Harvard: The Best and Brightest – 9/11 Truther Edition

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University’s stated mission is to "to promote and elevate the standards of journalism in the United States". Like most journalistic organizations it has a decidedly left wing audience, staff and editorial policy. Not that it should surprise anyone, an organization run by journalists for journalists being left wing isn’t exactly a man bites dog story.

However I was struck by an article on the Nieman Foundation’s website about the Time magazine cover depicting a young girl disfigured by the Taliban for running away from an abusive husband and his family.

The author of the Nieman article, Ralph Lopez, performs a dizzying array of rhetorical back flips to play the “blame America first card”, including a “history lesson” on how the US destabilized a “progressive” regime through our backing of the Afghan Mujahedeen:

In 1979, the CIA started secretly aiding opponents of the pro-Soviet government in Kabul, increasing the likelihood that the Soviet Union would be drawn into what Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski hoped would be "their own Vietnam." The young socialist government, which had overthrown a centuries-old monarchy, was cosmopolitan, outward-looking, and stressed the education of women as well as men. This was a time when women in Kabul could wear mini-skirts. In its search for proxies to attack the Kabul regime, Brzezinski and the Cold Warriors turned to the conservative warlord elements in the countryside. They were of all ethnicities; Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek. What they had in common was their ability to raise and organize fighters – and their Medieval attitudes toward women.

It’s a simple enough story to lefties like Mr Lopez: America was interfering in the internal affairs of a “progressive” regime. Never mind that in 1978, the year that the “progressive” KGB run People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan launched its coup on the Afghan government, the new “progressive” government instituted a widespread agriculture collectivization scheme, forced the closure of all religious houses of worship, assassinated every tribal and religious leader they could get their hands on, and brought in thousands of KGB advisors to help with re-education. Minor details that Mr Lopez could have included.

After reading this piece of shit left wing apologia I thought, “there they go again”. On a hunch though, I decided to Google Ralph Lopez, not knowing much about the guy, and boy oh boy was I surprised with what I found.

It seems that Lopez writes for Opednews.com and he wrote a delightful article on April 3, 2008 titled: It Has Happened: I'm a 9/11 Truther; A New Investigation, Broad Amnesty, and Forgiveness.

It was happening to me. Reading all that two and four-star brass saying it looked like a conspiracy put me face-to-face with it. I was becoming a 9/11 Truther. Kooks, lunatics, nuts. Everyone knows this. But these experts were just too credible, something the movement hadn't been before. I didn't need to be an expert or do much more research. It had been done, by military personnel with more flying time and expertise than I would have in a dozen lifetimes. And if they said there were a hell of lot of questions that needed to be answered in a new commission, That was good enough for me. I am now a 9/11 Truther. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.

So is this what Harvard’s Nieman Foundation found when it scraped the barrel of lefty writers in its pursuit to cobble together another blame America first hot piece ..... a fucking truther?

If this is what Harvard and Yale (since it seems that Lopez is a Yaley), the mills producing America’s political and cultural elite ..... our “Best and Brightest”, are churning out, then we are seriously fucked.

I wonder though, would Harvard’s Nieman Foundation ever give space on its prestigious pages for a Birther, or does being a good left really mean never having to say you’re sorry ..... about anything.

Compare and Contrast

Robert Novak’s recent passing has brought out the usual bile that is typical when someone like Novak dies. Nearly every obituary castigates Novak for his role making it publicly know that Joe Wilson’s wife Valerie was responsible for him going to Africa to investigate potential sales of uranium ore to Iraq.

After all, some people who out the identity of CIA agents are actually celebrated as heroes. Compare and contrast the Novak post mortem with The Nation Magazine's eulogy of Philip Agee, CIA turncoat and KGB agent:

We mourn the passing of Philip Agee, the courageous former CIA officer who, in his 1975 book Inside the Company: CIA Diary, exposed the agency's subversion of democracy and its practices of torture and murder, naming hundreds of officers, agents and companies involved with the crimes. Agee was motivated, he said, by the CIA's support for "the worst imaginable horrors" in Latin America. Agee paid a high price for his courage. Perhaps the best way to remember Agee is to support others who find the courage to expose criminal misconduct by their own governments

Agee's high price was spending the last 30 years of his life living in relative comfort in Cuba running a travel agency when he should have gotten a bullet in the back of his head.

