Blue Star Chronicles

Whatever you think of Ben Affleck and his acting abilities, you might have to admit that he did a jam up job of this satire of Keith Olbermann on last night’s Saturday Night Live. Of course, the video is right here for you to see.

Apparently, Olbermann’s ego wouldn’t let him NOT crash the SNL set to see the rehearsal on Friday evening. They say that Affleck actually got a bit nervous impersonating Olbermann with him watching. Ahh well. If Keith Olbermann can call everyone a Nazi or Nazi sympathizer, then he should be able to take a little bit of ridicule aimed at him.

Keith, at least you aren’t THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD!!!!!!

Bob Beckel is doing his political punditry thing on television and insulting the entire Southern region of the nation.

Bob Beckel

I had the television on a while ago and was just half listening to it when I heard Bob Beckel being interviewed regarding what Barack Obama needs to do to win over the South. The interviewer was saying that the Obama camp has decided that they really need to win over Southerners in order for him to be able to win the Presidency.

According to the interviewer, there had been a discussion in Obama’s camp about how to get past ‘the color of his skin’ in the South. A Southern democrat has told them that it wasn’t the color of his skin but his tin ear that was the problem. Bob Beckel immediately responded that it absolutely was the color of his skin that was the problem Obama would have in the South.

Then, the man started talking about the South and why it was useless for Obama to even campaign here. He said he’s been ‘down there’ and knew ‘those people’ and there’s really nothing Obama can do. ‘If you can’t shoot it, eat it, drink it or (expletive deleted) it, they just aren’t interested in it’, he said.

That got my attention. He actually said that!!!

He consistently referred to the South as ‘Appalachia’ … and not in a good way. I was wanting to scream to the television - THE SOUTH ISN’T APPALACHIA AND WHAT’S WRONG WITH APPALACHIA ANYWAY!!!!!

He said, ‘You know they eat catfish down there? That stuffs awful. I tried it and its nasty.’ He went on and on about the catfish. He went on and on about ‘those people’ and ‘Appalachia’ and how there wasn’t any way Barack Obama was going to be able to relate to Southern people. He said a few Black people in the South might vote for Obama, but that was it.

He said for some reason George H.W. Bush was able to relate to Southerners. He said he could ‘go down there’ and talk about hunting and fishing and every body liked him. But he didn’t think Southerners would be able to get past Obama’s skin color even if he can talk hunting and fishing.

ARRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was really wanting to throw something through the television.

His grand finale was that it was a waste of time and money for Obama to even let the wheels of his plane touch down in the Deep South. He said he might, MIGHT, have a chance in states like Florida and Virginia, but he might as well just realize he’s going to lose Kentucky, Tennessee and the Deep South.

I thought that he certainly will if that’s the attitude of his campaign people.

I am frequently dumbfounded at the level of prejudice that comes out of the Democratic leadership’s mouths. I could give multiple examples of statements I’ve heard from people like Howard Dean, Chris Matthews and Bob Beckel that are just almost unbelievable - but no one seems to bat an eye at it.

Of course, no one worries about insulting Southerners. You don’t have to be politically correct about the South. Its one of the last sub-groups of people that its okay to make horrible statements about and there are no political consequences.

Plus, its increasingly obvious that liberals don’t associate with people who don’t think like them, so they don’t have any counter points to their preconceived notions about what the South and/or Middle Americans think, feel and believe.

Barack Obama has already written off states like West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Now apparently, he’s writing off the entire South. What does that leave him? What states does he think he’s going to win?

I still think there’s a good chance that Hillary Clinton is going to nab the nomination right out from under Obama’s nose (its high enough in the air to not even notice the Clintons coming). Should he actually be nominated, I’m fairly sure there’s an excellent chance he won’t win a single state in the Union.

Remember, Bob Beckel ran the most devastating Democratic Presidential run ever. He managed Walter Mondale’s 1984 presidential bid. Mondale lost every State in the Union except his home state of Minnesota - and even there he only won by 4,000 votes. If he keeps it up, he might do the same thing for Obama.

Electoral College 1984 - Map

It turns out that I wasn’t the only one who was insulted by Beckel’s bigoted diatribe.

Michael Yon was interviewed on Fox and Friends (see video above) regarding the progress in Iraq. As many of you know, Michael Yon is a journalist and blogger who has made numerous trips to Iraq and chronicled what he has seen there in his articles and photography. He is former special forces and has spent more time with the troops than any other journalist that I’m aware of. Even better, he doesn’t stay in the safety of the Green Zone to do his reporting, as so many others do.

