As usual, your choices are criticized by those who think they know better

For electronic journalism, the main stream media (MSM) consists of the news departments of at least ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, NPR, Ganett newspapers, and their various feeds from the networks to local TV & radio stations. Many people believe that the MSM broadcasts a consistently liberal spin on all news and have turned to FOX and it's affiliates for an alternative. As evidenced by this article, some folks can't stand even a little heat in the ktichen:

Liberals Pressure Fox News Advertisers - washingtonpost.com:
"Liberal activists are stepping up their campaign against Fox News Channel by pressuring advertisers not to patronize the network.

MoveOn.org, the Campaign for America's Future and liberal blogs like DailyKos.com are asking thousands of supporters to monitor who is advertising on the network. Once a database is gathered, an organized phone-calling campaign will begin, said Jim Gilliam, vice president of media strategy for Brave New Films, a company that has made anti-Fox videos.

The groups have successfully pressured Democratic presidential candidates not to appear at any debate sponsored by Fox, and are also trying to get Home Depot Inc. to stop advertising there.
. . .
"It's a lot more effective for Sam's Diner to get calls from 10 people in his town than going to the consumer complaint department of some pharmaceutical company," Gilliam said.
. . .
Groups like the Sierra Club have targeted Home Depot because they believe it's inconsistent for the company to promote environmentally friendly products while advertising on a network that has questioned global warming.

The groups seem particularly angry at Fox's Bill O'Reilly, who has done critical reports on left-wing bloggers. On July 16, O'Reilly said the DailyKos.com Web site is "hate of the worst order," and sent a reporter to question JetBlue Airways Corp. CEO Dave Barger about the airline's sponsorship of a gathering run by DailyKos.

He'll never ride on JetBlue again, O'Reilly said.

Fox said JetBlue has since asked that its name be removed from the DailyKos.com Web site.

MoveOn.org is campaigning against Fox because it says the network characterizes itself as a fair news network when it consistently favors a conservative point of view, said Adam Green, the organization's spokesman."

What may be really bugging these folks is that FOX gets ratings - it usually has more viewers than any 3 of the MSM network news shows - perhaps an indication that some folks aren't prepared to swallow the liberal message without getting at least a glimpse of an opposing view.

The media's tired script - rerun the '70s

Some excerpts from an excellent article . . . If you're curious as to why we appeared incompetent & beaten at the end of the Vietnam war, you should click on the link and read the entire article and some of it's links.

American Thinker: The Surge Succeeds:
"God looks after children, drunkards, and the United States of America
- Otto von Bismarck

It's now quite clear how the results of the surge will be dealt with by domestic opponents of the Iraq war.

They're going to be ignored.

They're being ignored now. Virtually no media source or Democratic politician (and not a few Republicans, led by Richard 'I can always backtrack' Lugar) is willing to admit that the situation on the ground has changed dramatically over the past three months. Coalition efforts have undergone a remarkable reversal of fortune, a near-textbook example as to how an effective strategy can overcome what appear to be overwhelming drawbacks.
. . .
The Coalition has left the treadmill in which one step of progress seemed to unavoidably lead to two steps back. It requires some time to discover the proper strategy in any war. A cursory glance at 1943 would have given the impression of disaster. Kasserine, in which the German Wehrmacht nearly split Allied forces in Tunisia and sent American GIs running. Tarawa, where over 1,600 U.S. Marines died on a sunny afternoon thanks to U.S. Navy overconfidence. Salerno, where the Allied landing force was very nearly pushed back into the sea. But all these incidents, as bitter as they may have been, were necessary to develop the proper techniques that led to the triumphs of 1944 and 1945.

Someday, 2006 may be seen as Iraq's 1943. It appears that Gen. David Petreaus has discovered the correct strategy for Iraq: engaging the Jihadis all over the map as close to simultaneously as possible. Keeping them on the run constantly, giving them no place to stand, rest or refit. Increasing operational tempo to an extent that they cannot match ("Getting inside their decision cycle", as the 4th generation warfare school would call it), leaving them harried, uncertain, and apt to make mistakes.

The surge is more of a refinement than a novelty. Earlier Coalition efforts were not in error as much as they were incomplete. American troops would clean out an area, turn it over to an Iraqi unit, and depart. The Jihadis would then push out the unseasoned Iraqis and return to business. This occurred in Fallujah, Tall Afar, and endless times in Ramadi.

