It's about freakin' time!

Hezbollah acknowledged targeting civilians in rocket attacks on Israel, but said it fired in response to Israeli attacks - rejecting an Amnesty International report Thursday that accused the guerrillas of "serious violations of international humanitarian law, amounting to war crimes."

During the conflict, Hezbollah fired nearly 4,000 rockets into northern Israel, killing 43 civilians, seriously injuring 33 others and forcing hundreds of thousands of civilians to take refuge in shelters or flee.

"The scale of Hezbollah's attacks on Israeli cities, towns and villages, the indiscriminate nature of the weapons used, and statements from the leadership confirming their intent to target civilians make it all too clear that Hezbollah violated the laws of war," Amnesty International's Secretary General Irene Khan said in a comment on the report.

The article basically repeats what those three paragraphs say a number of times, but you've got the gist.

The claim that the targeting of Israeli civilians by Hezbollah was a reaction to their own civilians being targeted is ridiculous. First of all, Hezbollah is a terrorist organization that is in the business of killing civilians and that is what they did for this entire war. That's how they roll. Israel, on the other hand, fires at terrorist fighters. It just so happens that those terrorists hide behind woman and children and fire their weapons from residential rooftops. Essentially the majority of civilian Lebanese deaths aren't even "collateral damage", rather they were killed by the Hezbos themselves, but making them targets.

This is just like Iraq. Our troops are less safe when they won't fire in to a Mosque, school, or hospital even thougth the terrorists will fire out at them. If the Israelis were being that weak, they'd have been screwed. They attack the enemy where they are, and it just so happens that the Hezbos hide amongst civilians for the PR. That way they can have Green Helmet parade dead childrens bodies around the next day, directing cameras, reseting for better angles, etc. etc.

 

***UPDATE - Fonda and Friends delusional, start their own network. Why do they think they have a shot?***

***UPDATE - Brian Maloney the blogosphere's anti-Air America guru has all the details.

***UPDATE - AAR Denies. Sounds to me like they are on the verge of having no other option but bankruptcy, if no one buys up their assests.

While Malkin doesn't have a post up on this yet, she has been following the failures of liberal radio network "Air America" since the beginning, so I'm sure she'll have something to say later. Anyway, hat tip to Malkin's associate AllahPundit for pointing me to this story/spin job by Think Progress. Bad boyz for life... can't stop, won't stop...

NRO mocks here:

Wanting to make sure that no one thinks a bankruptcy declaration by Air America would be bad news, ThinkProgress adds:

The right wing is sure to seize on Air America’s financial woes as a sign that progressive talk radio is unpopular. In fact, Air America succeeded at creating something that didn’t exist: the progressive talk radio format. That format is now established and strong and will continue with or without Air America. Indeed, many of the country’s most successful and widely-syndicated progressive talk hosts — Ed Schultz and Stephanie Miller, for instance — aren’t even associated with Air America.

Radio giant Clear Channel is so committed to progressive talk radio that, this week, it will announce a partnership with the Center for American Progress, Jones Radio, and MSS Inc., to conduct a nationwide search for the next Progressive Talk Radio Star.

Pathetic. I can some up my feeling on this with a monologue from Joe Dirt character "Robby", played by Kid Rock:

"Don't get smart with me, you motherless dirtbag. You've been here long enough. Nobody wants you in this town. Nobody wants you around, period! (Joe Dirts begins to run away) Aw, look at him, fellas.…You cryin', boy? You cryin', boy? Maybe you should go back down to McDonald's and get yourself a whine burger and some french cries. How 'bout a 'Whine-a-ken?' You little sissy boy. Def Leppard sucks!"

*UPDATE*
As was predicted, Malkin is all over it and includes a long link list of her previous coverage which I see as some deserved gloating. Malkin has hammered the NY Times' coverage of Air America since the beginning, and is still waiting for them to get with the program:

First question: Will the New York Times fiiiiinally get around to covering this story? Hmmm?

You might recall that the Times, obviously friendly with the views of Air America, wrote glowing pieces on them even though they've continued to tank almost since they day they launched. The Times has been noticably absent in reporting on AA's continued and worsening failures.

Others:
Wizbang, Sensible Mom, Texas Rainmaker, Appalachian Scribe, Considerettes, Macsmind, The World According to Carl, American Princess

 

I saw this post at HotAir, which links to audio of Gov. Schwarzenegger supposedly saying some un-PC comments about a latina politican, and eventually linked to Ahnuld's standard issue apology.

What most haven't noted is what the "victim" of Schwarzenegger's comments has said about them:

Garcia, who is Puerto Rican, told the Times the governor's remarks did not bother her.

"I love the governor because he is a straight talker just like I am," she said. "Very often I tell him, 'Look, I am a hot-blooded Latina.' I label myself a hot-blooded Latina that is very passionate about the issues, and this is kind of an inside joke that I have with the governor."

So Ms. Garcia, what you're saying is that there is absolutely no story here? Well, we'll just pretend you didn't say that so we can continue to attack the Governator as some sort of sexist or racist, or whatever other angle someone is able to spin this in to.

Non-story to begin with, even less after reading Garcia's comments. Doesn't the media have a Bush "scandal" to invent, allow the original bogus story to sink in, then not retract after it's debunked? It's been a little while, and that's usually it's almost a weekly event.

 

By now you've seen the headlines: Senate: No Prewar Saddam-al-Qaida Ties. What the media isn't telling you is that THIS IS A LIE! Saddam DID have ties to Al Qaeda and Bin Laden.

