Author: David

by:Angel

Crossposted at :thirdworldcounty

Just in case you forgot to thank a soldier today.
Or to hit your knees and pray for one.

OBSERVATION POST OMAR, Iraq — Sleeping inside a vast refrigerator definitely has its advantages in Iraq, especially when the summer sun pushes daily temps toward the 120-degree mark.

Of course, some folks might actually lose sleep when they realize their heat-resistant bedroom used to house hundreds of chilled, dead bodies.

For the Marines of 3rd Platoon, Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, moving into an old Iraqi government morgue just north of Fallujah was a vast improvement over past accommodations, if not a little unsettling.

Initially, the Marines would simply set up camp in an abandoned building and conduct patrols and operations for Regimental Combat Team 5 on a weekly rotation. Eventually, Company A moved into the morgue and dubbed the walled compound “OP 4.”

Marines find life in former morgue ‘cool,’ but not quiet continues..

The name of the post has already been switched to OP Omar, in honor of a fallen Iraqi army soldier.

Company A’s good fortune doesn’t mean its stay at OP Omar has been a quiet one.

The compound had the dubious distinction of appearing on a jih–adist Web site several months ago.

In chilling video footage set to music, an insurgent sniper wounded both a U.S. Army soldier and a Marine who were tinkering with a radar unit on a roof at the compound.

In another instance, members of a supply convoy narrowly escaped death when a mortar shell arced into the compound, punched through the roof of their Humvee and out the driver’s side window and exploded on the ground. The Marines’ heads were ringing, but all avoided serious injury.

“You’ve got to be very careful about how you engage and when you engage,” Long said. “The difficult thing is that you just don’t know who the enemy is. It could be someone you just walked past or somebody you just shook hands with. The enemy plays by different rules than we do.”

C’mon folks.
Let’s hear it for our Marines whose blood, sweat and bravery keep us alive.
Sleeping in a morgue…all in a day’s work.

Mainstream media are still chompin at the ole bit and salivating to find a reason to condemn our warriors for doing what they are there to do.

Let us give pause and remember what exactly they are trained to do: kill our enemy. The enemy of freedom.

Nation-building and peacekeeping were allegedly being handled by ahem “diplomats” from their ivory towers in the U.N…yea right.

And while they insist our soldiers present the vile terrorists gunning for them, an open hand of friendship, the sane amongst us suggest our soldiers present instead, a fast and furious closed fist.

Lest MSM and the N.Y.(not really with the ) Times forget…..just last summer, six Marines died in an ambush.

Two days after that fateful event, 14 more Marines died when a roadside bomb destroyed their vehicle.

So… from Angel..
Semper fi to all those who wear the eagle, globe and anchor insignia.

And………..Stay cool dudes and dudettes….even if it is inside a “refrigerator”!

As seen at: WomanHonorThyself

We all scream for Ice Cream!

July 16 is National Ice Cream Day. Which means, of course, that you have a perfectly good excuse to get out there and eat ice cream. Lots and lots of ice cream.

Fortunately the state of my freezer permits full observance on my side of the mountain – and all because Yak the Younger decided to watch the Food Network. Last night’s offering: an episode of “Unwrapped” featuring ice cream toppings and how they’re made (entertaining, but trust me, if you know what they do to those cherries, you might not want to eat them).\

As the show ended, YtY looked at me and said “The only problem with Food Network is that I always end up wanting to eat whatever they’re showing.” A moment later he added, “OK, unless it’s Iron Chef.”

Of course, I’d watched just enough of the ice cream show to understand exactly where he was coming from – and enough of the kitchen to know that “audience participation” was going to require a field trip.

Never one to put off the inevitable, I told him to grab his shoes and we headed off in search of ice cream. And not just ice cream: ColdStone Ice Cream – with mixins. In pints.

Which means, of course, that we’ve got leftovers in the freezer – at least until midafternoon.

