Has Putin Gone Astray?

Or has he always been that way?  Freedom seems to be a concept that is giving Russian President Vladimir Putin some heartburn lately.  He is beginning to look to me like another Gorbachev.  That is, as a president who missed an opportunity to lead his country to a freedom inspired and people inspired sort of government.   He lost his election to the will the people who preferred Boris Yeltsin.

MOSCOW (AP) – Riot police beat and detained protesters as thousands defied an official ban and attempted to stage a rally Saturday against President Vladimir Putin’s government, which opponents accuse of rolling back freedoms Russians have enjoyed since the end of Soviet communism.

Will Vladimir Putin likewise miss a similar opportunity?  Yes, he will follow Gorby’s footsteps and begin to reign in whatever freedoms the Russians have.  Which would be a huge mistake with bad consequences for the world.

Police beat protesters

Kasparov freed after rally

Imus Schmimus

He would have been fired anyway due to the lack of first amendment supporters.  The 20 second blurb heard by maybe 300,000 people once, turned into a 24/7  stream heard by the entire country, continuously.  That is all it took for advertisers to get out of dodge.  And that’s all it would have taken for CBS to fire Imus.  CBS isn’t a non-profit organization (not intentionally anyway) so the choice as to what to do with Imus quickly became a no-brainer. 

I have a big problem with the rhyming Reverends, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton though.  When neither of those Reverends would accept his apology, and continued to literally hit to the streets and picket (a la last century) calling for his ouster because, they say, he is a racist.   They want to, and did, bring his career to a screeching halt, in disgrace.   Whatever happened to rehab?  That used to be where things like this went.  But guess what, this doesn’t solve the problem.  Worse, it doesn’t even address the problem.

Jason Whitlock has a different take on this Imus debacle.  It’s about the problem.   Jason says “Imus isn’t the real bad guy. Instead of wasting time on irrelevant shock jock, black leaders need to be fighting a growing gangster culture.”

Thank you, Don Imus. You’ve given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem.

You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.

You’ve given Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to respond to your poor attempt at humor.

Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.

The bigots win again.

Link to entire article.

Related: Mark Steyn’s Dream

Syria, The Express Check-In, Better Than The Mexican Border

Did you ever read a news piece and immediately recoil with a big WHAT? It’s been happening more often nowadays but if this doesn’t sound like DHS/Frankenstein on immigration or some such, I don’t know what else could. Attempting to stop the bleeding here (Mexican Border), while we make this incision on your jugular here (Syria).

Homeland Security is looking to hire people to go to Syria to sign up ‘refugees.’ I’d like to know why importing terrorists has become a priority while we are fighting a war to keep them out?

And if a threat level Yellow (Elevated) isn’t enough to adequately protect the U.S. border at Mexico, what does it have to be to stop operating from within a state sponsor of terror and puppet of Iran?

Always Somebody There To Be Offended

Eight months after posting an article about the biased reporting in the news accounts of Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel compared to how an Israeli response is reported, a user (Robert) comments to complain about the picture. But what got this user’s goat (politically correct too!), were these pictures of men with boobs from Debbie Schlussel’s blog. As luck would have it, another user (Ali) made a thoughtful response that I want to share.

 

First of all the one who post this pic after made changes in it, is a bloody baster. You have to ashamed of yourself, to do these thing. Second person who is published it also the such a baster. Then all the person who are willing to do this type of things. If you have any other opinion on the act of a person, it is not mean that you will publish pics after bloody amendments.

Robert

Robert  4/11/07; 6:40:18 AM #

Hezbollah leader Nasrallah in character

A bloody baster? Did you mean bastard? Oh I mean bloody bastard?

So you don’t like the picture? Where’s your sense of humor? Karachi? I thought it was funny. I’ve got others you might like. They show people burning flags of the US, and some of that in Israel too. Oh, and then those nasty pics of the bus explosions, but they’re not doctored, they are real. What would you say if I told you pics like those are all over the world too? You’re going to be busy searching for them and expressing your taste, or distaste for them.