Yahoo! has been running a link to the story on their home page all day, and virtually all other news sites and television programs have been repeating this "new finding" all day in an attempt to continue the "Bush lied" claim. Aside from the fact that this story is, as Tony Snow and others have said "nothing new", the "conclusion" is A FLAT OUT LIE! This report that concludes no connection was specifically about Zarqawi, and his lack of ties to Saddam. Not about Al Qaeda in general. So virtually every headline you've seen is A LIE, because Saddam DID HAVE TIES to Al Qaeda, but I can't blame you for not knowing. The media has done a great job of ignoring the story.

Do you remember a few months ago, the push by a few GOP congressman to release some of the millions of documents and thousands of hours of tapes captured in Iraq? We got a slow trickle of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the documents, but even they revealed quite a bit, that was quickly burried by the media. While I still want to know when we'll get access to the rest of those documents, I'll set that aside for the moment, as this post is about Saddam's Al Qaeda ties.

Via ABC News March 23, 2006:

A newly released prewar Iraqi document indicates that an official representative of Saddam Hussein's government met with Osama bin Laden in Sudan on February 19, 1995, after receiving approval from Saddam Hussein. Bin Laden asked that Iraq broadcast the lectures of Suleiman al Ouda, a radical Saudi preacher, and suggested "carrying out joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia. According to the document, Saddam's presidency was informed of the details of the meeting on March 4, 1995, and Saddam agreed to dedicate a program for them on the radio. The document states that further "development of the relationship and cooperation between the two parties to be left according to what's open [in the future] based on dialogue and agreement on other ways of cooperation." The Sudanese were informed about the agreement to dedicate the program on the radio.

The report then states that "Saudi opposition figure" bin Laden had to leave Sudan in July 1996 after it was accused of harboring terrorists. It says information indicated he was in Afghanistan. "The relationship with him is still through the Sudanese. We're currently working on activating this relationship through a new channel in light of his current location," it states.

(Editor's Note: This document is handwritten and has no official seal. Although contacts between bin Laden and the Iraqis have been reported in the 9/11 Commission report and elsewhere (e.g., the 9/11 report states "Bin Ladn himself met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum in late 1994 or early 1995) this document indicates the contacts were approved personally by Saddam Hussein.

It also indicates the discussions were substantive, in particular that bin Laden was proposing an operational relationship, and that the Iraqis were, at a minimum, interested in exploring a potential relationship and prepared to show good faith by broadcasting the speeches of al Ouda, the radical cleric who was also a bin Laden mentor.

The document does not establish that the two parties did in fact enter into an operational relationship. Given that the document claims bin Laden was proposing to the Iraqis that they conduct "joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia, it is worth noting that eight months after the meeting — on November 13, 1995 — terrorists attacked Saudi National Guard Headquarters in Riyadh, killing 5 U.S. military advisers. The militants later confessed on Saudi TV to having been trained by Osama bin Laden.)

and

An Iraqi intelligence service document saying that their Afghan informant, who's only identified by a number, told them that the Afghan consul Ahmed Dahastani claimed the following in front of him:

That OBL and the Taliban are in contact with Iraq and that a group of Taliban and bin Laden group members visited Iraq
That the U.S. has proof the Iraqi government and "bin Laden's group" agreed to cooperate to attack targets inside America.
That in case the Taliban and bin Laden's group turn out to be involved in "these destructive operations," the U.S. may strike Iraq and Afghanistan.
That the Afghan consul heard about the issue of Iraq's relationship with "bin Laden's group" while he was in Iran.

At the end, the writer recommends informing "the committee of intentions" about the above-mentioned items. The signature on the document is unclear.

(Editor's Note: The controversial claim that Osama bin Laden was cooperating with Saddam Hussein is an ongoing matter of intense debate. While the assertions contained in this document clearly support the claim, the sourcing is questionable — i.e., an unnamed Afghan "informant" reporting on a conversation with another Afghan "consul." The date of the document — four days after 9/11 — is worth noting but without further corroboration, this document is of limited evidentiary value.)

In the interest of full disclosure, I've left in ABC's "editor's notes". Regardless of their personal take and editor's notes, doesn't this information deserve mentioning in these LYING articles that claim to prove no connection, that are only based on no Zarqawi/Saddam connection? Of course that's not even getting in to any of this.

Bottom line? You've been lied to by the media...... AGAIN!

 

On August 8th I posted about Howard Dean's $10,000 per plate dinner at the Soros residence scheduled for August 19, and then never heard another thing about it. Why? Could it be the media is trying to protect their fundraising failure DNC chairman and the party in general from revealing how truly far they've gone left?

The Newsday story I originally linked to is not up anymore, but I found it mentioned in this other Newsday piece dated August 8.

This year's Hamptons political schedule is unusually hectic for a nonpresidential election year. Last weekend, Attorney General and gubernatorial front-runner Eliot Spitzer held a trio of fundraisers in the Hamptons. On Aug. 19, Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean hosts a $10,000-per-guest fundraiser at the Southampton estate of financier George Soros.

Yup, the party of the little guy set up $10,000 per plate dinner at the home of extreme left MoveOn.Soros. Again, the only explanation I can come up with for the media blackout, is the fact that it reveals once again just how far left the Democratic Party has gone. It's also interesting that if you do a search of the DNC's official blog, the name of their biggest piggy bank is no where to be found. Bonus: They call their blog "Kicking Ass". I don't think I could come up with a joke to mock that anymore than just pointing it out. Aside from how lame it is, wouldn't it be a better name for a Republican blog? Because we kick the asses (Donkey = DNC Mascot)? Oh I get it! Clever Dems, they mean it's a donkey that kicks! Hahahahah.....ha.......cough..................... ha. Give me a minute to compose myself, the cleverness is just a bit overwhelming.