Strangely, the main stream media tends to ignore reporters like Yon, seemingly prefering to focus on any set backs that occur, regardless of how small they might be. Meanwhile, significant progress is pretty much universally ignored by the media.

Yon doesn’t just write about sweetness and light, however. He has reported in a non-biased manner that has irritated people of all points of view at one point or the other. Regardless of your opinion of the war, its good to hear how its actually going without personal and political agendas interferring with the reporting.

I have heard from someone very close to me that the progress in Iraq has been unbelievable since the beginning of the surge. I believe him and am grateful that I can get some reports from people who actually know what’s going on there.

Thanks to Hot Air and Jawa Report for the video.

Barack Obama got pretty testy with a guy who wanted to get a picture with him today. He accused the guy of just wanting the picture so he could sell it on Ebay. That may be true, but Barack’s reaction to the guy shows that Barack is having trouble keeping up his personable facade. It also so he’s got a temper.

Oh - Barack’s people came out and said that the guy wanted the photo to sell on Ebay AFTER the video of the exchange became public.

Whatever. You just KNOW that if this had been John McCain it would have been played every five minutes on the news with the introduction that its an example of how McCain can’t control his temper. In fact, this is an example of a much worse temper tantrum than the video they showed repeatedly of John McCain supposedly losing his temper.

The media really thinks we are stupid and that they can decide who will be president by bombarding us with their own spin on the candidates and the news. We only get to see the candidates as they really are periodically through little snippets like this.

Tsk, tsk Barack. Watch your temper or you might get a reputation for being out of control.

h/t Politico

This story has been around since last fall, but I just found it today and found it very disturbing. This is an example of the main stream medias ability to put a pretty face on an ugly, grotesque, horrific act.

The picture above is of a lovely young woman in her twenties who exudes a sense of serenity. Its actually a pleasant picture to look at. This is the picture that was used as the branding for a New York Times review of a film called ‘Hot House’. The movie was about the lives of palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. The film, of course, focused on the need to release prisoners from Israeli prisons.

As the lovely face above peers out at you, you read the article of how these people are being held in Israeli prisons. The imagery and verbiage are all geared to engender sympathy for the prisoners. The problem is, they leave out part of the story. Actually, they leave out the biggest part of the story …. like why this angelic looking youthful woman is in an Israeli prison to begin with.

She’s a mass murderer. And she has no remorse for her acts. She unequivocally states she would do it again.

The parents of one of her victims wrote a letter about this film:

[Last June] the New York Times carried a review of a film called “Hot House” that goes inside Israeli prisons and examines the lives of Palestinian prisoners. We’re not recommending the film or the review. But we do want to share our feelings with you about the beaming female face that adorns the article [above].

The film is produced by HBO. So it’s presumably HBO’s publicity department that was responsible for creating and distributing a glamor-style photograph of a smiling, contented-looking young woman in her twenties to promote the movie.

That female is our child’s murderer.

She was sentenced to sixteen life sentences or 320 years which she is serving in an Israeli jail. Fifteen people were killed and more than a hundred maimed and injured by the actions of this attractive person and her associates. The background is here.

Neither the New York Times nor HBO are likely to give even a moment’s attention to the victims of the barbarians who destroyed the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem and the lives of so many victims. So we would be grateful if you would pass along this link to some pictures of our daughter whose name was Malki. She was unable to reach her twenties — Hamas saw to that.

Though she was only fifteen years old when her life was stolen from her and from us, we think Malki was a beautiful young woman, living a beautiful life. We ask your help so that other people — far fewer than the number who will see the New York Times, of course — can know about her. Please ask your friends to look at the pictures — some of the very few we have — of our murdered daughter. They are here.

And remind them of what the woman in the Israeli prison — the woman smiling so happily in the New York Times — said last year. “I’m not sorry for what I did. We’ll become free from the occupation and then I will be free from prison.”

With so many voices demanding that Israel release its terrorist prisoners, small wonder she’s smiling.

With greetings from Jerusalem,
Frimet and Arnold Roth
On behalf of Keren Malki

Has anyone done a film on the kidnapped Israeli Soldiers that palestine refuses to give any accounting for? No? I didn’t think so.

h/t: Real Israel
also at Powerline with more info here.
Digg this story here.

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Yeah, I know this guy just wanted to get on the news for this and me posting it is helping that effort, but still, its just so stupid it has to be noted! This guy is billed as a comedian although no one has ever heard of him. He gets the chance to be on Fox News for a national audience and uses that opportunity to slam Fox News in a pretty pathetic way. I’m hoping he wasn’t trying to do his comedy act! If so that would really be pitiful!