Now U.S. troops are remaining on site, which reassures the locals and encourages cooperation. The Jihadis broke (and more than likely never knew) the cardinal rule of insurgency warfare, that of being a good guest. As Mao put it, "The revolutionary must be as a fish among the water of the peasantry." The Jihadis have been lampreys to the Iraqi people. Proselytizing, forcing adaptation of their reactionary creed, engaging in torture, kidnapping, and looting. Arabic culture is one in which open dealings, personal loyalty, and honor are at a premium. Violate any of them, and there is no way back. The Jihadis violated them all. The towns and cities of Iraq are no longer sanctuaries.
. . .

You will look long and hard to find any of this in the legacy media. Apart from a handful of exceptions (such as John F. Burns of the New York Times), it's simply not being covered. Those operational names would come across as bizarre to the average reader, the gains they have made impossible to fit into the worldview that has been peddled unceasingly by the dead tree fraternity. What the media is concentrating on - and will to continue to concentrate on, in defiance of sense, protest, and logic, to the bitter end - is peripheral stories such as the Democrat's Senate pajama party, reassertions of the claim that the war has "helped" Al-Queda, and the latest proclamation from the world's greatest fence-sitter.
. . .
And what do they want, exactly? What is the purpose of playing so fast and loose with the public safety, national security, and human lives both American and foreign?

Generally, when someone repeats a formula, it's because they want to repeat a result. And that's what the American left wants in this case. During the mid-70s, American liberals held political control to an extent they had not experienced since the heyday of FDR. The GOP was disgraced and demoralized. The Democrats held the Senate, the House, and the presidency. There was absolutely nothing standing in the way of their maintaining complete power for as long as anyone could foresee... until Jimmy Carter's incompetence proved itself, which caused the whole shabby and illusory structure to fell apart in a welter of ineptitude and childishness.

The American left wants a return to the 1970s -- without Jimmy Carter. (Okay, without disco, either.) They want a cowed GOP. They want control of the institutions and the branches. They want a miserable, defeated country they can manipulate. And they want it all under the gaze not of the Saint of Plains, but of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who can assure that left-wing predominance will continue for a generation or more.

Will they get it? That's a question worth some thought. Because as it stands, neither of the program's necessary elements is coming to fruition. The war is not being lost, and their great political scandal has fizzled.

The other half of the equation was Watergate. Vietnam would not have been anywhere near as much a disaster without it. Watergate paralyzed the Nixon administration. It turned Nixon himself from an odd, unlikable, but incredibly capable politician to a half-crazed ghost sobbing in the Oval office in the middle of the night. It transformed his last great triumph -- the Paris peace accords that ended the war on an acceptable standoff -- into ashes. The left wing of the Democratic Party, shepherded by people like George McGovern and Mark Hatfield, proceeded to undercut the settlement as quickly as they could manage. Two separate appropriations acts passed in June 1973 cut off all further aid to the countries of Southeast Asia. (A third such act passed in August 1974 has gained more attention but it only duplicated the effects of the first two.) From that point on it was a matter of time. Nixon resigned a little over a year later. Less than a year after that, in April 1975, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia all fell.
. . .
And that, in case you were wondering, is what Plamegate was about. The Democrats needed a scandal - and not merely a run-of-the-mill, everyday scandal, but a mega-scandal, a hyper-scandal, something that would utterly cripple the administration and leave it open to destruction in detail. The targets were Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, held by the MoveOn crowd to be the actual brains behind Adolf W. Chimp. When nothing at all could be dug up on the administration principals, the scandal was effectively over. Knocking off a vice-presidential aide might cause excitement within the Beltway, but nobody in the real world could be expected to care.
. . .
People like John Conyers are trying to create a conflagration by blowing on the embers of the attorney firings and the vice-presidential subpoenas. To no avail. Scandals, like forest fires, occur only when conditions are perfect. Through their failed efforts, the liberals have in effect set a backfire, surrounding the administration with wide barriers of burned-over ground. The Democrats themselves have rendered Bush unassailable, and all the slumber parties, the empty votes, and the rhetoric are intended to camouflage that fact. Bush will have hard days yet, but he will not be Nixonized. He will be able to fight his war as he sees fit.

That means a continuation of the surge, and of the strategy of General Petreaus. Will that be enough? It's impossible to say. But the past few months have been the most surprising in the entire Iraq saga to date."

American Thinker: The EU Constitution Arrives by Stealth

Magazines from Britain often print letters complaining about the loss of sovereignty and the increasing regulations that are part of joining the European Union. It looks like those complaints are falling on deaf ears.