Anyway, I guess ya gotta do what ya gotta do when you've got to fund door knocking and picnic crashing campaigns (seriously, that's Dean's big idea). You know that's actually a great plan, as Dean says they will do this to "deliver the message". Which message? Your guess is as good as mine because it seems any and all Democratic plans are the best kept secrets in the country. Oh wait I'm sorry, their plan is "time for a change" and "new direction". Look out terrorists! No seriously, Yogi Dean is behind you raiding your picnic basket..

*UPDATE*
GOP.com quotes Soros via the Wall Street Journal.

August 15, 2006: The number one financier of the Democrat Party George Soros writes in today’s Wall Street Journal “The war on terror is a false metaphor that has led to counterproductive and self-defeating policies.” Soros goes on to give four reasons he feels we cannot beat terrorism, saying “First, war by its very nature creates innocent victims…Second, terrorism is an abstraction…Third, the war on terror emphasizes military action while most territorial conflicts require political solutions…Fourth, the war on terror drives a wedge between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ We are innocent victims. They are perpetrators. But we fail to notice that we also become perpetrators in the process; the rest of the world, however, does notice. That is how such a wide gap has arisen between America and much of the world. Taken together, these four factors ensure that the war on terror cannot be won.”

 

If you've actually been paying attention to the U.S. economy under the Bush administration, you're aware that it's been nothing short of great for most of the Bush administrations time in office, since troubles from the Clinton-Gore recession and 9/11. While all sectors of real estate were hitting record levels month after month for years under Bush, the necessary slow-down has begun and the media has been rushing to spell doom for the economy through alarmist headlines, and spun articles. They were even doing this during continual record growth over the past two and three years, insisting a "crash" was imminent, but as predicted by any realisting non-BDS suffering economist, we're experiencing a necessary and healthy slowdown, particularly as the fed raises interest rates to slow inflation.

But the housing sector doesn't even scratch the surface of the media lies that are leaving most people giving negative numbers on the economy, while giving positive numbers to their own situation. I love these numbers because they prove that people are being lied to or they wouldn't think that their own positive situation was a fluke, while knocking the economy as a whole. The major problem with all of this, is that a recent Fox News poll shows that the economy is the number 1 issue on voters' minds as the midterm elections approach. Let's take a closer look at the numbers and the lies.

The jobs numbers are out today, showing that another 128,000 jobs were created last month, which brings us to more than 5.5 million jobs created in the last 3 years! This also brought the unemployment rate back down to 4.7%, from the slight increase to 4.8% in the previous month. Even if the number had stayed at 4.8, it would have still been great and lower than the average of the 70s, 80s and 90s! Better still, wages grew faster than inflation.

I do have to say that this is probably the most fair AP story I've read on the economy in recent months, though you can still sense that they're looking for something negative to print, just not as hard as usual:

The tally of new jobs last month was slightly stronger than the 125,000 that economists were forecasting. The nation's unemployment rate dropped down a notch from a five-month high of 4.8 percent in July. Job gains for June and July also turned out to be better than previously estimated. In June, employers boosted payrolls by 134,000 positions and in July they added another 121,000.

See, what is the point of that "five-month high" line? An average reader sees "unemployment was at a high", they don't know that 4.8 is still a historically low unemployment rate and barely up from the previous months which obvioiusly were also historically low, especially in an economy after the recession, 9/11, expensive wars, the New Orleans situation (that I refuse to call "Katrina"). This leaves the impression that the drop to 4.7 was some sort of fluke, when in fact it's part of the low unemployment trend. But as I said, this AP article was much more fair than most, and this is a minor offense. I do have to give them credit for including this:

Workers' average hourly earnings edged up to $16.79 in August, a 0.1 percent increase from July. Economists were forecasting a bigger, 0.3 percent advance. While workers welcome strong wage growth, economists worry that a rapid and prolonged pickup in wages can ignite inflation fears.

Over the 12 months ending August, wages grew by a strong 3.9 percent. The last time this figure was higher was in June 2001.

Oddly "Consumer Confidence" dropped, but "Consumer Spending" rose. I'm not an economist, but those two numbers would seem to contradict eachother. More importantly, I've isolated a flat out AFP lie in the short article on consumer spending growth. The whole article follows:

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US consumer spending has rallied strongly in July but incomes fell, according to the government.

The Commerce Department reported Thursday that personal spending rose 0.8 percent last month, after going up 0.4 percent in June. It was the fastest pace of spending since January.

Personal incomes rose 0.5 percent, a slower pace than June's increase of 0.6 percent.

Both releases were in line with Wall Street forecasts.

I hope I don't need to spell that out for you, but on the assumption a liberal might be reading this... The very first sentence says that income FELL. But by the time you get to the third paragraph you learn that it simply GREW at a slightly slower rate, but didn't fall by any means. This is one of those situations where you libs can't spin this. That first line is a lie any way you slice it.

Still with me? I'm just laying the groundwork, because the poll responses are when the issue will really sink in, so hang in there. So far we know GDP and job growth continue to be strong, the unemployment rate remains historically low, wages are increasing, etc. etc. But as you're about to see, the public continues to be very down on the economy. Of course the liberal response is "the growth only helps the rich, and the economy is bad for the average person". Well, as I've done for months (see here, here, and here), I'm about to do a preemptive strike on those sort of responses, because the fact is that most people ARE happy with their own financial situation. (All numbers that follow via American Research Group, Inc.)