But like most things with the left, its all about politics in the end.

Something that really caught my eye in John Nichol’s obituary was this line.

Some of us also recall--and have a hard time forgiving--Novak's role in what Saul Landau correctly described as the "organized right wing attack" on the memory of murdered Chilean diplomat and dissident Orlando Letelier.

Nichols is referring to a mostly forgotten incident where Novak used his contacts and his column to take the “meme of the day” and turn it completely on its head.

Orlando Letelier was former Chilean diplomat who spent his time lobbying against Pinochet’s government after the coup in 1973. He was a minor celebrity among the leftwing glitterati/literati activist community when he was working out of the Washington DC based Institute for Policy Studies in the mid 70’s until his car was blown up, an assassination that was most likely organized in Chile.

While Letelier’s liberal allies were busy crucifying the Chilean government and the CIA (they must have been involved after all) over this peaceful souls death, Robert Novak and Rowland Evans were leaked the contents of Letelier’s briefcase recovered by the FBI during the course of its investigation into the murder. The contents, not surprisingly, showed that Letelier was part of a coordinated effort to manipulate and coordinate liberals in the United States (where have we heard that before) to lobby against the Chilean government and return a more Soviet friendly government back to Santiago. This coordination, not surprisingly, was being spearheaded by East Block intelligence agencies and its proxies in Cuba, who also not surprisingly were subsidizing Letelier work with cash remittances from the Cuban government. He also had contact information for dozens of suspected and known East Block and Cuban intelligence agents.
Novak didn’t sit idly by with this, went to press with it and was stymied and attacked every step of the way. Only the Washington Post printed his articles, with other outlets (most notably the NY Times) either ignoring it completely or posting attack pieces on Novak.

And this was the sin that Nichols and his pals were referring to: using ones talent and access to sources to spoil a perfectly good narrative about a left wing icon.

We lost a good journalist.

NPR's On the Media

NPR's on the Media is one of those cosmopolitan "smarter than thou" media watchdog shows on NPR. Its host, Bob Garfield, is a fairly reliable lefty .... sort of a walking stereotype of media bias and East Coast intelligencia.

This week Garfield was putting in work on another one of the administration’s obaminations (cute pun huh) debunking not only the birthers (more on that another day) but taking on some of those dastardly right wing radio hosts on the latest right wing lie concerning the health care debate.

BOB GARFIELD: Chief among those 10,000 issues is health care reform. But if Gibbs somehow believed the gravity of that matter guaranteed honest debate, he was sadly mistaken. It too was mired this week in a trumped up controversy over a nonexistent provision in the White House plan. Here on Fred Thompson’s radio show is supposed health care expert, Betsy McCaughey.

BETSY McCAUGHEY: One of the most shocking things I found in this bill, and there were many, is on page 425, where the Congress would make it mandatory, absolutely require, that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner.

BOB GARFIELD: Whoa! The Feds culling the population of those burdensome elderly? That is shocking — also, utterly untrue. The bill would simply allow seniors who do wish for professional advice on end of life issues, from will writing to hospice care, to get the government to pick up the tab.Yet, the euthanasia canard was parroted by House Republican Leader John Boehner and at least referenced by FOX News, CNN, The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

Unfortunately for "Bob" he should have waited a week to run with this story ... it seems that those dastardly right wingers may have been onto something:

We knew it would come to this when Oregon insisted on passing its assisted-suicide laws. It doesn’t take much for assisted suicide to go from a humane option to a cost-saving device, especially when the state pays for the medical care. One patient in Oregon got a letter that made this all too clear, when in the same letter rejecting her request for life-extending chemotherapy, Oregon offered her “physician-aid-in-dying”. In other words, Oregon offered their customer a heapin’ helping of death:

NPR on Wishfull Thinking

With Obama’s poll numbers beginning to fall in line with the popularity of his specific policies and the continuing recession and high unemployment being hung around his administrations neck, the 2010 mid-terms may turn out to be less than kind.

