Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Slop du Jour


M*A*S*H - TV Season Three - 3 Tape Boxed SetThe new series of Comcast ads feature an old clip of Loretta Swit on the $10,000 Pyramid show (which, if inflation-adjusted, would be roughly $9.3 million dollars today, I believe). This got me thinking about M*A*S*H and, for some reason, the Colonel Flagg character. Flagg -- a kind of demi-secret military intelligence operative -- was a perfect combination of blowhard and ignoramus (kind of like a testosterone-fueled version of Maureen Dowd, come to think of it).

A quick search got me a comprehensive list of quotes from the show, the following of which are my personal favorites.

A device has yet to be invented that will measure my indifference to this remark. -- Hawkeye

Okay, Radar, state your business, in one word or less. -- Hawkeye

Well, what's the slop du jour? -- Hawkeye

I told you the food here should not be taken internally. -- Hawkeye

How would you like to donate a pint of blood through your nose? -- Trapper

The only thing Charles remembers fondly from his childhood is his hair. -- Hawkeye

Klinger, it's my considered opinion that no one is going to believe you are pregnant -- Henry

I'm sick of hearing about the wounded. What about all the thousands of wonderful guys who are fighting this war without any of the credit or the glory that always goes to those lucky few who just happen to get shot -- Frank

What a unique device, the human tush. An architectural wonder, one of a kind...actually two of a kind. Designed to support our weight for a lifetime of sitting it also has the subtlety to do the samba. And when attached to certain members of the female species at a time when light summer dresses are worn can cause some of us to drive our cars straight up a lamppost. - Hawkeye

You are the 10 most boring people I know -- Trapper to Frank

I don't mind eating if it's possible to make a martini sandwich. -- Hawkeye

I'd like a dry martini, Mr. Quoc, a very dry martini. A very dry, arrid, barren, desiccated, veritable dustbowel of a martini. I want a martini that could be declared a disaster area. Mix me just such a martini. -- Hawkeye

Don't play dumb with me, you're not as good at it as I am -- Flagg

I am only paranoid because everyone is against me -- Frank

Are you eating breakfast cereal or is that just a bad telephone line? -- Klinger

You look like an ad for death -- Hawkeye


M*A*S*H Quotes

Monday, October 17, 2005

What Democrats must do to win elections


Governance.Com: Democracy in the Information AgeThe Powerline crew points us to Washington Times coverage of a report on Democratic strategy for 2006 and beyond.

Written by two veteran Democratic strategists, William Galston and Elaine Kamarck, the report insists that Democrats must truly become centrists if they are to regain majority status. In doing so, the pair highlights a set of 'myths', which have bedeviled the party for years:

• "The myth of mobilization." Democrats are not going to be able to win with the old liberal orthodoxy by simply energizing the party's base and bringing voters "to the polls in record numbers." In an electorate "where conservatives outnumber liberals 3-2 and where ideology so closely predicts voting behavior, Democrats cannot win the game of 'base' ball."

• "The myth of demography." Democrats are fooling themselves if they think the population growth among major minorities such as Hispanics "will secure a Democratic majority for decades to come."

"Along with rising Hispanic voter rolls has been a dramatic increase in Hispanic incomes, and these newly affluent voters behave more like the rest of the middle-class electorate."

• "The myth of prescription drugs is our shorthand for the proposition, which seems to bewitch Democratic political consultants, that Democrats can win present-day national elections by avoiding cultural issues, downplaying national security, and changing the subject to domestic issues such as health care, education and job security."


The report also noted a 'precipitous drop' in support from two critical groups: married women and Catholics. The former group has dropped from +4 Democratic in '96, even in '00, to -12 in '04. The latter group has dropped from +16 Democratic in '96, +2 in '00, to -5 in '04.

Trouble is, the authors wrote similar advice in 1988. Entitled "The Politics of Evasion," that report also charged liberal Democrats with "clinging to a series of myths that thwarted critical thinking and needed change." Powerline notes:

The Democrats didn't listen then; will they now? I doubt it. The Democratic Party has lost much of its influence to far-left grass roots groups like MoveOn.org, which are funded not primarily by the party's traditional constituencies, but by the far left, especially the far-left super-rich. The issues on which Galston and Kamarck urge the party to move toward the center -- the war on terror, the American military generally, and social issues like gay marriage -- are precisely the issues that motivate the most partisan Democrats. I'm not sure there are many Democrats left who are willing to compromise on those core issues, which is one reason I'm not as confident as most people that Hillary Clinton has the '08 nomination more or less wrapped up.

Over the last nine months, events have gone about as badly as they could for the Republicans. Maybe yesterday's election in Iraq was the beginning of a turnaround, and prospects will look brighter by next November. But even if the next year proves tough for the Republicans, they will still have their ace in the hole: they get to run against Democrats.


Like death, taxes, and Chad Johnson getting open, this report -- too -- is certain to be ignored.

Sunday, October 16, 2005

Book Review: Good to Great


Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don'tI may, by now, be the last person in America to read Collins' best-seller. No matter, it's exceptional. Using extensive quantitative research, Jim Collins and his team arrived at a set of fundamental differentiators that distinguish great companies from merely good ones.

How, for example, did Walgreens outperform the market by a factor of fifteen times, while its competitor Eckerd turned into an industry laggard? How did Kimberly-Clark meet and beat the master marketers at P&G? And how could Nucor take on -- and soundly defeat -- US Steel? Simple, Collins tells us: all exhibited a suite of traits that supercharged corporate performance.

