HometownSource Blogs

Via Instapundit, a statement by Helen Thomas:

Thirty-five Iraqis, including women and children, were killed by Americans yesterday.

The headline of the NYT story she was likely referring to:

“35 Are Killed in Iraq, 5 by U.S. Troops”

I guess we see what we want to see.

In this modern world of agenda media, it shouldn’t be surprising that last night’s “YouTube” debate on CNN turned out to include a number of questions from people misrepresenting their politics. I suppose one could claim CNN had no idea about that, but given the ease with which others have rooted out the claimers one has to wonder.

Debates in primary season are supposed to be a time for voters within a party to determine who will best represent them, not a time for opposing party activists to take pot-shots. Democratic candidates certainly did not have to put up with it at their CNN debate.

Then again, CNN being CNN, Read more »

What is going on with Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann?

She voted against her own earmarks in the Transportation Housing and Urban Development bill and in the Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations bill.

She is the one who inserted an earmark for $500,000 to improve a stretch of Minnesota Highway 241 in the Transportation bill.  She also inserted a request for $350,000 for the Northland Medical Center Princeton in the Health and Human Services bill.

That same Transportion bill includes $195 million for construction of the I-35-W bridge, $55 million to complete the North Star Commuter line, $1.25 million for the St. Cloud Regional Airport and $820,000 for the St. Cloud Metro Bus.

All but the bridge money are in HER DISTRICT.

Read more »

I was privileged enough to meet Bill Juneau during the course of a story I was working on about the Chisago County SWAT team. He was passionate about SWAT, and officer training in general, as a way to insure the safety of officers, suspects, and especially the public.

Today I wrote another story about Bill Juneau, this one to report the news of his death in Iraq. He was there to impart his vast training experience to that nation’s fledgling police force. As he was forefront in the formation of the SWAT team, so to was he at the forefront of a convoy headed for a training mission when disaster struck.

Bill firmly believed that properly trained police saved lives, and, while he is gone now, his legacy will live on in Chisago County in every life that is saved, in every person protected from harm, because of that belief and his passion for passing it on.

UPDATE: It turns out Bill was a blogger.

Tim Blair, one of the funniest writers anywhere, goes after a usual foil, Catherine Deveny, who, in advocating “change” in Australian government, writes, “Opportunity is created only through vision, tolerance, acceptance and imagination.”

The mark of a completely meaningless sentence: it remains precisely as meaningless no matter how you mix it up. “Tolerance is created only through vision, opportunity, acceptance and imagination”; “Vision is created only through opportunity, tolerance, acceptance and imagination”; “Imagination is created only through vision, tolerance, acceptance and opportunity”.

Happy Thanksgiving.

UPDATE: Calculating the carbon footprint of the UN’s conference on climate change:  40,000 tons of CO2 in air travel alone! Even more destructive than LiveEarth! One wonders how much more of this awareness raising! the delicate planet can withstand.

Now that Al Gore has created the hype, it’s time to cash in:

Mr. Gore has the chance to achieve enormous wealth after being named last week as a new partner at the famously successful venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.

Were this any other industry; tobacco, oil, pharmaceuticals, etc., Gore would be attacked mercilessly for cashing in on his own created hysteria. Since it’s Big Carbon, he will be applauded endlessly by the very same folks.

Filling your pockets with other people’s money is just fine, as long as you raise awareness! while you’re at it.

The Pentagon has announced it will charge Bilal Hussein with being a terrorist operative. Not a good day for the Associated Press:

Hussein was detained April 12, 2006 after marines entered his house in Ramadi to establish a temporary observation post and found bomb-making materials, insurgent propaganda and a surveillance photograph of a US military installation.

Morrell said Hussein, who was part of an AP photo team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005, had previously aroused suspicion because he was often at the scene insurgent attacks as they occurred.

AP offers a defense thinly disguised as a news article, prompting this reply from John Hinderaker:

…would the AP have us believe that its stringer was wandering in the desert and just happened to come across the murder scene, whereupon the murderers obligingly posed for his benefit? How stupid does the Associated Press think we are?

I’m not sure we’ve reached that level yet. I’m holding out for the “psychic” defense.

Where in the world might you find people dressing their children up like terrorists and using them as human shields, threatening a free press, throwing rocks at police, and destroying public property?

How about right here in Olympia, Washington, where “peaceful” protestors are blocking roads to prevent equipment from getting to our troops; equipment that will protect them and innocent Iraqis from harm.

Meanwhile, Evergreen State College, where most of the protesters are coming from, is gearing up to provide a “therapeutic debriefing” in order help students “process” the very “traumatic experiences” they are inciting.

What do you call something like that? A “sedition support group?” “Agitators Anonymous?”

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, boy scouts are forbidden to collect donations for troops serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, because doing so is considered too “pro-war.”

Left-wing ideologues recently gathered at the Humphrey Institute to, you’ll never guess, blast their country. Concern over our “human rights reputation” didn’t seem to be mitigated at all by the fact that we recently freed 30 million people from a cruel dictator, giving an entire nation a chance at self-rule. Instead, Harold Koh calls us a “soulless superpower.” Koh, Yale’s “liberal lion,” is exceptionally dishonest in his criticism:

…Koh argues the Iraqi prison scandal at Abu Ghraib— the image of the hooded prisoners with outstretched arms — symbolizes a shift in U.S. foreign policy. The shift took the nation from a zero tolerance of torture to one of zero accountability, he argued. Lesser figures, such as soldiers, have been held accountable. But the policy makers who unleashed the mentality the soldiers picked up on have not, argued Koh.

