Shoot To Kill

Looters are the scum of the earth. Yes, I can understand breaking into a grocery store for food and supplies. But breaking into stores on Canal Street for basketball shoes, big screen TVs, stereos, liquor and everything under the sun that you want? And how about rampaging through the wealthier neighborhoods to rob homes? How about attempting to break into the Children's Hospital -- which happens to have around 100 children inside as patients?

New Orleans is under martial law. There is one simple solution to this disgraceful problem: shoot to kill! And the sooner the better.

Ernie Pyle Lives On

Ernie Pyle was an American journalist who worked as a roving correspondent for the Scripps Howard newspaper chain from 1935 on. During World War II, while covering the North African, European and Pacific theaters of operation, he became America's most famous and beloved war correspondent. His sympathetic and caring reports of the ordinary GI made him a celebrated advocate and supporter of America’s fighting men.

His following was so great that in 1944, after he wrote a column urging that soldiers in combat get "fight pay" the same as airmen were paid "flight pay," Congress passed a law giving soldiers 50 percent extra pay for combat duty. That legislation came to be known as "the Ernie Pyle bill."

His articles were about the out-of-the-way places he visited and the people who lived there, written in a folksy style as if he was writing a personal letter to a friend. He wrote in an intimate style from the perspective of the common soldier instead of covering the goings-on of general officers and the operations of armies. You need only to read some of his columns such as Digging and Grousing, The God-Damned Infantry and The Death of Captain Waskow to see why he was so popular and beloved.

Today in Iraq the mainstream media's inability to cover this war accurately should be apparent to anyone who is familiar with the men and women on the ground and the dearth of stories that don’t involve a civilian or member of the coalition forces being blown-up, shot or executed. But fortunately, for those who care to look, there is at least one committed journalist who is able to produce week in and week out writing that hasn't been seen since that of Ernie Pyle. His name is Michael Yon.

If you want perspective in your war coverage, read Michael Yon. If you want the good, the bad and the ugly, read Michael Yon. If you want a reporter that puts his butt on the line the same as our soldiers do, read Michael Yon. If you want what the mainstream media is not giving you, read Michael Yon.

While the fact that he has little support outside of his own readers and has no large media affiliation is a devastating indictment of the mainstream media, Michael Yon is still the single best combat reporter on the ground in Iraq today.

NOTE: If you like what you read, please help Michael Yon continue reporting from Iraq by clicking the Support the Next Dispatch button on his website!

The Biteback Effect

Victor Davis Hanson provides another great analysis in his latest article. In this one he coins the term "biteback" effect, which he defines here:

But in the interest of simplicity, I'll call it the "biteback" effect. Every time one hears a strident censor bring up a purported American sin, expect that he'll be bitten right back by proving the opposite of what he intended — and looking foolish in the bargain.

Here is a recent example of biteback:

On the basis of an FBI agent's e-mail alleging loud rap music, cold room temperatures, and the rough handling of a Koran, former president Jimmy Carter and Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin advanced Guantanamo as a national scandal and proof of our amorality in this war.

"I think what's going on in Guantanamo Bay and other places is a disgrace to the USA," Pius Maximus Carter pontificated, adding that the detention center had "given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists." Sen.Durbin earlier had assured us of Guantanamo that, "You would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings."

But the more one learns about Guantanamo, after having it raised constantly by such self-righteous and anguished censors, the more it seems unlike any wartime detention center in recent memory — but in ways exactly opposite from the Stalag its detractors imply.

And here is why we see so much biteback these days:

In the age of utopianism we demand impossible standards of perfection. Then when they cannot be met, we conclude that we are not good at all, but the equivalent of a Pol Pot, Hitler, or Saddam himself — an elected American president who is a worse terrorist than Osama bin Laden.

And in a war with enemies like few other in our recent history, the contrast between rhetoric and reality is only accentuated: panties over the head of an Iraqi inmate, no head at all on an American prisoner; Korans given to the enemy terrorists in jail, Bibles outlawed for visitors to our friends the Saudis; our elected president becomes a member of the "Bush crime family" as we worry about proper barristers for Saddam Hussein's genuinely criminal family. As we fear that we have fallen short of the postmodern therapeutic age, Islamic fascists brag they are avatars of the Dark Ages.

Read the whole thing here.

Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus

Someone sent me this hilarious story which was posted in another blog. I'm sorry I don't know who to give credit to for it (or even if it is real), but when I do, I will note the source. Now, here we go:

Here's a prime example of "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" supposedly offered by an English professor from the University of Phoenix. One day he split the class up into pairs and where possible the pairs were mail and female. He gave them the following assignment. One of them would write the first paragraph of a story and send it to their partner. The partner would then add a paragraph and send everything back. This process would continue til both agreed the story was completed. The professor was to receive a copy of each email. They would be graded. Here's a classic....

At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question.

(second paragraph by Gary) Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to Geostation 17," he said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

(Rebecca’s response paragraph) He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. "Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel," Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspaper to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. "Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.

(Gary’s second response paragraph) Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace disarmament Treaty through the Congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporized poor, stupid Laurie.

(Rebecca’s response) This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate adolescent.

(Gary’s Response) Yeah? Well, my writing partner is a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. "Oh, shall I have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of F--KING TEA??? Oh no, what am I to do? I'm such an air headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle Steele novels!"

(Rebecca’s Response) Asshole.

(Gary’s Response) Bitch.

(Rebecca’s) F__K YOU - YOU NEANDERTHAL!

(Gary) Go drink some tea - whore.

(TEACHER) A+ - I really liked this one.

Where Is The Real Steve Benson?

Steve Benson, editorial cartoonist for the Arizona Republic, has actually drawn something that isn't anti-American or anti-Bush!

And he has already gotten a reaction from non other than CAIR! Apparently this one really ticked them off too:

The problem with CAIR is that they just cannot handle (when other people know) the truth.