The doctored picture you don’t like, and there are more from Debbie Schlussel’s website, just follow the link. But the picture is making a point that the Hezbollah terrorists (do you believe they are terrorists?) are cowards, or ‘girlie-men.’ Not the brave soldiers and wise statesmen they show themselves to be in some of the media on this planet. I hope I haven’t lost you already, because here’s where it gets good. IMHO,tossing missiles and blowing up your own children to kill other children is about the essence of cowardice. It’s called illustrating a point through absurdity. Men with breasts, in this case. So, the picture sort of depicts that. Clever huh? Don’t they have personal freedoms like this where you come from? Robert.

If you read her explanation you’ll see it was sort of an art project. But here is Debbie’s explanation about those pictures:

“But, actually, it’s kind of a redundant phrase. Hezbollah men might as well have breasts–women’s ones–because they are the biggest girlie-men on the planet. They’re not brave. They’re cowards. So I asked our master, in-house photo-shopper David Lunde to put together some pics of what Hezbollah’s “men” are really like.

…end of quote

I added the graphics for added visual effect. Well that and to improve understanding in the world.

Graphics by lundesigns.com

 

How The Media Offends

The media itself is right up there in credibility as say, oh, Howard K. Stern or Don Imus. While they ALL are consumed with Anna Nichole Smith and who nailed her, and Don Imus and the race baiters nailing him, and how can we possibly forget American Idol, the war on terror continues to chug along and new problems with Iran are developing, but you’ll have to look elsewhere to learn about it.

While all that is going on, Australia has doubled its troop size in Afghanistan, to (argh) win the War. Our general in Iraq is reaching out to Iraqis for their help, and, they are increasingly getting it. There are signs that the new plan in Iraq is working. And conditions in Iran are coming to the point that many of the same reasons that we went into Iraq (support of terrorism with training and hardware, development of WMD’s, defying international community with respect to nuclear development, and more), are present in Iran now.  I think I know where all those holes in the sand came from.

The Question Geraldo Won’t Answer

What do you think of sanctuary cities? That was the first question of the interview with Geraldo where they both got a little excited on the air. The question was about sanctuary cities. And sanctuary cities was the only thing they didn’t talk about.

O’REILLY: OK. Sanctuary cities, what do you think?

RIVERA: I think you have the story almost exactly wrong, my friend. I think that we’re talking about drunk driving.

The question is still out there. I just have a feeling that he would rather not answer that one truthfully, so he just won’t go there. He does get entertaining when he champions the illegals as though they are rightful citizens who have had their rights taken away.

link to the transcript

PBS Bows To Jihad

What else could it possibly be called?  That PBS has made the decision to insulate the American people from the realities of what moderate Muslims in America are saying and what civilization is up against when it comes to the Global War On Terror (that’s what I call it), the PBS network is doing a dis-service to this country in the very least, while aiding those who would wish us dead.  PBS has yanked the airing of “Islam vs. Islamists” from a series that begins airing next week.

The producer of a tax-financed documentary on Islamic extremism claims his film has been dropped for political reasons from a television series that airs next week on more than 300 PBS stations nationwide.

And that wasn’t the half of it.

Martyn Burke says that the Public Broadcasting Service and project managers at station WETA in Washington, D.C., excluded his documentary, Islam vs. Islamists, from the series America at a Crossroads after he refused to fire two co-producers affiliated with a conservative think tank.

“I was ordered to fire my two partners (who brought me into this project) on political grounds,” Burke said in a complaint letter to PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supplied funds for the films.

Talk about an inconvenient truth, PBS needs a extra large dose of it right now.  To further the jihadists’ goals by keeping us in the dark, when you have the chance to do otherwise, is disgusting.

Australia Sending Special Forces

Australia Prime Minister John Howard is fighting to win too!  He is sending more special forces to Afghanistan.   No wobbly knees down under.   I don’t believe I’ve seen this in theAustralia Prime Minister John Howard news today?  Not surprised.  Certainly does not fit the template.

Australia is sending special forces commandos back to Afghanistan to hunt down the leaders of the resurgent Taliban as part of a doubling of Australia’s troop numbers there, Prime Minister John Howard said on Tuesday.

The deployment of 300 special-forces troops to the southeast of Afghanistan, near the heart of the Taliban rebellion, is part of an increased effort needed to win the war in Afghanistan, Howard told a media conference.