Democrats giddy with possibilities only six months ago now confront a perilous 2010 landscape signaled by troublesome signs of President Barack Obama’s political mortality, the plunging popularity of many governors and rising disquiet among many vulnerable House Democrats.

The issue advantage has shifted as well, with Democrats facing the brunt of criticism about the pace of stimulus package spending, anxiety over rising unemployment rates and widespread uneasiness over the twin pillars of Obama’s legislative agenda: his cap-and-trade approach to climate change and the emerging health care bill.

Leave it NPR to ignore this and hope that the current advantage holds for another 18 months.

And while 15 months is a long way away, what CQ has to say is good news for the Democrats. The "in" party usually suffers losses in the midterm elections -- 2002 (GOP gains) and 1998 (Dem gains) being rare exceptions. Their verdict for 2010: Democrats "appear secure" in the House majority they won in 2006 and added to in '08.

But I suppose no one they know voted for Nixon.

Cognitive Dissonance in Action

Why is Obamacare going down in flames ...... you guessed it, its all the Republican's fault for fucking government up!

WASHINGTON — If President Barack Obama got anything indisputably right at his news conference this week, it was this: The American people don't trust the federal government.

That's a major reason he's having such a hard time selling his plan to overhaul the nation's health care. Even if they like Obama himself, people just don't think that the government can handle anything big, let alone something as personal to them as their health care.

From Vietnam through the Watergate scandal, the Iraq war and the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina, Americans have soured on the very thought that the government can do things well. That makes it immensely difficult to convince them — or their members of Congress — to go along with anything that even looks like a government takeover of health care.

I guess it never occured to the author that perhaps people dont want the government taking control of another 18% of the economy.

Just a thought.

Whats with the journalists at CNN?

You would figure that the shit canning of Susan Roesgen would have set an example of how not to conduct an interview

Upbeat Jobs Reports

539,000 jobs lost in April is "upbeat" .... or so says CNN:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Wall Street was poised for a strong open Wednesday as investors focused on two upbeat jobs reports, shrugging off anxiety about the bank stress test results due out Thursday.

A couple more of these "upbeat" months and unemployment will be at 15%.

Luckily for us, the trillion dollar stimulus package will create (or merely save, can't figure tha one out yey) 750,000 jobs by August!

I was really worried there for a minute.

Al Jazeera

Looks like Al Jazeera is making another attempt to break into the US cable market. It looks like a pity ploy from some left wing do gooders at what appears to be a PBS affiliate (go figure).

The Al Jazeera English news channel, broadcast in more than 100 countries, became available today to pay-TV subscribers in the Washington market thanks to a deal with nonprofit MHz. The Qatari news channel will join the lineup of international programming supplied by MHz to Comcast, Cox, RCN and Verizon FiOS. MHz will offer it over the air beginning July 1.

I remember a few years back when Comcast entertained the idea of syndicating Al Jazeera I called them and said I would cancel the second they went on the air. Luckily for them they backed down.

Battered Jounrnalist Syndrome

Truly saddening.

Asked in his Monday briefing if the White House would consider bailing out the newspaper business, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters the government may not have the power to reverse the industry’s decline.

But Gibbs wasn’t just sympathetic — he also twisted the knife a little, digging into reporters who questioned the Obama administration’s commitment to cutting spending.

“You guys didn’t think $100 million meant a lot a few weeks ago,” Gibbs said. “But looking at some of the balance sheets, $100 million seems to mean a lot.”

No mater how hard they try, it looks like the Dear Leader wont ride to their rescue after all.

And not only is there no delicious government cheese for those poor degenerate journalists, the Dear Leader repays their servitude with derision!

Its OK Barry, I'm sure they still love you.

How’s this one going to end ....

Obama releases the “Torture memos” detailing the cruel and hideous pink belly and death by caterpillar and ladybug technique used on the individuals who planned 9/11, but throws the caveat in there that there will be no prosecutions even though these acts were despicable and didn’t accomplish anything.