Here’s a clue ….. if a network lets you criticize them on their own network then they aren’t tyrants and involved in propaganda. That’s not how propaganda works. If you want to find out about having your free speech restricted you might try going to Cuba or Iran and then you will understand the meaning of having your free speech denied.

I’m sure everyone has heard about the Old Grey Lady’s hit piece on John McCain. If you haven’t heard about it you haven’t been on the internet or turned on your television today. It certainly got Michelle Obama’s lack of pride in her country off the current news cycle.

It turns out that the Executive Director of the New York Times, Bill Keller, has a few skeletons in his own closet he might not want out in his own newspaper.

The Deceiver is reporting on a September 2006 New York magazine story having to do with Keller and the circumstances that resulted in the end of Keller’s first marriage to National Public Radio reporter Ann Cooper and his second marriage to Emma Gilbey.

Here’s what New York wrote in 2006 ….

… Keller wrote one last piece on South Africa, an article for the Times Magazine about Nelson Mandela’s wife, Winnie, in which he cited a book called The Lady: The Life and Times of Winnie Mandela. The following week, the magazine published a letter by the book’s author [Emma Gilbey] …

After reading the letter, Keller called Gilbey, a British journalist living in New York, and asked her to coffee at the Times cafeteria. Gilbey, at the time, had a reputation as something of a power-dater; her exes included Senator John Kerry and Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour. An affair ensued, which shocked Keller’s friends. “I felt bad for everyone involved,” says Stephen Engelberg, a former Times reporter. “This was not characteristic behavior at all. I wouldn’t pretend to be Bill’s psychologist, but he didn’t get a red sports car, so …”

… Two years after they met, Gilbey was pregnant, Keller was divorced from Cooper, and he had a new job as [Times] managing editor.

I could have just written that Keller had been having an affair with a goat and, by his own journalistic standards, it’d be up to him to prove that he didn’t. But I won’t do that. I probably went overboard by writing about a story that actually has sources. That doesn’t seem to be necessary by the standards of the New York Times.

I seriously don’t care anything about Keller’s private life. I certainly don’t care or want to know about who he sleeps with. I’m just saying, people who live in glass houses …….

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Osama, Obama, Osama, Obama
Let’s call the whole thing off ….

Reminds me of Ted Kennedy slipping on Obama’s name. Its no wonder that the muslim world is all excited at the thought that the United States is on the verge of electing a muslim president. Nobody can get it straight.

Iowa Hawk has conducted an investigative report of the shocking crimes committed by media veterans. The facts laid out are disturbing to say the least. The glaring question is a chicken or egg sort of question. Do deviants find themselves attracted to jobs in the main stream media or does working in newsrooms foster what would otherwise remain dormant tendencies for criminal behavior?

As Casualties Mount, Some Question The Emotional Stability of Media Vets

An Iowahawk Special Investigative Report
With Statistical Guidance from the New York Times

A Denver newspaper columnist is arrested for stalking a story subject. In Cincinnati, a television reporter is arrested on charges of child molestation. A North Carolina newspaper reporter is arrested for harassing a local woman. A drunken Chicago Sun-Times columnist and editorial board member is arrested for wife beating. A Baltimore newspaper editor is arrested for threatening neighbors with a shotgun. In Florida, one TV reporter is arrested for DUI, while another is charged with carrying a gun into a high school. A Philadelphia news anchorwoman goes on a violent drunken rampage, assaulting a police officer. In England, a newspaper columnist is arrested for killing her elderly aunt.

Unrelated incidents, or mounting evidence of that America’s newsrooms have become a breeding ground for murderous, drunk, gun-wielding child molesters? Answers are elusive, but the ever-increasing toll of violent crimes committed by journalists has led some experts to warn that without programs for intensive mental health care, the nation faces a potential bloodbath at the hands of psychopathic media vets.

“These people could snap at any minute,” says James Treacher of the Treacher Institute for Journalist Studies. “We need to get them the help and medication they need before it’s too late.”

Statistics of Shame

Accounts of media psychopathy, while widespread, have until now been largely anecdotal. In order to provide a more focused and systematic study of the crisis, Iowahawk researchers set out to identify and tabulate criminal arrests and convictions of current and former journalists. While by no means comprehensive, this 10-minute project yielded a grim picture of a once-proud profession now in the grips of tragic, drunk, violent, child-raping rage.