Take a few minutes this afternoon and go get reacquainted with an ice cream cone. And don’t worry – you’re not cheating on a diet or acting from weakness of will – you’re celebrating an important American custom: National Ice Cream Day!

I proudly present Yak the Younger’s favorite take on the old “I scream, you scream” rhyme, apparently invented on the spot at the dinner table.

Looking down at the plate as it was placed in front of him, an eight year-old Yak the Younger proclaimed,

“I cuss, you cuss, we all cuss for ASPARAGUS!”

Rock on, little yak. Rock on.

And (as most of you probably figured out) we’re going to talk about one of them.

The “thing of the moment” happens to involve slanted, partisan “news coverage” by certain members of the mainstream media. Namely, CNN, which in my mind now stands for something slightly different than its owners and editors probably believe. More accurately, several somethings, none of them polite or appropriate for a family blog (and at least one of which I shouldn’t have to mention, because statistically, at least 95% of you have already thought of it).

But, you may ask, why this sudden need to post the obvious? Why this Friday-night harangue against the Monday Morning Quarterbacks of the news world? Why the need to point out something that everyone already knew?

Mainly because the photo essays CNN has posted in the past 48 hours have really ticked me off.

Why? Because the photographs accompanying CNN’s alleged coverage of the developing situation in Israel, Lebanon and the rest of the Middle East have been anything but neutral – and skewered photojournalism represents (to my mind at least) one of the more reprehensible forms of partisan reporting.

CNN has chosen to accompany its reports of violence and missile exchanges between Hezbollah and the State of Israel with a number of photo essays, each of which contain the same curious anomaly. Photographs taken in Israel show tanks, missiles being launched toward Lebanon, militia and military forces or combinations thereof. Photographs taken in Lebanon show fires burning, the rubble and destruction caused by missiles (presumably fired from Israel) or other signs of damage caused by attacks from Israel.

Anyone else notice the difference?

News reports which accompany the photos present threats, reactions and reports of military strikes on both sides – and clearly CNN has access to photos from photographers on both sides of the lines. So the question is: why do we see only destruction on one side and only aggression on the other? CNN’s own news stories indicate both sides have taken aggressive action and both sides have suffered damage. Why, then, does CNN treat its viewers to lopsided photographic coverage?

After considering the situation, I’ve come up with a few possibilities:

1. Photographers in Lebanon cannot find any members of Hezbollah engaging in aggressive acts, whereas photographers in Israel cannot find any destruction. (After all, Israel is such a big place, it’s probably difficult to find where the rockets land…)

2. Photographers in Lebanon move slowly, and arrive at the scene only after everything has already been engulfed in flames, whereas photographers in Israel see rockets coming and move away quickly. (Suggesting that perhaps the AP sends its slow photographers to Lebanon…)

3. Someone has consciously manipulated photographic evidence in an attempt to distort the viewer’s impression of events in the area, making the armies of Israel appear aggressive while displaying Lebanon as a weak victim of Israel’s aggression. (Nah, that couldn’t possibly be the answer. Everyone knows the mainstream media isn’t biased.)

Whether the photographic evidence represents a conscious (or unconscious) attempt to sway the opinion of the viewer, the result of haphazard photographic coverage or merely a perfectly random and accidental occurrence, the fact remains that CNN’s photographic coverage appears significantly out of balance – a fact which creates a dangerous potential for misleading the unwary viewer. A person watching only the photos, and not paying attention to the wider story, could easily leave with the impression that Israel, and not Hezbollah, was the aggressor and that Lebanon was suffering damage while Israel walked away unscathed. Granted, anyone who reads the coverage and pays attention to the reality underlying the media accounts can tell this is not the case, but powerful images like the ones currently coming out of Israel and Lebanon should not be used without discretion.

As the old adage says, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” and lopsided photojournalism reeks of irresponsibility – no matter what the underlying reason or cause.