American Thinker: The EU Constitution Arrives by Stealth:
"The new EU 'Un-Constitution' will centralize foreign policy making in Brussels -- along with military, police and executive control -- without any voter input. It will dissolve two dozen historic nations, and empower Brussels' dictocrats to issue arrest warrants to incarcerate Irishmen in Dublin. A dozen Eurocrats have openly admitted the constitutional fraud in the press, including Giscard d'Estaing, the author of the old, superfatted Constitution that was solidly voted down in France and Holland, the last time the voters were asked to give their humble opinions. They are not being consulted this time around because they dared give an answer the eurocrats didn't like.

This is the continent that gave us Nazism, Prussianism, Stalinism, Francoism, Petainism, Napoleonic Gaullism, Serbian genocide, and welfare Socialism in the last century alone. It has originated nearly all the major international wars of the last 200 years. It has silently enabled genocide in Rwanda, Sudan, the Congo, Cambodia, Ukraine, Germany, Poland, China and Kosovo. It is currently being penetrated and infiltrated by the third major totalitarian ideology of the last hundred years, oil-fed Wahhabi Islam, resulting in years of car-burning riots in France, subway bombs in London, and a reign of terror on college campuses from Spain to Norway. Europe is not just Switzerland, folks, with a strong and stable government. It is a continent with an endless history of turmoil and bloodshed.

So if you're a European and know you're being massively lied to about the most important political choice in your lifetime, would you just turn over on your couch and go back to sleep? Because half a billion Europeans are doing exactly that. It's stupefying.

Last week, the London Telegraph started an internet petition against the fraudulent constitution-by-stealth. How many signatures did it get? Less than 2,000. The Prime Minister's office at 10 Downing Street has a petition for a referendum on the "Un-Constitution" that is running a little over 10,000. But that's about it: we're talking about five hundred million people from Ireland to Ukraine.

Apparently Europeans want to be suckered. Or else they are so supine that they are allowing themselves to be suckered. It makes no difference in the end. Even though some three-fourths of the voters don't like this historic fraud.
Why the passive surrender by half a billion people?

We can imagine a lot of answers. Many Europeans don't think of constitutions as permanent. That's a distinctively American concept. Constitutions change all the time. This is just another one. Ho, hum.

But is that true? Not if you listen to the EU itself, which sounds like a long term Napoleonic enterprise. The EU has never backed down on any up-ratchet in its quest for power, even if the voters were dead set against it. And it is so corrupt that it has never even passed its own annual audits."

NASA spinoffs - helping in Darfur

In buried lake, hope seen for Darfur - Yahoo! News:
"Scientists have discovered the underground remnants of an ancient lake in Sudan's arid Darfur region, offering hope of tapping a precious resource and easing water scarcity, which experts say is the root of much of the unrest in the region.

The researchers hope to drill at least 1,000 wells in the dusty territory and pump the long-hidden water to ease tensions among communities living there — and strengthen efforts to restore peace in Darfur.

Decades of scarce water and other resources have stoked low-intensity local conflicts that eventually led to a devastating civil war.

The four-year conflict has killed more than 200,000 people, displaced more than 2.5 million others and sparked a regional humanitarian crisis after feeding instability in neighboring Chad and Central African Republic.

'Much of the unrest in Darfur and the misery is due to water shortages,' said geologist Farouk El-Baz, director of the Boston University Center for Remote Sensing, which led the effort that discovered the massive lake in northern Darfur using radar data from space."

Education, science, literacy - whatever you call it - works whenever it is tried. Unfortunately, many of the petty tyrants around the world would rather keep their people down and steal from international aid than to lift them all up (including themselves) to become equal partners with the Western world.

The true test for international aid will be how many wells are actually drilled and how the citizens of Darfur get access to the water.

Good News from Iraq - a surprising source

If you have time, click the link and read the comments on this blog - a lot of good information and not a lot of pettiness.

Britain and America: BBC reports that US tactics in Iraq may be beginning to work just as Washington prepares to give up:

"The BBC has not been a supporter of the Iraq war so it is quite something when its World Affairs Editor John Simpson concludes that America might finally be pursuing the right tactics in Iraq. Mr Simpson made his conclusion at the end of a report on BBC1's main evening news bulletin. After interviewing General David Petraeus, the Commander of US troops in Iraq, the BBC journalist said that the real battle was no longer in cities like Baquba which American troops had just liberated from Al-Qeada but in Washington where patience was running out.

General Petraeus said that the kind of counter-insurgency operation now underway usually took nine to ten years but his hearts and minds approach to building security in Iraq had only just begun. Mr Simpson contrasted the liberation of Baquba where 'only' eleven Iraqi civilians had been killed with the situation in Fallujah where large-scale civilian casualties had hardened Sunni opinion against the coalition. The people of Baquba had also grown tired of the suffocating rule of Al-Qaeda and welcomed the arrival of the Americans."