Read more disturbing statistics at Iowahawk

I suppose everyone has heard about the recent New York Times ’study’ on the violence of our military men returning from Foreign battles. The article referred to ‘murders’ committed by veterans of foreign battles as fact in a front page story entitled ‘Across American, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles’.

The title says it all doesn’t it? And unfortunately, as the New York Times well knows, many people form their opinions from the titles. The very long article goes on to distort statistics and report half-truths to make it appear that there is an epidemic of violence being perpetrated upon society by returning war veterans. Unfortunately, they leave out comparative statistics from the general population and fail to differentiate between murder and DUIs. You can get more information from Media Mythbusters and Flopping Aces.

LtCol Oliver North writes about part of the effect of this smear campaign against America in general and the military in particular by the old media.

Waukesha, WI ? Here in “Cheesehead” country, where Green Bay Packer fans go to Lambeau field with snow shovels, military recruiting has never been much of a problem ? until now. “These are outdoors, patriotic people,” a military recruiter told me as I prepared to speak at a Boy Scout function here. “Young people up here are tough. They hunt, they ice-fish, they go to football games in an open stadium in the middle of a blizzard. This used to be a great place to be a recruiter ? but not any more,” he continued.

“What?s happened,” I asked this two-tour veteran of the Global War on Terror.

His reply was blunt ? and an indictment of the so-called mainstream media: “The press is killing us. We have parents and high school guidance counselors telling our best prospective recruits that they have too much potential to waste it in the military. Last year we had to debunk myths about how the war in Iraq was being lost. Now when we go to talk to parents they ask us about stories they have heard about suicides, drugs ? and now murders. There is no ‘good news.’ It’s very discouraging.”

Remember those words: “very discouraging.”

The “murders” my recruiter referred to are those “documented” by The New York Times in a front page story entitled “Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles.” The “Deadly Echoes” piece appeared concurrently with the hunt for a male Marine suspected of killing a fellow female Marine in North Carolina ? a story that has been repeated almost hourly on the cable news channels.

The authors of the NYT piece claim that they found 121 cases where veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing, or were charged with one, after their return from war. What this amounts to says the Times, is “a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.”

The Times reprints one local newspaper headline reading, “Iraq veteran arrested in killing.” The story goes on to fan the flames: “Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories. Lakewood, Wash.: ‘Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife.’ Pierre, S.D.: ‘Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress.’ Colorado Springs: ‘Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime Ring.’”

This collection of sensational headlines is an effective gimmick ? but it ignores reality. The homicide rate for 18-34 year old civilians who have never served in the military is actually five times higher than it is for those who are now, or who have recently been in, the Armed Forces.

Had the Times wanted to make a different point, instead of impugning the U.S. military, they could have done a Google search to find these headlines: “Deputies: Couple commits suicide after foreclosure notice,” from KATU-TV; and “Foreclosure May Have Led to Homicide-Suicide,” from theindychannel.com; and “Lengthy SWAT Standoff Over Foreclosure Ends in Suicide,” from the Houston Chronicle. The New York Times could compile such headlines to dissuade Americans from home ownership.

“Very discouraging” is how the recruiter described the current attack on those who serve in the U.S. Armed Forces. He’s right ? and the recent Times hit piece is just part of a pattern that began to emerge in the so-called mainstream media as the situation on the ground in Iraq began to improve late last year.

By Autumn 2007, casualties, attacks on civilians, roadside-bombings, assassinations and sectarian violence in Iraq had plummeted. But for the potentates of the press, the lack of bad news from the battlefield didn’t mean that bad news about our military couldn’t be created elsewhere.

From October through December last year there were a series print and broadcast “investigative reports” about high rates of suicide, desertion, drug abuse and divorce among members of our military. A 17 November 2007 Associated Press headline blared: “Soldiers strained by six years at war are deserting their posts at the highest rate since 1980.”

In fact, the drug abuse and suicide rates for military personnel are considerably lower than that for the same age group in the U.S. population and the divorce rate in the military remains slightly lower than in the overall population. The desertion rate for the Marines has actually declined since 9-11-01.

Despite significant improvements on the battlefield in Iraq, the combined effects of this adverse “reporting” has created a more challenging recruiting environment ? and made it more difficult for young war veterans to find good jobs once they have completed their service. In December, the unemployment rate for 20-24 year old veterans was nearly 17 percent ? more than three times the rate for non-veteran Americans. It’s clear evidence that the smear has worked.

Matt Lauer has done a Dateline report on ‘American Gangster’, the much-hyped movie just released by Universal. The movie is based on the story of Frank Lucas who was basically a thug in New York City in the 1960s and 1970s. He’s been released from prison and now he and the detective that put him in prison are being immortalized in this film.