If CNN didn’t have access to enough photographs to demonstrate that both sides have suffered physical damage and both sides have missiles to launch, then editors could – and in my opinion should – have refrained from publishing photo essays showing the current “state” of the conflict. To publish images showing only the military might of Israel and the destruction its forces have wrought upon the poor, desperate (terrorist-harboring) state of Lebanon appears – to my eyes – an endorsement of Lebanon and Hezbollah and a condemnation of the state of Israel, which has finally chosen military action as a reasonable alternative to silence in the wake of not one but many terrorist attacks.

And that really ticks me off.

(Permit me to note, momentarily in closing, that my views are my own and not necessarily those of David or Third World County. And yes, I support the sovereign state of Israel and its right to defend itself against attack.)

by:Angel

Kindly cross posted over at: thirdworldcounty

“KARACHI, Pak-istan – A suicide bomber blew himself up outside the home of a prominent Sh-iite Mus-lim cleric Friday, killing the cleric and a bodyguard and triggering a riot in this southern Pakistani city…

Suicide blast kills 3 people in Pakistan continues…

…After the attack, hundreds of his youthful followers set fire to a state-owned gas station and damaged a bank branch and some shops..

In addition to the rioters, about 300 youths gathered near Turabi’s house, weeping and chanting slogans against America and Israel, usual targets of anger in the wake of acts of violence in this Is-lamic nation.”

O.K. kids time for Math class.
About 80 percent of Pakistan’s 150 million people are Su-nni; most of the rest are Sh-iite.
So…er….what’s up with the ahem….”youths”, a.k.a. Muzlim terrorists, to those of us in the REAL world…..chanting slogans against America and Israel?
Where exactly is the not-so-fine line that distinguishes Americans from their enemies?…uh perhaps the fact that 80% of the country is Muzlim may be a bit of hint there ?

Here’s another hint to those intellectually challenged.
America was conceived in liberty and has maintained its faith in the principal that all men are created equal.
Equal.
Equal.
Got that?

I will leave Liberals out of this discussion as they have utilized our democracy and our hard earned freedoms to subvert the very Constitution and Laws that are the source of them.

Apparently many Muzlim communities across the world believe that Americans and Israelis deserve abductions, mutilation, and beheadings.

Another difference between US and them:
According to our enemies………
Severing heads off of humans seems to be an acceptable form of resistance to American or Israeli perceived “occupation” and thus a valid method of retaliation.

For those seeped in denial..many of the A-rabs and Muzlims living in your own communities who happen to have access to the Internet, or the local mosque, support such blatant anti-Americanism and anti Israelism.

Not to mention the good ole American Muzzzzzzzzlim organizations with tons of money and considerable influence.

Most of whom receive monetary and a great deal of political support from foreign countries that just happen to support what they affectionately call “fundamentalist Izlam.”
For the list of haters see this here post: Who hates America and Israel the most?

Of course all these ahem… “groups” claim only to be working to safeguard the civil rights of American Muzlims. cough cough.

But others have actually checked into their records, and guess what? They were found to be supporting and working for those foreign interests that are hell bent on destroying the United States and Israel.
gasp*

How some of them even manage to procure American passports is still a mystery to me and no doubt to anyone who hasn’t lost their alleged mind just yet.

So g’head Pakki’s…chant your anti-America and anti-Israel slogans.
Maybe we can put it to some music and have us a new hit single.
Pfffffft.

Cross posted over at :WomanHonorThyself

Just when you thought the British police might stand a chance of shedding that “keystone kops” reputation… (ok, so some of us didn’t actually think so, but it makes a good hook).

A police-sponsored British magazine (pseudo-appropriately titled, “Safe”) apparently ran a story recommending that women should make sure they wear nice underpants when heading out to get drunk. The variation on the old ‘in case you get hit by a bus’ line seems to be ‘in case you pass out and some nice police-officer-or-other-third-party gets a look at your knickers while you’re incapable of requesting your pants be left on.’