First I always like to start with the biggest proof that the public is being lied to about the economy: the recession question. Consistently only about half of the country knows that we are NOT in a recession, the other half either believes that we are or is undecided. For starters there shouldn't be "undecided" because recession is an absolute, either we are or we aren't, it's not an opinion.. And the fact is WE AREN'T. Here are the numbers:

How can only half of the country not know that we aren't in a recession? The only logical conclusion is that they are getting bad information, and where do they get their information? The news media! How can 28% be so stupid to think that we are in recession, and another 22% be unsure about something that isn't an opinion question!? How!?

Before I get to the public's view of their own financial situation, here's their opinion of the economy:

Ouch! 55% see the economy either bad, very bad, or terrible, while only 44% see it as good, very good, or excellent. As bad as that is, it's actually a sharp jump from July's numbers where 68% rated the economy in the negative columns, and only 31% positively, but it still doesn't jibe with the personal situation numbers:

Whoa! 68% of the public is happy with their own financial situation, while only 31% aren't!!! Again, how do you explain this discrepency, without concluding that the public has been lied to, leaving them with the impression that they are the lucky flukes in an economy in the crapper. It probably doesn't help that virtually everytime positive economic numbers are reported, it's always with words like "unexpected" or "surprising", again leaving people with the impression the growth is out of the ordinary, while the numbers show the economy has been booming, and only in recent months has it even begun the necessary slow down to maintanable levels that won't cause inflation to go out of control.

Like with all lying liberal media issues, the big problem is that their lies (obviously) affect public opinion, and public opinion dictates how the public votes. We've got an extremely important election coming up in which the public puts the economy above terror and Iraq on their "what is important to me" scale, an economy they have a negative opinion about, because they were lied to. This of course carries across all things from national security to wars to immigration, but this is the easiest example to lay out with irrefutable facts. Please, tell your liberal friends that any financial upturn they've had isn't luck and they aren't in the minority. Or you could just wait for speaker Pelosi to come in and waste our time and money with a series of pointless investigations.

Oh, and suck on this White House summary:

On August 4, 2006, The Government Released New Jobs Figures – 113,000 Jobs Created In July. The economy has created more than 1.7 million jobs over the past 12 months – and more than 5.5 million jobs since August 2003. The unemployment rate is 4.8 percent – below the average of each of the past three decades. In addition, wages grew 0.4 percent in July, the second consecutive month of strong wage growth and faster than inflation.

The Economy Remains Strong, And The Outlook Is Favorable

• Employment Increased In 47 States Over The Past 12 Months Ending In June.
• Real GDP Grew A Strong 3.5 Percent Over The Past 4 Quarters.
• Productivity Has Grown At A Strong 3.5 Percent Annual Rate Since The First Quarter Of 2001. Productivity growth during the past five years has been at the fastest rate in nearly four decades.
• Real After-Tax Income Has Risen By 13.5 Percent Since January 2001.
• Industrial Production Increased 4.5 Percent Over The Past 12 Months.
• Manufacturing Production Has Risen 5.7 Percent Over The Past 12 Months. Manufacturing productivity has grown 4 percent over the past four quarters, faster than the 3.7 percent average growth in the 1990s.
• Strong Growth Is Helping Raise More Tax Revenues For The Federal And State Governments. In 2005, Federal tax revenues grew by $274 billion, the largest increase in 24 years, and State tax revenues are up substantially in 2006.

 

*As I've said, I will repost and not drop this until the Times answers for it and fires the responsible party. This is such an obvious photoshop, and I can't believe people are willing to let them get away with this. I've provided more Times email addresses for you to attempt to contact them at the end. I've yet to get a reply.*

*My Fruitless Email Conversation With The Times*
First Repost
First Revisited Post
Original Post

(REPOST FOLLOWS)
The other day Little Green Footballs wondered if another Lebanon photo by Tyler Hicks of the NY Times, might be another fauxto. LGF's Charles Johnson who was instrumental in exposing Rathergate, as well as the first Hajj fauxtoshopping scandal, brought the image to our attention, but was obviously less than convinced. Charles simply asked a question, and pretty much left it at that.

Similarly, AllahPundit posted on the image, and attempted to debunk the photoshop theory, and defend the image as real. As time went on, it seemed like the obviousness of the photoshop was becoming apparent to Allah, until in the end he gave up on the grounds that he didn't understand what the motivation would have been.

Let me first say that I have the utmost respect for both of these excellent bloggers, but I feel they chose to be over cautious to maintain credibility that had been built up by the Hajj scandal. I think they felt like they would be going out on a limb if they harped on this. An understandable feeling everyone had when the dust was still settling after Hajjgate. But not understandable, to me, when you look at the image. I posted the other day, and will now continue to until this is resolved.

The controversial image I'm referring to, of course, is the fauxto of Lebanese civilians taking shelter in a hospital in a town called Tibnine (alos Tibneen, Tibnin, and Tibnini), in which a black man's face was CLEARLY photoshopped on to the head of the body of an Arab woman wearing a headscarf. The image remains up at the NY Times' site, and they have not responded to any of my emails.

First take a look at the image below (click for full size):

Here's a cropped and zoomed version of the section in question (courtesy LGF)

And if somehow you still don't see it, look at this negative I created:

Again, Charles Johnson and HotAir's AllahPundit are two of my favorite bloggers who I have a lot of respect for, but I can't understand how they don't see the obvious here. To me, this photoshop job is almost as bad as the Hajj smokescreen.