Hayden and Gates call Obama a jackass for doing this and say that it will make his job much harder

Then Cheney comes out swinging and says why not release them all including all the actionable intelligence we got from them and the attacks they stopped.

Now Obama says “on second thought, I might just be open to prosecuting individuals from the former administration on this”

So, how does this one end? Does Obama back down or does Cheney? Cheney certainly has nothing to lose as Obama has upped the ante by reversing his prior decision, now being “open” to prosecution of former administration officials.

Cleary Obama wasnt prepared for a response like this, or perhaps he was ... after all with 100's of billions flowing out the door at the Treasury, this makes for a nice distraction.

The left is just dying for its pound of flesh but will Obama spend his energy here, especially if Cheney is correct. What does he have to gain aside from throwing some red meat to the left?

My prediction

Option A: there is no release of the documents Cheney wants made public, Obama quietly backs away from his threat, Cheney quiets down and the Left seethes.

Option B: Cheney doesn’t drop it, Obama still wont release them but they get leaked, Obama loks like a schmuck and the left accuses Cheney’s “stay behind army” of running a shadow government and leaking the material.

Tea Party Protesters Hate Veterans ... or Something

Wife beating drunk and all around asshole extrodinare Neil Steinberg manages to jam his foot in his mouth twice in article.

What did you make of the big protest against the U.S. military and our veterans Wednesday?

Because after all, if you hate trillion fucking dollar deficits for the indefinite future, you must despise the armed forces.

It gets better though, because after his little straw man on the Tea Parties, he takes a ham handed swipe at critics of trust fund revolutionary Bill Ayers and his cop killing terrorist bitch wife Bernadine Dohrn … you know people who show their admiration and respect of our armed forces by packing pipes full of nails and explosives and planting them at officers clubs (oh yeah, and killing police too)

I observed to Madden that hosting a performance with Ayers and Dohrn, tweedy academics whose long-ago stint as radicals make them permanent fetish fear objects for the vengeful right, was sure to stir protest.

Ironic no? I suppose that Steinberg must not have put 2 + 2 together when he threw these two seemingly unrelated items in the same article.

Tea Part Parting Shots

Now that the media "elites" over at NPR and the Colombia Journalism review (whose director Victor Navasky I am currently writing an post on) are coming in to bayonet the wounded (or what they see as the wounded), I am reminded of something I read from Jonah Goldberg the other day. His whole post is worth the read, but this was the best.

3. These protests are unpatriotic astroturfing by plutocrats.

So much for "dissent is the highest form of patriotism"!

I find it sort of amazing that when groups like ANSWER, a Mos Eisley cantina of America-hating nut cases, take to the streets it's a full-flowering of democracy in action. When ACORN pays their ragamuffins to protest, or when Rainbow/PUSH shakes down businesses through racial extortion, it's the sort of direct democratic action Thomas Paine dreamed of. And when labor unions pay people to protest, it's populist. But when a bunch of independent Americans, talk-show hosts, and email campaigners organize hundreds of protests around the country, it's astroturfing.

Good stuff.

Speaking of Teabagging and Homosexuals

As sure as I am that a closeted homosexual like Anderson Cooper is an expert about what can and cant be done with another dude's balls in his mouth, I cant even begin to fathom how MSNBC's she-boy Rachel Maddow knows what its like.

Dana Milbank

You can always count on the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank to carry the water for the DNC.

Back during the 2008 presidential campaign Milbank made several, later discredited attempts to characterize Sarah Palin’s campaign rallies as gussied up Klan rallies where reporters were routinely roughed up with the help of the Secret Service:

Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

Looks like Milbank showed up Rahm Emanuel’s strategy session this week, because he has reached into his bag of tricks to smear the Tea Party rallies.

Organizers of the conservative protest were told at the last minute that they didn't have a permit to dump a million tea bags in the square, as they had planned.

Instead, they served up a rather noxious brew.

"Hey Big Brother: Show us Your Real Birth Certificate," said one sign in the rain-soaked crowd.

"Blackbeard Obama, King of the Tax Pirates," said another.