Good news from Iraq is important - we're not getting it.

The mainstream media is so consumed with their Bush derangement syndrome that they're now endangering Iraqi civilians by failing to report our military success to the American public.

TCS Daily - How Al Qaeda is Winning Even as it is Losing:
"In Iraq, the administration has empowered a general and officer corps capable of winning the war on the ground. Now it must develop the media corps that can win the war on the airwaves. June 2007 saw a dramatic turnaround in our military fortunes, with the insurgents in headlong retreat in Anbar, Baghdad, and Diayala. But al Qaeda continued to dominate its chosen battlefield: America's living rooms.

The War on the Ground

In the first month of full implementation - June, 2007 - the 'surge' strategy of General David Petraeus resulted in a 32% decline in Iraqi deaths. An anti-al Qaeda alliance of Sunni chiefs, Coalition forces, and the Iraqi Army drove the insurgency out of most of al Anbar, and much of Baghdad.
. . .
But in the flush of battlefield success, public perception of American military progress continued its calamitous decline. According to Pew Research, the percentage of Americans who opine that America's military operations are "going well" slid from 38% in May '07 to 34% in June; those who believe our military operations are "not going well" increased from 57% of respondents to 61%.

The same Pew poll found that only 30% of the public could identify General David Patraeus and only 27% could identify Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. 59% of respondents were unaware that Shi'ites constitute the majority religious group in Iraq. Precise knowledge of the war's progress is obviously scarce. Yet 95% of respondents have defined opinions on the success of our arms.

What explains the downtick of confidence against a backdrop of success?

Since mid-2005, al Qaeda has aimed not to defeat the Coalition militarily, but to drain American public support politically. The strategy was forced on the insurgents by a string of failures in 2004 and 2005. The Baathist groups and their al Qaeda allies planned first to establish a geographic base of control within Iraq; second, to block Iraqi elections; and third, to prevent the establishment of the Iraqi Security Forces. They failed to achieve any of these goals.

. . . al Qaeda's largest harvest from "random slaughter" strategy was realized in America. Through acts of indiscriminate violence transmitted by the media, insurgents brought their war to America's living rooms. The atrocity-of-the-day is the principal informational input most Americans receive. This forms their knowledge base. The public does not live in the villages and mahalas of Iraq. Patterns of recovery, of normalcy, are not evident.

This is the essence of 4th Generation Warfare. And al Qaeda is clearly winning it."

A cute retro car from FIAT

Crave: The gadget blog - Posts in Cars:
"Fiat's launch of its new 500 model will make fans of Italy in the 1950s, those who dream of Sophia Loren riding a Vespa, as happy as the new Mini made Anglophiles. Fiat combined the new trend toward city cars and retro design to come up with this new version of its iconic car. The original Fiat 500 was launched on July 4, 1957, and the new 500 was launched exactly 50 years later. Fiat takes a page from Mini by offering the 500 with all sorts of cosmetic accessories, including checker patterns for the roof. "

This is probably a more reliable car than the original, but that may not be saying much. Don't look for one of these in the US. Fiat failed in the US market years ago.

One reason why we're all going to HDTV

How about a show of hands - raise your hand if you didn't know that all of us citizens own the frequencies used to transmit TV, and that the government is selling them for us.

New Rules Could Change Wireless Forever - Yahoo! News:
"You buy a cell phone, load any software you want on it, then choose your carrier. This vision of expanded consumer choices in the wireless world might be a little closer today than it has ever been, especially with reports that the chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is circulating an 'open platform' proposal for the upcoming auction of the 700-MHz band.

FCC Chair Kevin Martin told USA Today on Monday that 'whoever wins this spectrum' will have to provide a 'truly open broadband network -- one that will open the door to a lot of innovative services to the consumer.'
He said an open network would mean a consumer could 'use any wireless device and download any mobile broadband application, with no restrictions,' except for illegal or malicious software.
. . .
The auction for bandwidth, scheduled for later this year, is gearing up to be epic. The sale will include spectrum in the 700-MHz band that has been used for analog television since the beginning of that medium, as U.S. TV is going completely digital by mid-2009.

The 700-MHz spectrum is particularly valuable because it penetrates walls and various obstacles more effectively than other frequencies, and the FCC is now developing the rules for the auction.

A 108-MHz block of bandwidth will become available after the analog TV stations complete their transition. Of that 108 MHz, 60 MHz will be auctioned in January 2008, public safety officials will receive 24 MHz, and 24 MHz already has been sold."