To illustrate the point: had you invested one thousand dollars in Walgreens in 1975, that stake would have been worth over $560,000 by the year 2000. Contrast that performance with the great names of corporate America: Intel ($309,000), GE ($119,000), Coke ($73,000), Merck ($64,000), and the general market ($37,000).

In a nutshell, the traits include:

o "Level 5 leadership" - leaders that exhibit a unique combination of personal humility and professional discipline with ambition focused on the company, not the individual.
o "First Who, then What" - getting the best people on board, then worrying about fine-tuning corporate direction.
o "Confront brutal facts, without ever losing faith" - also termed "the Stockdale Paradox", this trait involves seeking the truth of the current situation while maintaining a certainty in victory.
o "The Hedgehog Concept" - fundamental discipline at the intersection of what your organization has passion for, what it can be the best at, and knowing the single metric that drives your economic engine (e.g., dollars per customer-visit, if you're a retailer).
o "A culture of discipline" - sustaining excellent results requires nuturing a culture of displined people taking displined action, consistent with the Hedgehog Concept.
o "The flywheel" - good-to-great transitions never happen in one grandiose re-org; instead, they are the result of a consistent sequence of buildups and breakthroughs, one after the other.

Like all great ideas, from the perspective of hindsight, Collins' characteristics look simple, dry, and boring. The book is anything but: it is a unique combination of research report, historical retrospective, and incisive analysis. Put simply, if you work in a business (!), you owe it to yourself to read this book.

Irony Alert: Carter-era official criticizes administration


The Real Jimmy Carter: How Our Worst Ex-President Undermines American Foreign Policy, Coddles Dictators and Created the Party of Clinton and Kerry In a recent op-ed column (the LA Times, as if you couldn't guess), former national security advisor to Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, pilloried the Bush administration. Calling the post-9/11 approach, "suicidal statecraft" (a la Arnold Toynbee), Brzezinski further claims that 9/11 represented a "challenge largely of regional origin."

Those slaughtered in the World Trade Center or at the Pentagon are, of course, unable to voice their opinions while Brzezinski pontificates. That a Carter-era official, party to -- inarguably -- the most disastrous presidency in the last half-century, criticizes anyone, should be enough to set off alarm claxons in newsrooms everywhere.

Recognizing the irony inherent in a Carter-era administration windbag critiquing anyone, Victor Davis Hanson shreds Brzezinski using everything but a taser and a cattle prod. Sally forth and read it all, for it is good.

...Aside from the unintended irony that the classical historian Arnold Toynbee himself was not always “adroit,” but wrong in most of his determinist conclusions, and that such criticism comes from a high official of an administration that witnessed on its watch the Iranian-hostage debacle, the disastrous rescue mission, the tragicomic odyssey of the terminally ill shah, the first and last Western Olympic boycott, oil hikes even higher in real dollars than the present spikes, Communist infiltration into Central America, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Cambodian holocaust, a gloomy acceptance that perpetual parity with the Soviet Union was the hope of the day, the realism that cemented our ties with corrupt autocracies in the Middle East (Orwellian sales of F-15 warplanes to the Saudis minus their extras), and the hard-to-achieve simultaneous high unemployment, high inflation, and high interest rates, Mr. Brzezinski is at least a valuable barometer of the current pessimism over events such as September 11...

Friday, October 14, 2005

The Egyptian liberals and the American conservatives


Ancient Egypt The Gateway Pundit points us to this exceptional post on the Freedom for Egyptions blog, which is entitled, "The Egyptian liberals and the American conservatives."

Recently, I had a discussion with a friend of mine who claims to be a liberal Egyptian on the Iraq war. In a separate coincidence, I had another meeting with another friend who also claims to be also liberal on the same topic.

Egyptian liberals are quite divided on the war in Iraq. Or it could be that the war on Iraq demonstrated sharply two streams of liberals in Egypt...


After reading this exceptional post, GatewayPundit further ponders an intriguing set of questions:

A few questions came to mind while reading this great posting:

* What happened to American Liberals?
* If American Conservatives stand as Freedom Fighters what do the liberals stand for today?
* How can a person say he or she believes in freedom and democracy but is unwilling to sacrifice?
* What is the American liberal strategy to freeing people enslaved in a brutal regime?
* How can one say they are for Human Rights and yet turn their back as mass graves are being filled to overflowing?
* How can one who believes in Human Rights equate dismemberment to hazing techniques?

And, to my Egyptian friends...

* Please name one international leader who consistently stated that their were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq "before" the War in Iraq began. Just one... (and Saddam Hussein does not count!)
* What are you being told about America that would have you not trust American intentions today?
* Does anyone give America credit for the great sacrifice in life and money that our country is giving Iraq and the region today?
* Why is there not greater outrage in the Middle East against the killers of innocent Iraqis?

Thursday, October 13, 2005

The Mediacrats and the Terrorists: on the Same Page


April 6, 2004: CNN: "Sen. Edward Kennedy launched a blistering election-year attack on the Bush administration's candor and honesty Monday... [he] said that Iraq was never a threat to the United States... 'Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam,' [he said]."

Feb. 13, 2004: New York Times, Bob Herbert: "...Citing phantom weapons of mass destruction, he led the nation into a war of choice that has resulted so far in the tragic deaths of more than 500 American troops and thousands of innocent Iraqis... powerfully connected corporations like Halliburton and Bechtel [are profiting]... More than 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam, another war of choice that was marketed deceitfully to the American people..."

