Other incidents of crying in the legislature

So I checked to see the congressional record over the two sessions for any reference to crying. I found

an account of a fellow military comrade crying at the wake of a fallen hero.

An account of tears shed at the sight of a child who had suffered from burns;

an account of a woman close to tears and suicide because of her intense pain from a disease;

and a government program "crying out for reform".

But I never heard of a senator crying.

(nod to Rush for the poster)

Can you decipher the message in this photo

hint: Something dark, vacuous, cold.

Kurtz on Movies

Stanley Kurtz has a great post at The Corner about why box office receipts are lacking:

Big media's melting down. Movies are in a slump. Why? The media's losing money because contemporary secular liberalism is really a kind of religion. Liberals don't want to make money. They're out to win souls...

Are secular liberals running a campaign against "people of faith?" You bet they are. Just go to the movies and you'll see it. This is not about making money. "Kingdom of Heaven" is pulling Hollywood further into its slump. Who wants to see this p.c. propaganda, anyway? No, the media's on a crusade against religion. And they're sinking under the weight of their missionary obsession...

Now check out this nonsensical assertion from today's New York Times: "As a rule, Hollywood studios go to great lengths to ensure that their projects–both in the development stage, and especially when they are positioned in the marketplace–are free of messages that could be offensive to any great swath of the moviegoing public." You've got to be kidding. Has this guy even thought about Hollywood's treatment of religion?

Kurtz has some excellent points here, but I believe the New York Times is correct. In my experience, Hollywood does do a good deal of scrubbing of the movies. Just not enough. Imagine if they let the Directors' cut through on films like Sin City or 40 Days! There are plenty of examples where Hollywood has indeed gutted some of the "offensive messages" from their top flicks, but a film tainted with liberal messages is hard to purge period. In my experience, the same "marketing people" trying to purge these films usually have the same liberal twist on life.

NRO now Searchable (uh, I think?!)

Imagine my surprise and delight to see the lengthy NRO navigation bar condensed to DHTML drop-downs. Fantastic! And look. One of the drop downs says Search!:


How cool is that. So cool in fact I've taken their model to search some of my favorite essays from George Orwell. First go to NRO and try their search engine! Wow! Next, try my search page.

Pretty nifty huh?!

Results-based Journalism

Last week, Joe Scarborough was utterly perplexed at a the comments of ABC political staff of "The Note" who said that they were disappointed that the brutal Iraq war was not getting enough coverage. "What are they talking about?!" exclained Scarborough. I tend to agree.

Now that NewsWEAK has been outed for its coverage of non-atrocity atrocities the question has to be asked, what are journalists thinking these days!?

At first, I was also perplexed as to what "The Note" was getting at? But it suddenly dawned on me: this is results-based journalism at its worst. Something akin to "making the news" rather than "reporting the news".

In truth, the war has been covered very intensely and on nearly every issue of every front page of every newspaper around the country. So why does "The Note" think the coverage is lacking? And why did NewsWEAK run with a story with minimal sources on a subject bound to stir up hatred against Americans? Easy.

The folks at "The Note" perceive the continued support for the war and the lack of American riots in the street against President Bush resulting from "not enough coverage of the war." As I see it, in their minds, the reason mobs haven't taken to the mall in protest of the war is that there's not enough bad news about Iraq being disseminated.

So too, NewsWEAK didn't blink twice about running this story because it fueled their motive to get the masses in the street around the Mall. Only this time they came out in force in the Middle East. Oh well, 20+ dead is certainly some type of result from journalism. Sad.

The Other Fallout from NewsWEAK

Quick note on the current NewsWEAK snafu. Powerline points to recent developments against the batch of unconfirmed judges with NARAL trying to dig up dirt on these "out of touch theological activists" (hat tip to PowerLine and Robert Novak).

This is just one example of the Jihad going on in this country against evangelical Christians. The big mistake at NewsWEAK has fueled that fire as well. See this post from Saturday by "Henry" at Crooked Timber:

It doesn't seem to me to be unreasonable to guess that there's an indirect link between this NYT story on evangelizing Christians making life uncomfortable for non-believers in the armed forces, and the riots in Afghanistan that followed a Newsweek report that a copy of the Koran had been flushed down the toilet by Guantanamo interrogators. Other services than the Air Force have a spotty track record in the area of Christian-Muslim sensitivities; to the best of my knowledge, General Boykin was never disciplined for the flagrantly offensive comments that he made in 2003.

Henry takes the near-recanted/not-recanted/not-accurate-but-accurate NewWEAK article and links it to a story that's been developing for over a month now about a Lutheren minister upset at the Air Force for preaching too much religion ( NewsMax has the backstory on this piece ). Needless to say, the riotous massess killing people across the Middle East aren't the only ones beefed up by this story, just the most violent demonstration of its effect.

This about says it all...

... yes I will be back and blogging now.

Subservient Chicken

I laughed, I cried. It moved me

Subservient Chicken