Note the headscarf you can see emerging from behind where this man's head was obviously pasted. Note that his head is more focused than the rest. Note that he looks like he's wearing 3 different shirts sewn in to one (because the one on the left (his/her right shoulder) is part of the photoshop. Note that even my mother looked at this and saw what a piece of crap photoshop job this is!

I've got to crash, but please, if you can see the obvious here, email the Times at the following email addresses. They seemed the most appropriate of those that I found:

web-editor@nytimes.com
apcar@nytimes.com - Len Apcar Editor, NYTimes on the Web
bogert@nytimes.com - Jeremiah Bogert Staff Editor, Picture desk
witty@nytimes.com - Patrick Witty Staff Editor, Picture Desk

Also, if you are this man or you know this man please email me at randy at rightwinged dot com. Additionally if you've seen this man or the body he's pasted on in other photos, please let me know. The Times got away with the "imprecise" caption in their first exposed Hezbollywood scandal, but they cannot be allowed to get out of this one without someone's head rolling.

 

***UPDATE - SCROLL FOR VIDEO SALUTE TO NOLA'S BIGGEST IDIOTS***

***UPDATE 8/30 - Today's Vent With Michelle Malkin touches on a lot of this***

*UPDATE - Bryan at HotAir has a similar yet better written post up, only he stayed focused where as I just got totally annoyed thinking about it, and hearing constant "natural disaster" and "Katrina ravaged a city" crap in the background. Scroll for others

****UPDATE - Paul at Wizbang is on the same page as me, but goes a step further with video and photo evidence, and wonder why the information has been surpressed. I'm just glad to hear someone else say "IT WASN'T KATRINA!". Actually, Paul credits Katrina with saving tens of thousands of lives (and I totally agree). He makes the point that the break happening that day was coincidence, and they have higher water on days with exceptionally high tides, but that water had been seeping underneath for over a year. If not for Katrina warnings, the city would have been filled with people and tens of thousand would have been killed within hours.***

Section I: What really happend in New Orleans wasn't "Katrina" or any "natural disaster"
Section II: Race baiting media
Section III: Response to race baiting - Whites died at a disproportionately high rate.

It would be impossible to count the times we hear and read news about the catastrophe in New Orleans, and it's referred to as "Katrina". I am so sick and tired of that, because it wasn't "Katrina", it was shoddy design and construction of levees built around a soup bowl city below sea level. The concern raised over the levees was about overtopping and the flooding that a massive storm surge would have. And to clarify something for MSM kool-aid drinking libs: NO ONE WARNED ABOUT THE LEVEES BREAKING. You recall the AP's attempted "scandal" to prove that "Bush lied, he was warned", when after much blogger pressure and a "friday night correction", it was revealed that all he was warned about (which was common knowledge) was concern of flooding as a result of overtopping.

I also can't stand the fact that almost no one EVER mentions the actual strength of Katrina when it hit and most people are under the impression that Katrina was either a Category 4 or 5. The storm, which actually veered east of directly striking New Orleans was only a Category 3 at landfall, and New Orleans only experience Category 1 to 2 conditions. You might recall that the levees were built to handle category 3 storm surge, though even in the warnings leading up to the storm about a 4 or 5, there wasn't talk of them breaking, it was just talk of a storm surge so high it would make them irrelevant. A side issue I have is that the levees have been rebuilt to that category 3 level. Beyond the stupidity of not building them to handle a 5, why should we believe they could handle a 3? They didn't even handle Katrina's 1-2!

Let me take you all the way back to only 8 weeks after the storm (October 26, 2005) to finish my point before I move on. This WAPO article was written before anyone even knew that NOLA only dealt with category 1 to 2 conditions, but already it was obvious that "Katrina" wasn't the villain.

Today, exactly eight weeks after the storm, all three breaches are looking less like acts of God and more like failures of engineering that could have been anticipated and very likely prevented.

Two months after that we had another WAPO article that first made it clear just how weakly New Orleans was actually hit. In this December 22, 2005 piece we see that inspite of evidence and the facts, The Army Corps of Engineers and other Louisiana liars still calling the storm a category 4 or 5, which again is the belief it seems most Americans hold. Check it out:

The National Hurricane Center released a summary report on Katrina this week that downgraded the storm's intensity at landfall in Louisiana on Aug. 29 from Category 4 to Category 3. The winds in New Orleans, which lay to the west of the storm's center, were probably even weaker than that, at Category 1 or 2 speeds, the report said.

Leaders of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency responsible for New Orleans's levees and ultimately accountable for their failure, initially blamed the problems on the fact that the storm was more powerful than the Category 3 event for which the levees had been designed.

As recently as last week, federal and Louisiana officials responsible for the region's levees were describing Katrina as a Category 4 or 5 storm. Edmond J. Preau Jr., Louisiana's assistant secretary for public works, told a Senate panel that Katrina essentially delivered a Category 5 blow to the Gulf Coast.

"That storm was the biggest storm ever to enter the Gulf of Mexico," Preau said in testimony before the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "I think it would be a real disservice to everyone if Katrina goes down in the history books as a '4' because the wind speed dropped at the last minute."

