Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

OBAMACARE - NOT A DOCTOR IN SIGHT, BUT PLENTY OF PAPERWORK

And not any great privacy either.  Mark Steyn explains the nightmare upon us in his column, "The Doctor Won't See You Now."

THE ENEMIES' VIEW OF AMERICA

Victor Davis Hanson speaks on the enemies' view of America (from the Hugh Hewitt conversation; for other topics see here and here.)

VDH: They think that we are a wealthy, affluent, leisured society that doesn't have a moral sense, that are corrupt, that are godless, and that they are zealots. They believe in a hereafter. They have a more pure view of human experience, and that we hide behind our technology and our sophisticated weapons, and we're not able to get down and dirty with them and fight for what we believe in. They believe that we don't know who we are, if we're better than the alternative. And they think in the long war that this is becoming, they're going to outlast us. So when they see a John Kerry say these things, or they see a Dick Durbin, or they see a picture like this, they say a-ha. You see? We're winning on the battlefield, because these people do not want to support this long war. They don't believe in it.

"Suicide Killers" - A movie to see

Stanley Kurtz highly recommends "Suicide Killers," a movie eventually to be released commercially.  He writes:

A couple of days ago, I saw a remarkable documentary called “Suicide Killers.” This was at a screening intended to help qualify the film for an academy award.  The film has already made an early cut in the Oscar nomination process.  Because this documentary contains extended and unprecedented interviews with actual suicide bombers,

HEZBOLLAH'S STATURE IN LEBANON DIMINISHING

Amir Taheri offers a fascinating analysis of Hezbollah's diminished influence and stature after the war with Israel.   Sheik Hassan Nasrallah no longer receives the adulation he enjoyed immediately after the war.   Very interesting developments indeed.

UPDATE 9/1/06:  Charles Krauthammer  adds detail to Amir Taheri's analysis.  Here, however, is an opposing view

MORE FAKE NEWS FROM HEZBOLLAH - THIS TIME AN AMBULANCE ALLEGEDLY HIT BY ISRAELIS

This is truly disgusting.  Hezbollah fooled the world again with fake reports and charges against Israel.  If it weren't for investigative bloggers doing the analysis (where is the MSM?), these staged events would have gone undetected.  Here's the site with the details of the alleged Israeli attack on a Lebanese ambulance and the investigation that discovered it never happened!!    Fraud!  Phony!  Phony!  Phony! 

Where does that leave us?  Here's the conclusion of the report:

But if the entire incident turns out to have been an elaborate but clumsy hoax, where does that leave the reputation of the media? Not a single reporter or editor doubted the story for a second. Or if they did, they certainly didn't inform readers of their doubts. Why did the media swallow the story hook, line and sinker? In their zeal to bash Israel, did they allow themselves, consciously or unconsciously, to be duped by Hezbollah supporters into broadcasting propaganda as news? Or is the media so eager to jump on any fresh scandal that they simply switch off their critical thinking and become absolutely credulous of any juicy tale thrown their way?

It took the blogs and non-professional independent researchers to shine the harsh light of forensic analysis on this case, in the process debunking just about every aspect of the allegations. And this was done merely with the meager scraps of evidence left over by the "professional" journalists, and by squeezing the maximum amount of information out of the subtlest of clues. But if the journalists who were right there on the scene had even the slightest interest in actually investigating the story, they had access to all sorts of information that could have blown the lid off the case. How hard would it have been to go back to the Red Cross office after a few days to inspect the ambulance carefully in person? To look at the hole in the roof, to photograph the rust up close, to search for burn marks or blood on the gurneys, to notice the driver's healthy chin? Wouldn't that have been a scandal worth reporting?

Is the media that gullible -- or does it have a political bias? Either way, its credibility has now been lost.

PHONY (AND STAGED) PRO-HEZBOLLAH PROPAGANDA PICTURES USED BY THE MAIN STREAM MEDIA

I have updated my August 2nd post on the phony pro-Hezbollah, anti-Israel propaganda pictures coming out of Lebanon.    Click here and then scroll down to see the incredible videos.   Do we have a bunch of naive dunderheads in MSM?   Or is it a matter of the MSM choosing sides and cooperating in a propaganda effort against Israel and the West?   Either way, skepticism is now the watchword in viewing any photos on TV, in print, or on the internet.

UPDATE 8/11/06:  Still more

Update 8/16/06:  Michelle Malkin provides a helpful summary article for WorldNetDaily.

Update 8/18/06: Joel Mobray updates the situation still further and concludes his article saying,

Yet given that thugs from Hezbollah, Hamas, and Arafat’s Fatah control almost everything in the most “newsworthy” areas of the Arab world, any scene or event encountered by Western media outlets must be viewed with supreme skepticism.

 

But it’s not as if this is news to the Western media. They know it. Yet pretend as if they don’t. That’s the real travesty.