May 5, 2004: Boston Globe: "...If Kerry prevails, he will beat Bush on foreign policy by being the more prudent and sensible. Just as the sheer unpopularity of the Korean and Vietnam wars ruined Democratic incumbents, the calamity of Iraq will speak for itself in undermining Bush..."

Oct. 11, 2005: ZAWAHIRI-ZARQAWI COMMUNIQUÉ: "...Things may develop faster than we imagine... The aftermath of the collapse of American power in Vietnam, and how they ran and left their agents, is noteworthy... we are in a battle, and that more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media..."


Yes indeedy-do. Sometimes it's tough to tell where Bob Herbert ends and Ayman al-Zawahiri begins
(hat tip: PoliPundit). Sadly, mimicking the party line of the terrorists is nothing new for the Mediacrats. Perhaps the Times could even reprint the "How to make a nuclear bomb" manual that is circulating on terrorist web-sites.

Where is the party of Truman, FDR, and JFK? Where are the Democrats who would not hesitate to protect America first? Unfortunately, they are removed from this Earth and probably spinning in their graves faster than Lance Armstrong's front wheel.

Bill Clinton's litany of half-hearted law enforcement actions -- pilloried most recently by his own appointee, Louis Freeh -- resulted in the A.Q. Kahn nuclear parts network; surreptitious nuclear programs in Libya, North Korea and Iran; and a series of horrific attacks by Al Qaeda.

While I pray the day never arrives, it is likely that -- in the not-so-distant future -- a nuclear device will detonate in Europe, or North America, or the Middle East. And it will be a direct result of the Clinton legacy. And on that forsaken day, a lot of people in the world -- liberals and conservatives alike -- will be longing for the good old days of President George W. Bush.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

The Rocket Scientists in the Media


Masterminds of Terror: The Truth Behind the Most Devastating Attack The World Has Ever SeenI wonder if any of the mainstream news outlets can spend about ninety seconds considering the following news articles that have been reported (separately) over the last several days:

UCLA Daily Bruin: IED Detonated near UCLA: "...the bomb squad arrived at 527 Midvale Ave. to find “an improvised explosive device” in the building’s open-air courtyard, said Grace Brady, a spokeswoman for the LAPD..."

News 11: Explosives Found near Georgia Tech Dorms: "Three explosive devices found in a courtyard between two Georgia Tech dormitories on the East Campus Monday morning were part of a “terrorist act,” an Atlanta police official said..."

Dallas Morning News: Media might be missing a story and ignoring a terrorist: "... On Oct. 1, as the Oklahoma Sooners hosted Kansas State in front of 84,000 fans, University of Oklahoma student Joel Hinrichs III blew himself up outside the stadium. There is evidence that he sought to enter the game and was turned away by security after refusing to allow his backpack to be searched. Some minutes later, that backpack, containing the chosen explosive of shoe bomber Richard Reid and the London subway bombers, exploded, killing Mr. Hinrichs as he sat on a bench..."


Yes, the gasbags at the New York Times -- genius op-ed columnists like former theater critic Frank Rich and uber-feminist Maureen Dowd -- can't let up on their bloviating anti-Bush agenda for a moment to ruminate on real stories.

Requiring all the mental gymnastics of adding two and two, stringing together a common thread between these stories is well beyond the mainstream media's rocket scientists. And, besides, it might make clear that President Bush was deadly serious when he stated that we're at war. After all, that message isn't on point for the Mediacrats.

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Keep drivin' that Hummer


Beyond Oil : The View from Hubbert's PeakInteresting article from the Rocky Mountain News (hat tip: PoliPundit):

Eight U.S. companies have filed applications with the federal government to lease land in Colorado for oil-shale development, a sign that oil producers again are ready to gamble some 23 years after the last boom went bust.

The government said it will tread carefully, since it doesn’t want to repeat the oil shale boom-and-bust cycles of the 1970s and 1980s that almost devastated the Western Slope’s economy.

But with crude oil above $66 a barrel at the close of trading Tuesday, oil shale is a promising alternative to crude. The Green River shale deposits in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming are estimated to contain 1.5 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels of oil, and while not all of it can be recovered, half that amount is nearly triple the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.


Before we start breakdancing, though, it's worth noting that several companies (like EnergyTec [EYTC]*) have been working diligently on freeing oil from the Wyoming area for quite some time. It ain't as easy as it might appear at first blush.

With industrialized and emerging countries all pursuing limited supplies of oil (and none of them quite as concerned with ecological damage as most in the U.S.), it's high time government eased exploration, refining, and alternative energy restrictions. It's not just good policy - it's a matter of national security.

*Full disclosure: yes, I am an investor in EYTC.

Monday, October 10, 2005

Hinrichs and Shrapnel


Had an interesting thought last night: there's a way to conclusively prove Joel Henry Hinrichs III was a suicide bomber bent on killing as many OU football fans as possible. I'd heard reports that trees in the area of the explosion were pockmarked with holes, as if from shrapnel. Were that the case, it would prove -- without a shadow of a doubt -- that Hinrichs had intended to kill dozens.

Blogger Acorns-from-an-Okie had similar thoughts. He stopped by the scene and took a few photos. His conclusion:

I (as definitely a non-forensic-science-type-guy) was not able to see any evidence of shrapnel or anything that would make the bomb explosive device more lethal.