A third showed the president dressed up as Steve Urkel, the nerdy black kid with big glasses and suspenders from "Family Matters." "Did I do that?" the sign said, showing a graph of the economy plunging.

Closeted racists and crakpots, that’s the Rahm Emanuel’s meme for the day, and you’d better play along lest you get a talking to by the CEO of GE.

Anderson Cooper on Teabagging

It makes sense when you think about it ...... after all, being one of the most well known closeted queers around, Cooper probably has a perspective on what can and cant be done with another guys balls in his mouth that most people lack.

Lisle Illinois Tax Day Tea Party

To be honest, I had no idea what to expect. I am not exactly the protesting type ... this was my first foray to an event like this. All my exposure to “protests” have been images on TV and the web of the Code Pink burnout hippie type, college aged “my mommy and daddy made sure my Visa was paid off so I can come to this” and the professional trustafarian Block Blockers who frequent G8 meetings.

Needless to say, what I saw in Lisle was nothing like this.

Mostly it was people like me who took a long lunch to see what all the hubbub was about with some stay at home parents (kiddies in tow) and some retirees sprinkled in. There were a dozen or so speakers ... no one whose name I recognized but they all received an enthusiastic welcome from the crowd. There was talk that ACORN had notified the organizers that they would be coming for a counter demonstration, but I hadn’t seen anything like that by the time I left.

I am no professional at crowd estimation, but when I got there at 12:00pm on the dot (I am a stickler for promptness) there looked to be around 500 people present.

By 1:30 (when I had to go back to work) that number had easily doubled.

Now 1000 people isn’t a lot, but this is Lisle, not downtown Chicago and there were half a dozen other rallies within 20 miles of this, so yeah, I think its safe to say that this was pretty significant.

Naturally, NPR (like the NY Times yesterday) did its part to marginalize whats going on with a half assed hit piece and a lot of dismissive commentary on "Talk of the Nation" this afternoon but Glenn Beck put alot of this into context:

"The mainstream media doesn't get it. They'll report on the tea parties just as a -- you know, oh, they're just a bunch of whack job Republicans who only care about taxes on the rich. Where were they with George Bush? . . . But the tea parties are not about taxes. They are about the reason for the taxes, which is an out-of-control government that cannot control its own spending."

He’s right, this isn’t about taxes or spending so much (from my perspctive) as its about a government out of control, and I think the press is certainly doing a disservice to the country by ignoring and minimizing this.

Beware the Polls

Great comment about the partisan use of polling from the National Review:

There is an effort afoot to marginalize and demoralize people who refuse to hop aboard the Good Ship Obama. Dishonest polling is one of many tools in the Left's arsenal, but it's especially effective because these surveys can actually warp how people perceive the nation's mood. If a conservative were to catch in passing banner headlines proclaiming that 2/3 of the country approves of Obama's job performance and nearly 3/4 find him strong on national security, he may understandably feel isolated and powerless. That's the entire message implicit in these tactics—from the attack Rush strategy to DHS' outrageous "Right-Wing" threat assessment: Pipe down, conservatives. You're isolated, part of a hopelessly tiny minority, and possibly even dangerous. For the good of the country, keep your thoughts to yourselves.

NY Times Rides to The Dear Leader's Rescue (yet again)

Our new political overlords never have to look too far for cover when inconvenient truths raise their ugly heads. Take a look see at the latest from the Times on the Tea Party Protests tomorrow: Hold the Tea: Americans Fine With Taxes.

In news that will be bad for activists hoping to start another American Revolution with a series of protests modeled on the Boston Tea Party, a new Gallup Poll finds that a solid majority of American say the income tax they pay is “fair,” and that slightly more than half classify their own tax burden as either “about right” or “too low.”

Not that the hacks from the Times actually bother to ask anyone involved what their beef is, after all, its much easier to construct a straw man and bash it for a while. As an interesting side note, the percentage of people who think they pay a "fair" amount of incomes taxes is eerily close to the percentage that pays no federal income tax at all.