Talk about singling out the exception over the rule. Read more »

And you thought anti-smoking advocates would stop at restaurants and bars:

One anti-smoking group plans to begin a campaign this week to encourage landlords to outlaw smoking in their buildings. While the program would be purely voluntary, some communities might follow two California cities by considering broader ordinances that would apply to multi-unit dwellings.

Anti-smoking groups still have millions of dollars from the state’s settlement with tobacco companies to spend on campaigns against tobacco and secondhand smoke.

Remember people, it’s for your own good.

Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, the student who claimed Hillary staffers used her to plant a question, now says she wasn’t the only one. Plus, the entire experience has put her off politics:

Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, a 19-year-old sophomore at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, said that giving anyone specific questions to ask is “dishonest,” and the whole incident has given her a negative outlook on politics.

Alienating the youth vote probably isn’t a good move for Hillary.

In other news, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer has been warned! There will be none of that question asking business at the next debate. Via Drudge:

‘This campaign is about issues, not on who we can bring down and destroy,’ top Clinton insider explains. ‘Blitzer should not go down to the levels of character attack and pull ‘a Russert.’

For the record, here’s what “a Russert” looks like: Read more »

Last week a report hit the net — specifically, a listserve for global warming skeptics — with scientific proof that humans have no involvement in the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide. Within hours, some actual scientists were sniffing it out as a hoax, but not before Rush Limbaugh and his whole hee-haw gang took the bait and made greater fools of themselves than usual. Dozens of freshly-posted blog posts disappeared faster than a central MN ice-fishing contest. Later, one David Thorpe was credited, supposedly, with the game and an explanation:

“What the hoax showed is that there are many people willing to jump on anything that supports their argument, whether it’s true or not. What we wanted to emphasize is that it’s necessary to achieve scientific validity using the peer-review model. Proper climate science makes every attempt to do this, and is a constantly evolving and self-refining process, as all science is.”

Peer review? That’s sooo 20th century. Surely everyone knows the new formulas by now.

Google Search >= Field research
Google Search > Peer reviewed science
Google Search = Some slammin’ deals on painkillers

Reminiscent of FEMA’s bogus press conference, Hillary Clinton is now on the hot seat for using canned global climate warming change questions at a Nov. 6 appearance:

After her speech, Clinton accepted questions. But according to Grinnell College student Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff ’10, some of the questions from the audience were planned in advance. “They were canned,” she said. Before the event began, a Clinton staff member approached Gallo-Chasanoff to ask a specific question after Clinton’s speech. “One of the senior staffers told me what [to ask],” she said.

Apparently, it’s not the first time either:

…Geoffrey Mitchell, 32, says he was approached by an operative for the Clinton campaign to ask a planted question about standing up to President Bush on Iraq war funding. The encounter happened before an event on a farm outside Fort Madison, Iowa. The Clinton event was hosted by Iowa State Sen. Gene Fraise.

Planted questions about climate change and standing up to evil Republicans, the “today” leftist’s favorite topics? Has she no faith in the base?

UPDATE: Roger Simon at Politico also notes they seem odd questions to plant:

As long as you are going to plant a question, why not plant a question that is not going to be asked anyway?

This blog two days ago:

Time and time again, the party has chosen its own future over that of the nation’s. And, while most of us just shake our heads at these bumbling attempts at political gain, our enemies will no doubt use every manufactured division to their advantage, as they have done for the last four years.

Joe Lieberman yesterday:

“There is something profoundly wrong-something that should trouble all of us — when we have elected Democratic officials who seem more worried about how the Bush administration might respond to Iran’s murder of our troops, than about the fact that Iran is murdering our troops.” … “There is likewise something profoundly wrong when we see candidates who are willing to pander to this politically paranoid, hyper-partisan sentiment in the Democratic base — even if it sends a message of weakness and division to the Iranian regime.”

Spooky.

Interesting that the Strib chose yesterday to refer to districts with approved levies as “winners,” and those without as “losers.” Wouldn’t voters who massed together to vote for no tax increases also be winners?

My district passed a more than $14 million tax bill for mostly non-education related spending. Yesterday, the county gave its support for spending what will likely be at least $22 million on a new jail. I could be wrong, but I’m betting that taxpayers like myself who can ill afford these higher bills don’t feel much like winners.

Continuing that theme, at least one failed school levy was attributed not to voters exercising their democratic muscles, but to the presence of a “consultant” and “race baiting.” Similarily, in Oregon a failed SCHIP style “universal health care” measure was attributed to Big Tobacco’s influence.

Related, school funding advocates are already lobbying for the state to correct the will of voters:

“And what of the students in the districts where the stars weren’t aligned,” she asked. “Frankly, that really stinks,” [Bev] Petrie said of winners and losers emerging from Tuesday’s poll results.

Their partial ballot success was a lifeline thrown out to the students but its up the governor and legislature to affect a complete rescue, Petrie opined.

Why is it that when people vote to increase their taxes they are winners, but when they vote not to, they are often characterized as unwitting victims of special interests whose decisions must be corrected by the state?