Conclusion: while there's apparently no easy way to prove that Hinrichs was out to kill lots of people, a lack of shrapnel alone doesn't tell us a thing. Why, for instance, did he attempt to buy quantities of ammonium nitrate several days prior to the explosion? A lack of shrapnel points only to a lack of bomb-making skill or a need to transfer the device (say, from a backpack to a vest -- as has been reported).

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Here be good readin'


Carefully hand-selected for your reading consumption, a cornucopia of vignettes designed to enlighten the open-minded and infuriate the liberal:

Victor Davis Hanson, writing in National Review:

...The old debate whether Saddam Hussein was involved with al Qaeda is now calcified. Liberal conventional wisdom denies any such linkage since there is no firm evidence that Saddam knew of, or was involved in, the September 11 attacks. Thus most on the left ignore entirely that Ansar al-Islam was doing Saddam's dirty work in fighting the Kurds, that Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas resided in Baghdad, that Saddam openly harbored Abdul Rahman Yasin and Ahmed Hikmat Shakir who were connected to the effort in 1993 to blow up the World Trade Center and various anti-American plots, and that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi fled Afghanistan to the sanctuary of Iraq.

No matter. That was then, this is now — and there is no denying that al-Zarqawi is conducting al-Qaedist operations in Iraq, or that the sort of people who attacked us on September 11 are the sort of people now flocking to the Sunni Triangle and often dying at the hands of U.S. military forces. Everyone can agree on that.

The "flypaper" exegesis — that Iraq has become a magnetized burial ground pulling in wannabe al Qaedists — is widely dismissed as unsophisticated and yokelish. But we saw the same phenomenon on the Afghan border in late 2001 where the Pakistani madrassas thinned out as jihadists went over the mountains to the Taliban's aid — only to be bombed to smithereens, the survivors limping back to warn others to give up such a holy trek....


And today's Urban Legend, courtesy of SRT's collection of said legends:

URBAN LEGEND: The President and his administration intentionally misled the country into war with Iraq--and the "16 words" that appeared in the 2003 State of the Union are the best proof of it. In the words of Senator Ted Kennedy, "The gross abuse of intelligence was on full display in the President's State of the Union ... when he spoke the now infamous 16 words: 'The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.'.... As we all now know, that allegation was false...."

REALITY: On July 14, 2004--after a nearly half-year investigation--a special panel reported to the British Parliament that British intelligence had indeed concluded that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy uranium from Africa. The Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction, chaired by Lord Buffer, summarized: "It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999. The British government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium.... The statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that 'The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was well-founded."


Oh, but I'm sure Saddam's uranium was intended for peaceful purposes. Shhhhh. No one tell the Mediacrats. They can't be bothered with this story, because Tom Delay's alleged involvement in a trumped-up fund-raising tussle is really, truly more important.

Speaking of which: George Will recently described a surefire solution to poverty in America. And it's one that is certain to be ignored -- in every respect -- by the Mediacrats.

...last Sunday on ABC's "This Week," Sen. Barack Obama, Illinois's freshman Democrat, [had] the requisite lament about the president's inadequate "empathy" and an amazing criticism of the government's "historic indifference" and its "passive indifference" that "is as bad as active malice." The senator, 44, is just 30 months older than the "war on poverty" that President Johnson declared in January 1964. Since then the indifference that is as bad as active malice has been expressed in more than $6.6 trillion of anti-poverty spending, strictly defined.

The senator is called a "new kind of Democrat," which often means one with new ways of ignoring evidence discordant with old liberal orthodoxies about using cash - much of it spent through liberalism's "caring professions" - to cope with cultural collapse. He might, however, care to note three not-at-all recondite rules for avoiding poverty: Graduate from high school, don't have a baby until you are married, don't marry while you are a teenager. Among people who obey those rules, poverty is minimal....


I saw a great sign over at SRT. It was a sign held by a counter-protester, possibly in one of the Sheehan media-circus events.

It simply read:

WE WON THE WAR ON SLAVERY
WITHOUT YOUR HELP.

WE WON THE WAR AGAINST HITLER
WITHOUT YOUR HELP.

WE WON THE WAR ON COMMUNISM
WITHOUT YOUR HELP.

GET THE PICTURE??


You could also list the war on poverty (e.g., the Welfare Reform act of 1996, utterly successful by every measure and egregiously opposed by the Mediacratic leadership) as well as a host of other issues.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to question the Left's litany of failures over the last half-century. Which begs the question: why are they still using the same play-book? No matter, here are some results. Courtesy of PoliPundit, witness the progression of Democratic power in Congress, "ever since the high water mark of the FDR-era coalition":

...(for the US Senate)...

68 seats - 1965.
61 seats - 1975.
47 seats - 1985.
48 seats - 1995.
44 seats - 2005.

...(and for the House of Representatives)...

295 seats - 1965.
291 seats - 1975.
253 seats - 1985.
204 seats - 1995.
202 seats - 2005.

That’s despite the media, the FDR-era voter blocs, the public-sector unions, non-voting conservatives, the Democrat money machines, those bogus “opinion polls,” bogus “exit polls,” and those 18-22 year-old “librulz,” who get whipped up into frenzies by the Ward Churchills and Paul Krugmans of the world, and who then march off to the wrong precincts to vote against those evil conservatives...

Furthermore, here are two numbers you won’t see if you’re getting your political analyses from people who tend to get fawning interviews by the Pravda-Media:

9.
65.