What the real beef is, or mine at any rate, is not what the marginal tax rates are today, but what they are going to be in 5 or 10 years after the bill for our Dear Leader's "First of the Month economic development plan" comes in.



This is the problem, trillion dollar deficits financed by China for as long as the eye can see.

People are tired of being ignored, and worse they hate being kicked and mocked by assholes like the Time's Robert Mackey.

Gun Control in the Name of Good Diplomatic Relations: Why the Numbers Just Aren’t Adding Up

Not to underplay the devastation of the cartels on the rampage in Mexico, because it is bad (so bad that a friend and coworker with family in Michoacán asked how he could buy an AK-47 and smuggle it to his family there), but the violence seen along the border is going to be used as a jumping off point for gun control in the United States by this administration.

A new assault weapons ban, one with teeth this time that will avoid all the mistakes of the 1996 ASB as well as the UN Small Arms Treaty will be passed so that the Dear Leader can profess his willingness to work via multilateral structures to help our international allies.

The Media blitz is already upon us in this regard with the groundwork being laid that not only are we in the US responsible for the demand side for the Cartels products (which to be honest is partially true) but that we are also primarily responsible for the supply side of the firearms.

Enter the hazy and not so clear “statistic” that I am seeing more and more to justify this:

AFP

Mexican and US authorities have traced over 90 percent of the guns used by the cartels to American gun shops and shows, even though US laws forbid foreign nationals from buying fire arms.

USA Today

ATF acting director Michael Sullivan said investigators have traced 90 to 95% of the weapons found in Mexico to the U.S.

Washington Times

The State Department says firearms obtained in the United States account for more than 90 percent of Mexico's drug-related killings.

Everyone’s favorite assholes Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball

As much as 90 percent of the assault weapons and other guns used by Mexican drug cartels are coming from the United States, fueling drug-related violence that is believed to have killed more than 7,000 people since January 2008, according to estimates by Mexican and U.S. law enforcement officials. But the political obstacles to addressing the U.S.-to-Mexico weapons flow are dramatically underscored by Holder's experience in just the last few weeks.

And naturally, what compilation of questionable firearm related statistics and quotes would be complete without a quote from some douchebag democratic politician from San Francisco

"It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers, mayors, kidnap innocent people and do terrible things come from the United States," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said at a hearing Tuesday. "I am appalled that you can buy a 50-caliber sniper weapon anywhere and it's not restricted to a federal firearms dealer - you can just buy it."

But what does this 90% really referring to? As you can see from the highlighted section there seems to be some confusion. Is it more than 90% or less than 90%? Is it 90% of all guns confiscated or 90% of all guns used in the commission of a crime? Is it 90% of all guns used to commit a murder (any murder) or just 90% of all guns used to murder innocent people?

According to the ATF, this 90% figure refers to 7,743 firearms found at crime scenes in 2008 that could be traced were traced to suppliers in the United States. To put this in perspective that means that 8604 guns that were take from crime scenes had identifiable markings that allowed law enforcement to trace their origins. Now, if we are to believe people like the esteemed Senator Dianne Feinstein, (D-USSAistan), then only 8604 guns were confiscate in all of Mexico in 2008. Only 8604 guns confiscated in all of Mexico in 2008 ..... anyone else having a hard time swallowing that load of shit? More guns are seized in Chicago every year, and it has 1/40th population of Mexico (with similar firearms laws). Its especially difficult to buy considering that the same people pushing the 90% figure are also pushing the equally ridiculous claim that 2000 guns a day are being smuggled into Mexico from the Untied States, which by my math puts the total for 2008 at 730,000. If we extrapolate these “statistics” a bit further one could surmise that only 1% of all firearms smuggled into Mexico are used by the Cartels in their drug turf wars. Almost seems like the vast majority of American firearms going into Mexico are being used responsibly.

Aren’t statistics fun?

But like all political battlespace preparation, horseshit statistics and “facts” are just one element of the attack. They can also rely on the ignorance of the fifth estate.

