Day: March 5, 2006

All the bald, nude gold men are lined up. All the limos gassed up. All the ‘world revolves around me’ actors and actresses are liquored up. It’s Oscar time again.

And I couldn’t care less.

I stopped caring about this twenty or so years ago, right around the time when Rob Lowe sang with Snow White. I just can’t stomach the thing anymore. Talk about navel gazing! I don’t know what bugs me more, celebrities with twisted arms patting themselves on the back with fake smiles and kisses that really aren’t kisses, or the tens of millions of Americans who sit glued to their television sets ogling over designer dresses worn by anorexics.

You know what would happen if one third of the audience decided to watch something else tonight? It’d be the end of the world as we know it.

I’m lucky this year. The show starts here in the UK around 3 AM, and I won’t have to see any part of it. After all, I’ve got something a whole lot better to do.

Sleep.

Not everyone feels the way I do though…

Contrary to what you’ll read in the New York Times, or hear on NPR radio, or see on CNN, Iraq is not on the brink of civil war. Nope, just the opposite. Ralph Peters writes in the New York Post…

Rolling with the “instant Infantry” gunners of the 1st Platoon of Bravo Battery, 4-320 Field Artillery, I saw children and teenagers in a Shia slum jumping up and down and cheering our troops as they drove by. Cheering our troops.

All day – and it was a long day – we drove through Shia and Sunni neighborhoods. Everywhere, the reception was warm. No violence. None.

And no hostility toward our troops. Iraqis went out of their way to tell us we were welcome.

Instead of a civil war, something very different happened because of the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. The fanatic attempt to stir up Sunni-vs.-Shia strife, and the subsequent spate of violent attacks, caused popular support for the U.S. presence to spike upward.

Not what you expected right? Me neither. Why isn’t the truth being reported? Peters says that some have staked their reputations on Iraq’s failure, and that comes across in their reporting.

But there’s no way we can let irresponsible journalists off the hook – or their parent organizations. Many journalists are, indeed, brave and conscientious; yet some in Baghdad – working for “prestigious” publications – aren’t out on the city streets the way they pretend to be.

They’re safe in their enclaves, protected by hired guns, complaining that it’s too dangerous out on the streets. They’re only in Baghdad for the byline, and they might as well let their Iraqi employees phone it in to the States. Whenever you see a column filed from Baghdad by a semi-celeb journalist with a “contribution” by a local Iraqi, it means this: The Iraqi went out and got the story, while the journalist stayed in his or her room.

And the Iraqi stringers have cracked the code: The Americans don’t pay for good news. So they exaggerate the bad.

Now THAT I believe! Remember that story that ran wildly last week about 1,300 bodies in a Baghdad morgue? An exaggeration not fully confirmed by the professionals.

I remember when Arthur Chrenkoff used to run his “Good News from Iraq” stories. Those ended, but there’s another site that continues where he left off. Good News Central covers ‘the rest of the story’ and it’s worth a read. Don’t let the New York Times be the last word on Iraq.

But they don’t seem to have the guts to do anything about it.

Democratic congressional leaders aren’t happy with the way Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean is spending money. At a private meeting last month, they let him know.

Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) challenged the former Vermont governor during a session in Pelosi’s office, according to Democratic sources. The leaders complained about Dean’s priorities — funding organizers for state parties in strongly Republican states such as Mississippi — rather than targeting states with crucial races this fall.

One congressional Democrat complained that Dean has — at an alarming rate — burned through the money the DNC raised, and that Republicans may be able to swamp Democrats in close races with an infusion of RNC money.

The Dems are going to need more than money.

I do have to hand it to Dean. He goes his own way, that’s for sure. You never see him with any congressional Democrats. He hates Hillary (and she hates him). He thinks John Kerry is a complete idiot. He won’t appear alongside anyone else on Sunday news shows. He won’t debate Ken Mehlman, his counterpart on the Republican side.

What does Howard Dean do? Spend money apparently.

I can just about predict what will happen if the Democrats lose seats in November. Dean will blame the ‘weak candidates’ and PelosiReid will blame Howard as being a lame leader. And neither excuse will play, nor matter.

It’s going to be a fun mid-term. 

On Sundays, SKY NEWS in the UK runs the same stories over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. It’s actually worse than watching CNN’s Headline News in the US. At least on that network you can watch a whole half hour of programming and not see the same news clip. I’ve been sitting here for a couple of hours now, and I’ve seen a story about British Cricket players playing in India about 349 times. And that story about Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell? 538 times.

TV in Britain stinks.

I’m always a bit amused by headlines like this.

UK, US to withdraw Iraq forces by early ’07: papers

The United States and Britain are planning to pull all their troops out of Iraq by the spring of 2007, two British newspapers reported in their Sunday editions, quoting unnamed senior defense ministry sources.

The Sunday Telegraph said the planned pull-out followed an acceptance by the two governments that the presence of foreign troops in Iraq was now a large obstacle to securing peace.

“The British government is understood to be the driving force behind the withdrawal plan but all 24 coalition members are likely to welcome the move, given the growing international unpopularity of the war,” the Telegraph said.

The Bush administration and Pentagon have stated repeatedly there is no timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq, and a U.S. military spokesman repeated that on Saturday.

“We’ve made no such plans,” said Pentagon spokesman Major Paul Swiergosz.

I’m not sure why they continue to do this, but the MSM seems intent on trying to push for troop withdrawal by publishing stories like the one above. It’s a big waste of time actually. The only people who are going to decide troop withdrawal dates are the generals in the field. They won’t be influenced by public opinion polls formed through a series of newspapers publicizing end-of-war date predictions.