A grand total of nine incumbent Republican House members have lost re-election bids since the 2000 election cycle, *inclusive*... Ever since the re-apportionment of the U.S. House following the 1990 Census... the Democrats have lost a grand total of 65 net House seats.

9.
65.

Just keep those raw numbers in mind when next August rolls around, and the usual suspects begin screaming and shouting the media is poised to re-take the House.

Friday, October 07, 2005

Francisco Franco still dead: MSM ignores Suicide Bomber


There are more startling and credible stories circulating around the death of bomber Joel Henry Hinrichs III, the Oklahoma U. student who blew himself into smithereens just outside a packed stadium last weekend.

One commentator on OU's FanBlogs notes:

Some local speculation that I consider reliable after I've sorted through rumors and media reports.

Bomber attempted to enter the stadium and was turned away when he refused to allow his backpack to be searched.

He then went to an area where charter buses park. A bus driver had a conversation with him while driver smoked cigarette, driver was returning to his bus when the explosion occurred, knocking driver off his feet.

Evidently, bomber was transferring explosive from a backpack to a vest when they exploded. The explosives in backpack failed to ignite and then were subsequenlty detonated by police later that evening ( which accounts for second blast heard nd reported Saturday night ) .

Hinrich visiting the Mosque or any Muslim connections are not established. I've seen reliable reports that conflict as to Hinrich's involvement at the Mosque. Respected Muslim OU professor says no, some media reports say yes.

One thing for sure, there's still more to come out about this and I'm puzzled by the national media ignoring this story.


Indeed.

And Tap Scott's CopyDesk claims to have that very same eye-witness account, abridged here for readability:

"...Saturday night I walked out of the OU stadium with about three minutes left on the clock bringing the game to the half. I am a part-time driver for a bus company and decided to go back to the bus... Prior to leaving the game, I sat on a cart and chatted with one of the security guards and would catch a glimpse of the game on the Big screen at the South end of the field. When I decided to leave, I stopped and talked to a very tall gate keeper and another young lady who was also a security officer...

From there, I proceeded to the Bus parking area. As I walked up to the buses, I stopped behind a gentleman sitting on the bench at the end of the last bus. I was looking for someone to talk to because that is just who I am. He appeared to me to be asleep, so I decided not to share with him about the beautiful new bus I was driving. It was then I made my way toward my bus. While walking, I heard another bus with its engine running and so I decided to see if I could find another driver.

After taking just a few more steps, I was hit from behind with a huge concussion. It didn't knock me down but it did push me forward. When I turned around, I saw a huge plume of smoke rising from what seemed to me to be coming from the back of the last bus, so I immediately ran to see if there was any danger of a fire.

When I got to the bus, I found nothing that indicated the bus had exploded. It was only after I turned around that I saw what had really happened. I have been instructed by the FBI not to give out any details of what I saw..."


Just a suicide? Do you really need ammonium nitrate fertilizer... just to off yourself? A car idling in a garage or a .38 special would seem to be sufficient. Channel 9 News reports that Police have confirmed Hinrichs attempted to buy quantities of the fertilizer:

Norman police confirmed Thursday that they ran a routine investigation of a 21-year-old University of Oklahoma student who blew himself up on campus Saturday night. [...Officials said...] an off-duty, plainclothes officer overheard a conversation Joel Henry Hinrichs III had with the proprietor of a Norman feed store last Thursday at 4 p.m. The conversation centered on a purchase of ammonium nitrate fertilizer... the off-duty officer reported that Hinrichs asked about different types of fertilizer and the concentration of ammonium nitrate in each.

Ammonium nitrate was the primary ingredient in the bomb that killed 168 people in the explosion that brought down the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.


Okay, so he couldn't build a McVeigh-style bomb and raised some suspicions in doing so. And to reiterate the fact that it wasn't just a suicide, OU President David Boren stated:

"Passouts were suspended during halftime for security reasons in order to enhance safety for the fans. A second device which was found during the initial search has been detonated."


Two devices.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, writing on the Counterterrorism Blog wonders aloud:

Perhaps Hinrichs's attendance of the mosque that Moussaoui attended and his attempt to purchase ammonium nitrate have reasonable explanations unrelated to terrorism. (Or perhaps the sources are wrong about this information; one hesitation I have about drawing conclusions in this case is that many of the reported facts are based on fairly sketchy sourcing.) However, there's enough to this story that it deserves more attention. It would be significant if Hinrichs had been motivated by radical Islam...


The Enid (OK) News & Eagle boils it down to some critical questions for OU President David Boren:

...the information that is being ferreted out by the media is starting to paint a disturbing picture. Why would Hinrichs try to buy large quantities of a known explosive material? What was his motive for committing the suicide in such a public and dramatic way? What kinds of associations has he been involved with recently and what were his political views?


If a suicide bomber detonates himself in the midwest, far, far away from New York, did it really happen?

I hear crickets chirping.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Non-story #8,604: Hafnium shipment intercepted at Bulgarian Border


Osama's Revenge: THE NEXT 9/11 : What the Media and the Government Haven't Told YouThe Sunday Herald of Scotland reports another interesting little story that the Mediacrats haven't deemed lede-worthy. A shipment of around ten pounds of hafnium, which can be used to enrich nuclear material, was intercepted by Bulgarian customs officials late last month.

Where was it headed? The chief of the Bulgarian police stated that is was destined for the Middle East, brokered by the Romanian mafia. Add it all up: organized crime, the Middle East, and lots of interesting toys from the old Soviet bloc. Nah... that's not worth reporting.