Well if that would be a disservice, then what do you call what I'm doing? IT WASN'T A CATEGORY 5, 4 OR EVEN A 3!!! Do you not remember all the "dodged a bullet" talk in NOLA? It was justified because they did dodge a bullet. But they couldn't dodge the bullet of incompetent engineers. They couldn't dodge the bullet of Louisiana's Senior emergency management officials being indicted before Katrina for up to $60 million in unaccounted for funds. They couldn't dodge the bullet of Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin refusing to issue the mandatory evacuation that Bush asked for. They couldn't dodge the bullet of Nagin ignoring their own evacuation plan by letting hundreds of buses sit (do you really need a link?), which essentially puts most deaths on his doorstep. They couldn't dodge the bullet of Blanco blocking the Red Cross from entering the city for fear of creating a "magnet" to the Superdome. etc. etc.

I could go on and on about what really happened in New Orleans with hundreds of links, but the fact is that most of you already know all of this, and I'm just sort of using this as a refresher. And those of you who don't know this most likely chose not to know all of this so you could blame Bush. To sum up this portion of the post though, I just have to say again "Katrina" didn't destroy New Orleans did, crappily built levees did!!!. I can't even describe how sick of hearing "worst natural disaster" I am.

While all the "Katrina"/"natural disaster" crap seems to get at least a daily mention, the past week has been building towards today with countless descriptions along those lines. The year anniversary is a major media event, and my favorite liberal media offender, the Yahoo! home page pulls a Kanye West:

Are you effing kidding me? "The poverty and racism that separated New Orleans before Katrina plague the city's reconstruction." sounds a lot like opinion, and not much like news to me. Both that headline and the "racism" button under the picture link to an AFP "article" entitled: Race relations still tense a year after Katrina. Not surprisingly the article mentions nothing about Ray "Chocolate City" Nagin's repeated racially charged remarks. Worse than that, this "article" is clearly nothing but an opinion piece that I almost can't believe doesn't use the phrase "white devil". Just read the opening three paragraphs:

NEW ORLEANS, United States (AFP) - The chaos following Hurricane Katrina showed millions of Americans that deep racial divides, poverty and racism persist in their country.

Images of seas of black faces begging for help that took days to arrive, and stories of sheriffs from adjacent white suburbs turning desperate evacuees away at gunpoint as they tried to flee New Orleans, horrified the nation.

But for many who grew up in a city that had hosted the slave trade and clung to segregation, the initial shock was transformed into fury that their deepest fears and suspicions were true: the government does not care about black people.

That third paragraph CLEARLY reads like the writer's opinion. The article goes on with more of the same, but never actually substantiates it's claims about "racial divides" and "racism". I'm annoyed by the liberal MSM all the time, but this is just ridiculous. This article shows no evidence of the racism it is claiming to report on, I'm just stunned at how weak of an "article" it is. They didn't even try.

As the "article" goes on, there are a bunch of other lines meant to hit you emotionally, but again, there is no substance to the. It quotes a number of black people, only one of whom says anything about racism (even though that is the message of the entire "article"), "The racism is so raw here". Well, case closed. She offers no substantiation.

This article opinion piece reports "racism!", but then speaks skeptically about white reaction to those claims:

Many whites in the city respond defensively to questions of race. When Spike Lee's documentary premiered ahead of Katrina's anniversary, the city's newspaper ran a front-page review complaining that the voices of white victims were not heard.

How stupid does the writer have to be to put that line in there, and then not interview a single white person for this "article"!? I suppose whatever audience this was written for wouldn't notice that anyway, they're just looking to get pumped up about their Bush hatred.

Of course the icing on the cake is ending with the obligatory lie (see first section of this post)

Katrina swept ashore in the early morning of August 29, killing more than 1,500 people along the US Gulf Coast and flooding 80 percent of New Orleans.

Katrina didn't kill them! Failed levees did, and they were only there because Blanco and Nagin chose not to make them leave, and drag them out whether they liked it or not! (Before you libs say "you can't force anyone from their homes", I have to say "then don't bitch about their situation if they chose to stay").

What annoys me more than anything though is the whole "race" discussion being brought up at all. Virtually everyone ignores the fact that whites died at a substantially higher rate than blacks did there. Don't believe me? Check out my original post here and see these updated statistics here and here. I was going to screen cap all of this and include images, but I've lost interest after getting sidetracked this morning. But the gist is this - NOLA is (well, was) 67% black and 28% white, while 40% of those that died were white and only roughly 50% were black (give or take, based on different stats that seem to overlap).

Have you ever seen an article asking why America is so racist against whites and let them die at a significantly disproportionate rate in the aftermath of Katrina failed levees? Where's the outrage?

Anyway, as I said, I've already become bored with this. I'm off to dream about the billions in tax dollars we're spending to rebuild a city in such a manner that it will be able to be easily destroyed again. Great investment. The only plus side is that maybe they can clean the crime situation up a bit, as they've exported their crime problems to Houston.

*UPDATE - Others*
Florida Cracker, Locomotive Breath 1901, 186k Per Second, RedBlueChristian, Sister Toldjah, Junkyard Blog, The World According to Carl

***UPDATE***
A video tribute to the NOLA idiot parade. New Orleans' biggest a-holes caught on tape. (please email me with links to others if you know of them)

This first one is not safe for work due to language (eff word). This clown wanted the feds to give everyone $20k... You know give them "what the f*** we deserve".

"Kanye West doesn't care about being a douche bag":

Count Chocula Ray Nagin's famous I have a Hershey speech:

Nagin's Nestquick clarification... That's the kind of chocolate I'm talking about (Bonus, notice in the "chocolate city" speech, he's addressing specifically by name "black people". So not only is this "clarification" idiotic, it's a flat out lie):

New Orleans cops looti.... er, I mean... catching looters... No wait... Yeah, New Orelans cops looting.

more...