(For the record, I never quite understood the whole “wear nice underpants in case you get hit by a bus” philosophy – but then, I’ve never seen a bus knock someone’s pants off, either).

Although police spokesmen claim the publication was designed as “a spoof” and the advice tongue-in-cheek, the British police should probably learn a few important lessons from the recent public response:

1. Most people don’t read police-sponsored magazines for humor value.

2. In fact, most people don’t appreciate humor even in humor magazines – to say nothing of police publications.

3. Even the Keystone Kops might have paused momentarily before telling young women “if you’re going to get drunk, make sure to wear clean undies.”

And most important of all…

4. If you’re going to give advice about ladies’ undergarments, don’t be surprised if someone gets her knickers in a twist.

No time to cruise my blogroll. Seriously. Please link some good stuff to this post and track back. Open trackback posting all weekend long on this post. I’ll visit linked posts as I can, but I’m not even answering all my (legitimate) email this week. *sigh*

Meanwhile, thanks for all the help, TRY and TRUA!

As I said, this is an open trackback post open all weekend long. Link to this post and then track back. If you want to host your own linkfests, check out

Also note the other fine blogs featuring linkfests at Linkfest Haven.

July 9-15: Sports Cliche Week.

In honor of the occasion, permit me to present a few of my favorites (you know, the ones that make you want to crawl through the screen and gag the announcers with their ugly ties…):

“It’s theirs to lose (or to win).” (Pay no attention to the other team behind the curtain – or over the net – or behind the football…)

“It’s all over but the crying.” (Not according to the clock.)

“It’s not over till it’s over.” (Thanks for the reminder.)

“This is a real train wreck.” (Funny, I didn’t see an engine. Or a caboose…)

Golf:

“He’s no Arnold Palmer.” (And you’re no rocket scientist…)

“That’s a difficult putt. He might make it – but he might not.” (Which does pretty much cover the possibilities…)

“He’s going to be happy with that one.” (Sure glad you’re hear to clear these things up for us.)

“The best player who’s never won a major.” (Which makes him what – the best loser on the links?)

Football:

“It’s decision time.” (Haven’t made any until now?)

“They need a plan, and they need to execute.” (Apparently they’ve been winging it so far.)

“You could drive a truck through that hole.” (But unfortunately not through the gaps in Madden’s neverending commentary.)

“He’s gonna feel that tomorrow.” (Probably accurate, definitely unnecessary.)

Gymnastics:

“The sweetheart of the games/competition/fans” (Someone pass me the insulin.)

“(S)he’s sacrificed everything for this moment.” (Not everything. Mostly just Oreos.)

Can you think of any I’ve missed? Comments are open…

Things a lil hectic, Glad *GLAD!) for the support from TRY and TRUA posting in. Real quick 5-min break.drive-by posting.

This is from an eWeek review:

…while Firefox 2.0 is shaping up to be a good upgrade to Version 1.5 of the popular Web browser, it doesn’t look like it will be the slam-dunk over the forthcoming Internet Explorer 7 that Firefox 1.5 has been to the current IE 6.x.

For that matter, unless Firefox 2.0 and IE 7 improve greatly before their respective releases later in 2006, neither will come close to topping the quality of the already shipping Opera 9…

And from another eWeek review,

…if you want to see the features that other Web browsers will be adding in a year or two, you should download Opera 9, which was released on June 20. The free Opera 9 is available in Windows, Linux, Solaris, BSD and Mac OS X versions.

Nanny. Nanny. Boo. Boo.

🙂

Yeh, O9’s cool.

Crossposted from Stop the ACLU

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I am going to assume that most people can agree that America’s population is found across a vast political spectrum. From libertarians and liberals to moderates and conservatives we find each other across a broad field on ideas and issues. Many times we can all agree that certain things are problems within society yet be on the opposite extremes on how to solve that problem. One of the problems of society that most people can agree on is that of crime. The solution to reducing this problem most likely is found somewhere in the middle and not the extremes.

Continue reading “Stop the ACLU”