Where are the "journalists"? Where, indeed? Hey, does someone want to wake up Andy Rooney and give him the news?

Iran's quest to become a nuclear power has galvanised the Balkan mafias, security sources have warned following the discovery of potentially lethal nuclear enrichment material in the region. Last week, Bulgarian customs officials prevented a car from crossing into Romania after discovering 3.5kg of hafnium, a metallic element that is used in the nuclear enrichment process and which could potentially be employed in the manufacture of radioactive "dirty bombs".


Sunday Herald: Police fear Balkan mafia eager to sell A-bomb materials to Iran

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

A suicide bomber at Oklahoma University


Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News (Paperback)The president of Oklahoma University -- one David Boren -- would have you believe that the late Joel Henry Hinrichs III was simply an emotionally disturbed individual. Never mind that Hinrichs was within 100 yards from a stadium, which was filled to capacity with 84,000 football fans, when he detonated the bomb he was carrying.

Here are some related non-stories that the Mediacrats haven't been digging into:

1) "The Daily Oklahoman is reporting authorities found a large cache of bomb-making materials in Hinrichs' apartment. The cache is so big that the Oklahoman quoted one of the officials on the scene as estimating a full 24 hours would be required to cart away all of the material." -- Newsbusters

2) "Joel Hinrichs attended a mosque down the street from his apartment. His roommate is Pakistani and his identity has not yet been released..." -- Gateway Pundit

3) Hinrichs tried to buy ammonium nitrate, the substance used to level the Edward P. Murrah Federal Building: "Dustin Ellison, the general manager of Ellison Feed & Seed on Porter Avenue, said that a man matching Hinrichs' description had come into the store days before he blew himself up on OU's campus. Ellison said the man asked about ammonium nitrate, but couldn't offer a reason why he needed it. After the bombing, Ellison said he thought nothing of it. However, when he saw Hinrichs' photo, it triggered his memory...." -- Unattributed Yahoo News Report

4) Hinrichs' possible Jihadi connections are also outlined in this News Oklahoma report (video).

As Newsbusters notes, the proximity of Hinrichs to the crowd is highly suspicious. As an OU student, he would probably have had access to the student section. Is there a more target-rich environment than a stadium crammed with people? Not that I can think of.

The Mediacrats are, true to form, out to lunch on yet another critical story. If anyone is still wondering about shrinking subscription rates and falling Nielsen ratings, wonder no more.

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Conservative angst on Miers


Men In Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying AmericaThere's been a righteous diversity of opinion (okay, some would call it an uproar) among the right-of-center blogs concerning the appointment of Harriet Miers. There have been a host of negative reactions and a smattering of positive ones.

John at Powerline: "A disappointment."
Michelle Malkin: "Utterly underwhelmed."
John Yoo: "Opportunity squandered."
Ankle-Biting Pundits: "Is this what we fought for?"
John Hawkins: "A disaster."
Junkyard Blog: "Miers disappoints."

The most optimistic conservative I've seen so far is the effervescent Hugh Hewitt.

I hope the disappointed right will get over its sulk quickly as the fight over Miers is going to get very ugly very quickly as both the secular left and the anti-religious left realize that the president has nominated a thorough-going Evangelical of character and tough disposition. The light is going to go off over there that the president's eyebrows went up when Harry Reid scribbled Miers' name on the Minority Leader's list of acceptable nominees.

Taking the ball and going home because the nominee doesn't know you by your first name is hardly principle at work, and the refusal to see what she brings to the table isn't argument. It is entertaining, and also a sort of wish for a return to the days of old when the president was a Democrat and brick throwing made life as a pundit easy...

...See also The American Thinker, which is simply brilliant. By day's end there will be great and spreading fear on the left, and perhaps some genuine remorse among the shoot first and think later right.


Give Hugh credit. At crunch-time, Hewitt's gut reactions have frequently been brutally accurate. Consider the forces that he mustered -- in a matter of minutes -- during the 2004 elections. Remember? The exit polls that showed a clear Kerry lead? Amidst the wailing and gnashing of teeth, Hugh's voice was a clarion call, unequivocally stating that no matter the reasons, the exit polls were bogus. And while many others were crowing catastrophe, he had already declared, "checkmate."

Volokh Conspiracy notes that Miers appears pro-Second Amendment... always a good sign. And Alexander McClure puts the dot on the exclamation point:

All I need to do is quote from her remarks this morning:

“The wisdom of those who drafted our Constitution... have proven truly remarkable. It is the responsibility of every generation to be true to the founders’ vision of the proper role of the courts... If confirmed, I recognize that I will have a tremendous responsibility to... help ensure that the courts meet their obligation to strictly apply the law and the Constitution.”

What more do you need?


Would it be trite to say, "indeed" ?

Monday, October 03, 2005

CBS online: bias confirmed


In honor of Hugh Hewitt's ongoing debate with CBS over its alleged bias in listing journo-bloggers, I decided to run the same test on CBS News as I did the MSM at large a few days ago. The results? I laughed. I cried. But it didn't change my opinion much.

Democrat: 81,200
Republican: 65,400
Percentage of articles that mention Democrats, versus percentage that mention Republicans: 55%

Liberal: 11,600
Conservative: 33,400
Percentage of times the subjective label "Conservative" is employed, rather than "Liberal": 74%

Left-wing: 359
Right-wing: 506
Percentage of times the subjective label "Right-wing" is employed, rather than "Left-wing": 58%

The phrase, "CBS - you just got pwnt" comes to mind.