That block going to public safety officials is hopefully going to be used to unify their communications so different agencies can communincate with each other after a disaster. Governments may move at glacial speeds, but they do eventually move.

If you don't want to upgrade your TVs, you can get your fix from cable or satellite (I'll bet you do already), or there may be converter boxes sold to use older TVs with the new digital signals.

Technology marches on - rent movies with your remote

TiVo, Amazon to sell movies straight to TV sets - Yahoo! News:
"TiVo upgraded the 'Amazon Unbox on TiVo' service to allow customers with high-speed Internet connections to select one of about 10,000 movies, shows or other video, using the TiVo remote control.

The programs, priced on average at about $4 for a movie rental and about $2 for a television show, will be viewable after it downloads to the TiVo set-top box.

Amazon and TiVo first announced the service in February, and at that time required users to select the video on a PC."

Those of us without TiVo will just have to settle for old fashioned movie rentals - oh well, that 3 block walk to Blockbuster might do us some good.

BTW - does it seem to you that their price for a TV show is excessive compared to the price for a movie?

The end of British sovereignty draws near

'Don't tell British about the EU treaty' | International News | News | Telegraph:
"The new European Union treaty will mean 'transfers of sovereignty' from Britain and Gordon Brown is right to hide the fact from the public, an EU leader admitted yesterday.

Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's premier and leader of the bloc of 13 single currency members, spoke out as the Prime Minister faced rising calls for a referendum on the treaty drawn up following the rejection of the old EU constitution by French and Dutch voters in 2005.

Mr Juncker said he supported public debate on the treaty - except in Britain.

'I am astonished at those who are afraid of the people: one can always explain that what is in the interest of Europe is in the interests of our countries,' he told Belgian newspaper Le Soir.

'Britain is different. Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?'

Mr Juncker, a supporter of a United States of Europe, described the June 23 deal signed by Tony Blair as an 'objective success' for friends of the EU constitution."

The EU constitution has been voted down by the public twice (in France & Holland), so of course now they're trying to put it into effect without a vote, and without publicity if possible. People in Europe need to let their representatives know how they feel about that.

Britain gets lucky - they need to get realistic

Terrorism isn't a good arena for the practice Political Correctness (PC)- emphasis added:

American Thinker: London Calling:
"Two car bombs were found in London, professionally placed, the first discovered not by police but an ambulance crew. Evidently the bombs were triggered (by cell phones) but failed to go off.

Then, only hours later, an attack was attempted on Glasgow Airport by two goons a little crazier than strictly necessary. Failing to breach the terminal, at least one of the terrorists leapt out of his incendiary-packed SUV, poured gasoline over himself and set it ablaze. (One of those actions that informs us that we are dealing with people truly unlike us.) Once again the citizen element prevailed - when the police were unable to subdue the blazing terrorist, he was tackled by a passerby who brought him down in short order.
. . .
The London Telegraph states that MI 5 is now monitoring no less than 30 ongoing plots involving up to 1,700 individuals, "an increase of 100 since November". While it's good intelligence procedure to allow a conspiracy to mature under close watch in order to bag as many participants as possible, 30 is a very high number, and 1,700 terrorists is simply too many to keep an eye on. Allowing ten agents for each terrorist (the number would actually be higher), including at least two drivers, technicians, and replacements, gives us a requirement of 17,000. Now multiply that by three shifts. Does the MI 5 have that many field agents? Does the FBI? Does anybody, in this post-Cold War epoch?
. . .
None of this would have occurred in the U.S. Over here, we bag them.

Many of the Jihadis arrested in this country over the past few years - the Lodi group, the Miami group, the would-be New York subway bombers, the Lackawanna group -- committed no actual violent acts. What they were doing was conspiring. They were talking big, making connections and inquiries, scouting targets. In Britain, this would make them eligible for a control order. On this side of the pond, it gets them locked up in ugly concrete structures for a long, long time."

As the folks in our governments frequently say - "they only have to be successful once - we have to be successful every time."

Besides supporting our governments (federal, state, & local) in their efforts to provide some homeland security, we need to think about our own security. Avoid crowded places or be very alert when in them. Lay in a little extra food & water, and think about getting a generator. Get fresh batteries for the flashlights, first aid kits, etc. Besides having these at home, think about carrying them in your car. Many folks can work from home - that saves gas and removes them from office buildings that might be targeted.

In other words, think about your personal protection and about civil defense.

To help others, take a CPR class, get in shape, and stay up on current events.

If you're inclined to keep firearms, take a safety class, a concealed carry class, or a tactical shooting class, depending on your level of experience. Stock up on ammo, and most important be fanatic in drilling yourself to lock up the weapons when you're not home to use them.