Blitzer describing the refugees in a way that would have caused widespread outrage had it been Hannity or O'Reilly, but the left won't eat their own channel.

Shep and Geraldo lose it on the air, even with out naming names, fueling a lot of the Bush blaming that came out of this. We never saw them crying at Nagin and Blanco's doors for not issuing a mandatory evactuation and using buses to get people out, leading to the unmanagable situation that FEMA had to come deal with. You didn't see them yelling and screaming about them blocking the Red Cross from entering the city.

I don't want to downplay the situation, but you can go anywhere to find the outrage about it. My outrage is over the continued misreporting of what happened.

 

I've actually been sitting on this one for a while, after a reader named Michelle linked me to this Hajj fauxto, but I've been too busy to post on it the way I wanted to. So without further ado, let's get it on...

In the middle of the al-Reuters/Adnan Hajj photoshop scandal a reader named Michelle sent me a link to a story on Folha De S. Paulo, a Brazilian paper, who was using another Hajj photo I hadn't seen yet. The neighborhood looked similar to the one seen in the original, famous Hajj photoshop, but a lot of those neighborhoods look the same (to me anyway). The obvious difference was how colorful the image was. It looked like Miami or something and you might remember that in the original Hajj scandal, in addition to adding smoke, Hajj darkened the image, dulling down a lot of color.

A few days later while I was obsessing over another obvious photoshop, this one by Tyler Hicks at the NY Times (still not giving up by the way), I flipped through the other images in the Times slideshow and noticed that the first image was identical to the one on the Brazilian site.... well, almost.

Below are the two images. First the one from Folha De S. Paulo in it's original size, followed by the one from the Times which won't fit in full size, but you can click it to see the full size

Aside from the obvious, the Folha image is trimmed at the top and sides when compared with the Times image, but still clearly the same exact photo. As for the obvious difference, I don't think I need to explain how colorful the Folha image is, and how colorless the Times image is. Based on Hajj's history, I'd have to guess that the photoshop is the darker one shown at the Times, although it actually looks more "real". For some reason the colorful one at Folha seems almost cartoonish.

It get's weirder though. Neither image has a caption that indicates a date, but we can get an approximate because the URL of the Times version reveals that the page was created on July 25, 2006. Likewise the URL of the Folha page that uses the image shows that it was created on July 26. That's obviously not that big of a deal, because maybe the Brazilian paper was just a day behind. But I had to think back to Michelle's original comments when she emailed me the link to the image. She thought it was the same image as the busted smoke photoshop. (see original UNphotoshopped Hajjgate image below)

Obviously it wasn't the same image, but it did seem similar for some reason. I opened them both in my lame Microsoft Picture It! program and quickly realized that the original smoke photoshop fight nicely on top of this other one, and it was in fact a photo of the same exact neighborhood. The odd part was that the known photoshop had a date of August 5. Well, not that "odd" considering what we've all revealed about Hajj and other fauxtographers over there, but humor me. My first thought was, "did he take this other photo on the same day, but date it differently (like others we've seen)?"

Giving the undeserving benefit of the doubt I decided that maybe the same neighborhood was bombed twice. Perhaps not all the Hezbos were killed in the first bombing raid, and the next one was to finish them off. Odd that it would be almost two weeks later, but whatever. I don't have Hajj here to photoshop me a smoking gun, so I let that part slide. But the important point to remember was that we clearly had yet another Hajj photoshop that had gone unnoticed. Though I'm still unsure which was photoshopped, the one at the Times or the one at Folha DSP.

By the time I noticed this, Reuters had pulled the Hajj images so I wasn't able to see if there were others BUT I was able to find 3 more images of that same neighborhood, by other Reuters photographers. Two of the images were taken by an annonymous photographer known only as "STRINGER", dated August 6, and the other by Bilal Jawish dated August 7.

Again, I have no evidence that this neighborhood wasn't bombed once in late July then 3 days in a row almost 2 weeks later, but given what we've all seen in the past few weeks, it's suspicious to say the least, especially when 2 of the photographs are taken by "STRINGER" the same week that Adnan Hajj was canned. Even more odd is the fact that two of those images submitted to Yahoo! each have two different captions.

Are all of these curious things just coincidences? You be the judge. But one thing is for sure... We have another photoshop from Hajj, and then a bunch of other Reuters photos of the same neighborhood we've now proven he's photoshopped twice.

Below is a video I put together entitled "Adnan Hajj Reloaded" which includes all of the images mentioned. Scroll past the video for the individual images which are linked to their Yahoo! locations. (I'm not including captions because as I said, two of them have two captions each, pick your favorite)

Free Video Hosting Watch More Videos

Make what you will of all this, it's time for the Randman to get some shut-eye. No matter what you think of those other odd photos (that I don't claim represent any kind of smoking gun), the obvious FACT we see is that yet another Hajj photo has been shopped, yet remains online. I thought after Reuters pulled all Hajj images that the Times might too, but then I realized... wait, that would indicate an ounce of journalistic integrity. And a paper that continues to hold up an image of a black man's face photoshopped over the head of an Arab woman in a headscarf ain't gonna pull anything. (Again Tyler Hicks, that isn't over and it never will be until you or whoever photoshopped that image is fired and publicly humiliated)

Note to Readers: If you can offer an insight on any of these images, or have others, or any comments what so ever... in addition to commenting below, feel free to email me at Randy at Rightwinged dot com.

Related:
Allah, Rusty, and Dan Riehl are all closely watching another case of potential fauxtography. Yesterday you probably heard about a Reuters vehicle that was mistakenly hit with two Isreali missiles.... the strange thing is that, like many vehicles supposedly hit by Israeli missiles this month, they look more like they were hit with sledghammers (at worst).