And don't forget to check out the original survey, which appears in much prettier fashion and covers the general print media. Spoiler (shhh, don't tell anyone): the Mediacrats are demonstrably biased.

Sunday, October 02, 2005

RadioBlogger: dropping (metaphorical) bodies like John Gotti


Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News MediaThere's been some exceptional work over at Radioblogger of late. RadioBlogger, working with Hugh Hewitt, offers outstanding transcripts of discussions with various media luminaries.

Recent conversations relate to the delayed Katrina response. Christopher Cooper, in Friday's Wall Street Journal, reports some startling news. And it's news that you probably haven't heard via conventional channels:

One of the mysteries of the fumbling federal response to... Katrina has been why the military, which was standing by, and federal disaster agencies, which had pre-positioned supplied in the area, didn't move in more quickly and with greater force. Senior government officials now say that one major reason for the delay was that they believed they had to plan for a far more complicated military operation, rather than... [just] a relief effort.

[False] Accounts from local officials of widespread looting and unspeakable violence [Ed: sloppily relayed by the mainstream media ] -- which now appear to have been significantly overstated -- raised the specter that soldiers might be forced to confront or even kill American citizens. The prospect of such a scenario added political and tactical complications to the job of filling the city with troops and set back relief efforts by days... [FEMA] faulted a "hysteric media" for passing on such [bogus] stories...


In other words, the mainstream media -- through its sheer incompetence -- helped cause the humanitarian crisis it so stridently decries. Look for a related Sixty Minutes  expose, oh, about the same time Jessica Simpson pulls down a Nobel Prize for mathematics.

RadioBlogger captures some related conversation. James Lileks:

HH: Now let me talk about the media and New Orleans. I just did this...oh, it was so classic PBS, sitting around the table talking with three people about something that nobody's going to watch. But it was fun. And they're defending the media down there, and you know, the slashed baby throats, and the forty people in the freezer, et cetera, as, you know, they were the captives of Ray Nagin. What do you make of this?

JL: I think, I'm going to defend the media here, because I think that if somebody runs screaming out of the dome, shouting that a giant octopus is eating people in the upper deck, I think it's the duty of the media to report that. Because if the media went inside, they might be eaten by the giant octopus. So I'm on their side in this one.


When Lileks breaks off a riff like that, it can probably only be equalled by P. Diddy or, perhaps, Mark "the Genius" Steyn:

And one thing I've learned since September 11th, is that a lot of things that 90% of journalists claim as fact are not fact. I mean, it started on about September the 12th, when people said we couldn't invade Afghanistan, because of the quote brutal Afghan winter...

...[if you're in the mainstream media], when you get to Iraq, you're supplied generally with a translator. The big news organizations have translators. Who are those translators? The ones that CNN and ABC and a lot of the big newspapers are using are actually the old Baath party translators.

...I think the Democrats for years now have made the mistake of... because they're not great issues people, and they make the mistake of, as they say in English soccer, playing the man, not the ball.... and they get rid of the guy, and some other guy nobody's ever heard of takes over, and life goes on, and the ideas, which is what's important about conservatism, those ideas stay strong. And until Democrats learn to stop wasting their time trying to do a... take a contract out on some peripheral political figure and actually attack the ideas, they're always going to be losing elections.


In his casual and exquisitely succint manner, Hugh Hewitt then boils the underlying truth to its purest distillation.

...We had all the resources of the American media combined in New Orleans. Everything they had, they threw at it. With the help of locals like you and national networks, print, media, radio, everything, not one outlet could get inside the convention center or the Superdome to do accurate reporting. What's that tell us about the trustworthyness of American media, when it's far away from home in a war zone like Iraq? Isn't that in fact an obvious admission that not only can they not do the job in New Orleans, we can't expect them to do the job of accurate reporting in a war zone like Iraq?


Indeed. Go ye and read of RadioBlogger, for it is good. Just do it. You know you want to.

Update: Welcome, RadioBlogger regulars! Related reading in these parts: The Stockdale Paradox and the Modern Left and Is the media biased? Google News has the answer.

'The EU Wants to "Oversee" the Internet'


There are some entertaining remarks over at LGF, related to this cute, fuzzy little article:

BRUSSELS, Belgium - The European Union insisted Friday that governments and the private sector must share the responsibility of overseeing the Internet, setting the stage for a showdown with the United States on the future of Internet governance.

A senior U.S. official reiterated Thursday that the country wants to remain the Internet’s ultimate authority, rejecting calls in a United Nations meeting in Geneva for a U.N. body to take over.

EU spokesman Martin Selmayr said a new cooperation model was important “because the Internet is a global resource.”

“The EU ... is very firm on this position,” he added.


I wrote about this issue before. Having the EU or the UN's ITU run the Internet makes about as much sense as tuna-fish-flavored ice-cream. Choice comments over at LGF:

They're very firm - what are they going to do - steal our lunch if we say no?

Right. They are firm on this. What exactly are they going to do? Hold their breath and kick their little feet? Pout? Whine? Send the dreaded strongly worded letter?

Hey EU, howzabout you simply thank us for coming up with the Internet and running it so well? Then go create something equally beneficial to the world and share it with us all. Ankle-biting shadows of a once-great civilization.

" “The EU ... is very firm on this position,” he added." - They must have taken THE BLUE PILL OF FIRMNESS...

Although over at CNN they word it a bit differently: "U.S. insists on controlling Web"...