Like any good sociopath, Lucas is called charming and a vivid storyteller. He still want talk about the murders he committed because there is no statute of limitations on murder. He will talk about his other crimes and seems to be enjoying the attention this movie is bringing him. Lucas created a drug empire based on shipping heroin from Vietnam in the caskets of dead Soldiers.
Macsmind reports on Lauer’s interview. He says Lauer just gushed over the convicted felon Frank Lucas. He snickers when he speaks fo Lucas’ method of shipping heroin to the States from Vietnam. I guess Lauer thinks that’s humorous or clever somehow.

I just think its disgusting.

“Frank Lucas exudes a distinctive charisma even though he’s been physically weakened by time on the street and behind bars. I talked with him about the film, “American Gangster,” which he had only just seen days before our interview. He was gushing about the movie and Denzel Washington’s performance, saying he was “amazed at the way he had (him) down.” Although Lucas was well known in the criminal underworld of New York and among law enforcement in the ’70s, the new film is bringing him a tidal wave of press attention. He appears to be relishing it, although it wasn’t enough to get him to come to the movie’s premiere at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. He reportedly circled the block in his car that night before deciding not to make an appearance. Was he afraid of retaliation by any of the criminals he testified against? Or was he afraid of the crowd and the spotlights?

A vivid storyteller, he has quite a riveting one to tell — a criminal twist on Horatio Alger. This semiliterate African-American man grew up in the south, came to New York and built a drug empire unlike any other in the late ’60s and ’70s, beginning his life of crime in the ’50s as the protegee of Harlem gangster Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson. When Johnson died in 1968, Lucas took over his drug operation and expanded it. The key came when he was able to corner his own supply of heroin in the so-called “Golden Triangle” of Southeast Asia, where numerous American soldiers had become addicted to heroin during the Vietnam War.

Utilizing a military connection, he and his crew designed a disturbing scheme to get the heroin in the United States–smuggling bags of dope in the coffins of dead U.S. soldiers being flown back from Vietnam. The infamous operation became known as the “Cadaver Connection” (a nod to the Italian mafia’s well-known French Connection that came to light in the 1960’s)”

So is this what Hollywood wants us to view as heroes these days?

The New York Sun’s Eli Lake is reporting this morning that al-Qaeda’s intranet communications system has been shut down - or more likely moved - following an report by ABC News that revealed the fact that American intelligence had penetrated and was monitoring their communications.

The intelligence blunder started with what appeared at the time as an American intelligence victory, namely that the federal government had intercepted, a full four days before it was to be aired, a video of Osama bin Laden’s first appearance in three years in a video address marking the sixth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001. On the morning of September 7, the Web site of ABC News posted excerpts from the speech.

But the disclosure from ABC and later other news organizations tipped off Qaeda’s internal security division that the organization’s Internet communications system, known among American intelligence analysts as Obelisk, was compromised. This network of Web sites serves not only as the distribution system for the videos produced by Al Qaeda’s production company, As-Sahab, but also as the equivalent of a corporate intranet, dealing with such mundane matters as expense reporting and clerical memos to mid- and lower-level Qaeda operatives throughout the world.

And so the battle rages on with our enemies from without who received invaluable assistance from our enemies from within ….

One intelligence officer who requested anonymity said in an interview last week that the intelligence community watched in real time the shutdown of the Obelisk system. America’s Obelisk watchers even saw the order to shut down the system delivered from Qaeda’s internal security to a team of technical workers in Malaysia. That was the last internal message America’s intelligence community saw. “We saw the whole thing shut down because of this leak,” the official said. “We lost an important keyhole into the enemy.”

The founder of a Web site known as clandestineradio.com, Nick Grace, tracked the shutdown of Qaeda’s Obelisk system in real time. “It was both unprecedented and chilling from the perspective of a Web techie. The discipline and coordination to take the entire system down involving multiple Web servers, hundreds of user names and passwords, is an astounding feat, especially that it was done within minutes,” Mr. Grace said yesterday.

The fact that they can shut down and move that widespread a system in a matter of moments is phenomenal. It tells us that both them and their system is sophisticated and well organized.

Years of work to infiltrate the al-Qaeda intranet system was flushed down the drain for the sake of a story. Someone, somewhere leaked the story to ABC and ABC published it. Its being investigated where the leak came from, they know who it went to. ABC probably was really proud of themselves for getting a scoop on that story.

h/t Newsbusters

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