For example

Lax gun laws and lax enforcement in the United States have made it easy for Mexican gunrunners to buy and transport everything from AK-47s to Stinger antiaircraft missiles, which then allows the cartels to use these high-powered weapons against rival gangs or against a military attack. More than 90 percent of the thousands of guns confiscated yearly in Mexico have been traced to US origin.

I must have missed the FIM-92's and AT4’s next to that Ruger 10-22 I just bought at Mega Sports. Damn it! Got to look closer next time. And it pretty obvious that Dicky McGee hasn’t bought a gun if he thinks that gun laws are lax, maybe lax by Khmer Rouge standards but pretty tough on an absolute basis.

And another:

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

Really? I bought 4 Romanian AK-47’s in 2002 all for less than $1,000 total. How much cheaper and more widely available have they gotten? And clearly the RPG’s, grenades and machine guns that the cartels are now using are common wares at any Wal-Mart since the expiration of the assault weapon ban don’t cha know?

And Lastly

Some weapons seized from drug traffickers, such as grenades, are stolen from the Mexican military. But drug traffickers have little interest in weapons carried by the military, because they are of lower caliber than the semiautomatic weapons from the US, says Martin Gabriel Barron, a researcher at the National Criminal Sciences Institute in Mexico City. The semiautomatics are then often modified to fire like machine guns.

Let me see .... drug traffickers have little interest in Mexican military weapons (whose arsenal is nearly identical to the US military) and instead prefer to buy civilian versions of US military small arms (coincidentally the same kind used by the Mexican military) and then take the time to modify them to “fire like machine guns” .... exactly like the ones from the Mexican military. And although I really should defer to the Christian Science Monitor’s Sara Miller Llana with her master armorer certification from Colt firearms on this one, how exactly does one modify a “semi automatic” to “fire like a machine gun”? I am under the assumption that the replacement of the barrel and extensive modifications to both the upper and lower receiver to not only change the action from semi-automatic to fully automatic but to also take the larger rifle cartridge (as opposed to the smaller assault rifle cartridge) that is the signature of a “machine-gun” would make it easier to just but a machine gun and forgo any modifications. But that’s just me I suppose.

Wow, those Mexican drug cartels sure do like to do things the hard way.

Is suspect, and far be it for me to just make shit up like the “morans” above but many of these “military style weapons” are not coming from the U.S . I suspect they're coming from Central America and Colombia, which have been flooded with weapons over the past 40 years. The Soviets and their client states made over 100 million AK-47’s and shipped millions to Latin and South America. Even when poorly maintained they have long duty lives and can be purchased for as little as $20 in some parts of the world. So tell me why a smuggler would spend $500-1000 at a gun show in Dallas for something he could pick up in Ecuador or Nicaragua for $50?

They wouldn’t, that’s the answer.

Now I am not dismissing the fact that weapons do flow from the US to Mexico and that a number of these do wind up in the hands of the cartels but there has been no case made that American guns are a significant factor in Mexico’s ongoing drug cartel wars. I, like many people, suspect (and with the Holder/Clinton/Obama triumvirate its not a wild suspiction) that this is simply going to be used as an excuse to pass both the UN’s Small Arms Treaty and another Assault Weapons Bill.

So stay vigilant kiddies and keep your powder dry.

Eight out of ten scientitians agree!

Naturally, now that the Dear Leader reigns triumphant over our land, the politicization of science is over.

Case in point:

The tenderness of the delicate American buttock is causing more environmental devastation than the country's love of gas-guzzling cars, fast food or McMansions, according to green campaigners. At fault, they say, is the US public's insistence on extra-soft, quilted and multi-ply products when they use the bathroom.

"This is a product that we use for less than three seconds and the ecological consequences of manufacturing it from trees is enormous," said Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defence Council.

"Future generations are going to look at the way we make toilet paper as one of the greatest excesses of our age. Making toilet paper from virgin wood is a lot worse than driving Hummers in terms of global warming pollution."

Allen Hershkowitz's title "senior scientist" certainly does sound authoritative enough.

Come to find out that Hershkowitz PHD was in political economics from CCNY, not exactly the kind of qualifications one would expect to see from a “senior scientist” but naturally that makes him an expert voice for the media.