 

This is yet another notch on the belt of the bloggers exposing Hezbollywood, that makes you wonder "if we can catch this stuff, certainly highly paid and trained MSM employees could". We're left with the conclusion that the MSM either chooses to ignore the obvious because it suits their agenda, or they deliberately mislead us all the time. I think it's a combination of both.

Today (well, yesterday I'm a little late) the Hezbollywood exposing crown has been passed to Zombie. If you aren't familiar, Zombie is everyone's favorite photographer of whacked out liberal protests in San Francisco, but he outdid himself this time.

Zombie put together a ridiculously detailed report thoroughly destroying the "Israel bombed a Red Cross ambulance" crap that got a lot of play especially after we all saw a lot of photos like this (yeah, still live as we speak type)

Thankfully at least Fox News (don't know about any others) picked this up, which I think makes 3 out of what seems like an infinite amount of Lebanon fauxtography. Hot Air has the video.

HotAir's headmistress Michelle Malkin has every related link you could ever need including direct links to stories from MSM outlets who pushed this bologna, awaiting a response. And a big thanks to Michelle for posting this hilarious video, which actually includes one of my own photoshops. At around 56 seconds you'll see a flash of Sheehan behind the "wailing woman" (aka unluckiest homeowner in Lebanon). That was my entry in one of Rusty's "you can be a stringer too" contests. By the way, make sure you're familiar with the "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" internet cult videos, before watching or it won't be as funny.

Big props to Dan Riehl for being out early on this one. I remember reading his early posts on this, but was tied up with other things at the time so didn't get to check it out much myself. Now Zombie's done more work on the bombed ambulance than anyone could ever hope to, and I think the case is officially closed. Of course it's never really closed when the MSM won't acknowledge it, but for those who actually care about honesty in media and have been closely following the Hezbollywood antics, this case is closed in our minds.

 

By: Randy @ 05:52 AM in: Israel / Palestinian Conflict, Liberal Media | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

(h/t LGF who h/ts USS Neverdock)

BBC:

Read that second paragraph again:

The shell is huge, bigger than the young boy pushed forward to stand reluctantly next to it while we get our cameras out and record the scene for posterity.

What?! What kind of sick bastards are working at the BBC? Not a lot of commentary needed on this one.

More from the Sanctuary, Allah, and Ed Driscoll.

 

It's no secret that I think "global warming" is tremendous pile of crap and that I'm infuriated when I hear liberals blaming it for increased natural disasters, hurricanes in particular. It's annoying mainly because we can look at the historical record and see that these are natural cycles of upswings and downswings in hurricane activity that last sometimes a decade or two. Check out Accuweather.com's Joe Bastardi if you're out of the loop.

What's really interesting is that everyone, including the Accuweather folks, predicted an active season this year, but after a slow start have downgraded their "prediction" (which seems more like part observation when it's revised the way it was).

Downgraded:

Forecasters now expect 12 to 15 named storms including seven to nine hurricanes. Of those hurricanes, three to four could become intense storms of at least Category 3.

Original:

In May, federal forecasters said the 2006 north Atlantic hurricane season would be ''very active,'' with 13 to 16 named storms. Of those, eight to 10 were expected to blossom into hurricanes with four to six becoming intense hurricanes of Category 3 strength or higher.

But wait! Aren't more hurricanes the result of global warming? And haven't we been bombarded with headlines all summer about all the record high temperatures in all states this summer? Haven't they been preparing the report that while 2005 was the old "hottest year on record" 2006 took the crown? They even got Pat Robertson (which isn't really that surprising because he's always looking for a reason to say something stupid).

So explain to me why this hurricane season has been downgraded? Need more than that? How about the fact that we're having a BELOW AVERAGE season.

Let me guess "scientists", you've got a way to spin that as "global warming" too, right? I'm sure somehow the warm water you talked about leading up to this season, actually reflected the sun better and kept the water below the surface cooler or something, right? Just like I'm sure global warming explains why snow fell for the first time in 25 years in Johannesburg a couple weeks ago and crazy rare snow has repeatedly pounded South Africa this month. Please liberals, I'm dying to hear your explanations on this.

One other quick point about that graphic. Notice that 2005 was a record season, but the previous record was 72 years earlier, in 1933! Did global warming cause that record season that held all the way until last year? Think liberals, think! I'm so tired of you telling me it's the hottest it's been in X years, and having to ask you "why was it that hot X years ago? Who drove the hummer or burned stuff at a factory?"

Have no fear though libs, if you were getting concerned that your global warming dogma might beging to fall on deaf ears, Reuters has your back. You never had to worry anyway, because most mainstream scientists fear opposing global warming because it virtually eliminates the posibility of gaining funding and has the potential to hurt them at work, but Reuters just wants you to know that they're there for you and Yahoo! helped by blasting the headline across their home page:

Atlantic hurricanes could rev up any time

The article opens with this gem:

MIAMI (Reuters) - There has been little action in the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season so far, but that may be about to change.

... and ends with this...

So far this year, only three tropical storms have formed -- Alberto, Beryl and Chris. Strong wind shear -- the difference in wind speed and direction at different levels of the atmosphere -- has disrupted some of the tropical weather systems that eventually become cyclones.

Mayfield expressed puzzlement as to why the season hasn't been a little more active.

"We're actually not sure why some of these are not developing," he said.

Mayfield obviously doesn't understand how this evil global warming works. Apparently neither does anyone else.