ROFL. What's the EU going to do? Go to the UN? Pass a resolution that says if we don't comply they'll.... HAVE A MEETING! Threats from the EU/UN carry about as much credibility as John Kerry.

We must be careful, very very careful, lest they 'send us a letter'. You all know the impact of 'a letter' from the UN. Quaking in my boots, I am.

Riiiight ... as if my Illuminati brothers and I are going to give up control ... /Did I say that out loud?

How many times have European leftists said that we (Americans) need to "understand other people's cultures"? They don't even understand anything about us! They don't understand freedom of speech, individual rights, limited government. And there's people, like Chirac, who want global taxes. Have they ever heard of the Bill of Rights? Taxation without representation?


LGF: The EU Wants to "Oversee" the Internet

The Mediacrats' Flagship Recants... Again


Burning Down My Masters' House: My Life at the New York TimesIn episode #4,325 of the serial "New York Times Mistakes" (all of which are mysteriously skewed to the Left and somehow never, ever err on the other side), Adam Liptak finally owns up to another critical error (hat tip: Hugh Hewitt):

Judge John G. Roberts Jr., nominated to be chief justice of the United States, was not the author of an unsigned memorandum on libel law that was the focus of an article published in The New York Times yesterday. The Times erroneously attributed it to him. Bruce Fein, a Washington lawyer who was general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission in the Reagan administration, said yesterday that he wrote the memorandum...


Consider this the mediacratic equivalent of a "blue screen of death." The Mediacrats' flagship is suffering from catastrophic, systemic errors and only periodic reboots allow it to operate day-to-day.

NY Times: Libel Memorandum Attributed Falsely to Court Nominee

Friday, September 30, 2005

Is the media biased? Google News has the answer.


Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News (Paperback)According to its informational page, Google News, "gathers stories from more than 4,500 news sources in English worldwide." I wonder what Google News, with its integrated search capability, can tell us about media bias?

Let's do a little experiment. Let's search for the two major party names.

republicandemocratic% Rep.
%s senator2,3202,75046%
%s senate7,2208,44046%
%s congressman4,7904,25053%
%s congress22,40025,60046%

*Note: searches were qualified on both sides with the term "United States" to ensure a minimum of foreign news stories. In addition, the terms "democrat", "democratic", "democrats" were all counted; and "republican" and "republicans" were also counted on the other side.

Interesting. It looks like there's pretty much an even split.

I wonder what happens if -- instead of using party names -- we use the labels "conservative" and "liberal"? You would guess that a balanced mainstream media would employ the terms on a relatively equal basis. After all, the terms are subjective, and not official designations of any kind. If the mainstream media were truly balanced, these subjective terms would be evenly distributed.

I'm excited. Let's search.

conservativeliberalratio
%s congress9,0404,42067%
%s senator4,1402,98068%
%s senate15,30010,00060%

I'm stunned. On average, about two-thirds of mainstream media articles (remember, around 4,500 news sources in English) use the subjective term "conservative". Only about a third use the subjective term, "liberal".

How about additional subjective terms, such as "right-wing" and "left-wing"?


right-wingleft-wingratio
%s8,8406,29059%
%s congress79648862%
%s senator39326560%
%s congressman1273977%

Pretty much the same result. The media is more than willing, on average, to throw around a subjective label like "right-wing". Far more willing than to use the equivalent term for the other side of the political spectrum.

That's another reason I call the mainstream media the "mediacrats". Their agenda is so transparent, you can hardly see the New York Times when you hold it up to a bright light.

Next time you hear geniuses like Dan Rather or Al Franken blathering about how fair the Mediacrats are, pull these numbers out.

By a simple, quantitative measure, most news sources appear perfectly willing to slap labels on the GOP and the right... far more frequently than doing so for the Democrats and the left. I think that tells us just about all we need to know.

The mediacrats: taking a dying medium and killing it even quicker.

Thursday, September 29, 2005

"Roberts Decision Unsettles Dems"


The Perfect Kill, by AJ QuinnellThe other day, I was shocked to encounter a news story that seemed to tilt its coverage against the Mediacrats. What the... ? I had to read it twice to be sure. Even the headline (above) was discomforting. Here's an excerpt:

For the eight Democrats on the 18-member Judiciary panel and the 44 Democrats in the 100-member Senate, the choice over how to vote is riddled with short-and long-term political ramifications...

...As members of a divided, minority party, many of their considerations are at odds, such as how to appease a liberal donor base while appealing to swing voters, and trying to sort out whether voting no makes any difference to what sort of nominee President Bush submits in coming weeks to fill a second high court vacancy....


Wow. The author used the "L" word in a news article, plus labeled the Democrats "a divided, minority party." Which I guess they are. Alright, someone needs to come clean. Which editor was sleeping off a fifth of Jim Beam when this gem belly-crawled past the news-desk?

I've got to admit, I've seldom seen such characterizations in the mediacratic newspaper I read on a daily basis. So, what news service produced this story? The Associated Press? Nope. Knight-Ridder? Nah. Agency France Presse? Uhm, no. Al Jazeera? Surely you jest.

No, the author was none other than Margaret Talev of the McClatchy News Service . Hmmm. Never heard o' that one before. If Fox News is any indication, McClatchy might have a big future in store.

We'll know the trend is for real when a news story -- describing the area affected by Katrina -- estimates the size at, "roughly three times the diameter of Michael Moore."

Margaret Talev: "Roberts Decision Unsettles Dems"