Perpetuating the myth

Update-here is the short version.

Congressman Tim Walz, who has never yet commented on why he falsely claimed to be a Afghan War vet, perpetuated that myth last week on Hardball with Chris Matthews.  Most of the interview with Rep Walz and Ret Gen Barry McCaffrey is uninteresting, until about the 9:40 mark-(H/T to an anonymous commenter)

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

"(the) Congressman's a retired Army Command Sergeant Major with time in combat"

No effort on the part of Rep Walz to correct that misstatement, even though he had a chance.

I'm not sure which is worse.  That Ret. Gen McCaffrey is under the impression that Walz is a combat vet, or that Walz was referred to as a combat vet on live television and choose not to correct the mistake.

Doug Hoffman is the reason I joined the GOP

No matter the results in today's election in New York's 23 CD, the grass roots faction of the Republican party has won a huge victory in restoring common sense to the national party. 

You would have to have been living under a rock not to know the basics of the story by now.  In a special election to replace John McHugh who recently became the new Secretary of the Army, the local Democrats chose their candidate and the local Republicans chose theirs.  Unlike a usual election, the GOP county chairs chose their candidate, Dede Scozzafava, directly.  No endorsing convention and no primary.  Doug Hoffman, a much more conservative candidate, was endorsed by the Conservative Party and a three way race ensued until Scozzafava withdrew over the weekend.

Why is this a win for grassroots conservatives?  Just look at last year's presidential election.  The choice was between liberal and a radical liberal.  Seriously, while I admire John McCain for his service to his country, his political beliefs are not conservative except in a few areas.  At best, you can call McCain a moderate Republican, but not a moderate conservative.  So in the New York race, grassroots conservatives, the ones mainly behind the Tea Party movement and the August townhall fever, stood up against the GOP party insiders and put their foot firmly down.  No more moderate candidates (calling Scozzafava moderate is being generous) and no more spending tens of thousands of dollars of national party money on candidates that wont vote along conservative principles.

Which brings me back to the reason I joined the Republican party.  Not because I suddenly became conservative; I've been a solid conservative since 9/11, if not before.  Not because it was a popular thing to do; many pundits were announcing the death of conservativism and the GOP earlier this year.  No, I removed the fence post from my backside and joined the party for one reason only, and that is to get good conservative candidates on the ballot.

Being an independent has many advantages.  It lets you sit above the partisan fray, and make decisions solely based on principle, whatever you believe is best.  Being an independent means you are always on the outside, free to criticize the decisions that were made that you had no part in.  But being independent also means having to go to the polls and hold your nose while voting for John McCain, and even Norm Coleman.  Being an independent means having no say in who the candidates are, you just get to choose between the names on the ballot.

The Republican party both at the national and state level has had several problems over the last decade, not the least of which is losing touch with the principal of fiscal responsibility, and moving farther and farther to the middle to try to get elected.  But by far the biggest problem has been the bureaucracy of the party that has lost touch with the common voter, the Joe six-pack or even Joe the plumber.  The GOP got lost in its own institutional memory, doing things because they have always been done that way.  Putting up candidates who had collected enough favors over the years from party insiders.  Conservative principles aren't sexy, and they don't sell well to a generation that increasingly wants to know 'what's in it for me?'  But it is those same conservative principles that have served this country so well over its two hundred plus years.  And it is those same conservative principles that can save this country from the impending national catastrophes we face of an exploding federal debt and massive government interference in the free market.  Selling those principles to the voters means explaining it in a way they can understand.  And I don't mean just by way of Twitter and Youtube, although those are important parts of the communication battle.  But the message itself is the key, not the medium.

The GOP strategy over the last few years has been to move farther away from conservative principles because it didn't know how to sell them to the voters.  What we should have been doing is finding candidates and leaders than can articulate exactly why conservative principles will benefit that common man, and more importantly why it will benefit their children.  There is no reason that the GOP shouldn't get 75 percent of the vote from parents, as we explain what the future will look like for their kids under liberal and conservative governments.  We need candidates who can stand before a crowd of college students and explain to them that while they might benefit now from free tuition, it will hurt them in the long run.  Candidates who can explain why free health care is not what we will get from health care reform.

So how did Doug Hoffman get me to join the GOP?  Well, he actually didn't.  Not Doug, anyway.  But the victory of common sense grassroots Tea Party conservatives in choosing the best candidate for NY-23 is exactly the reason I joined the party-to make sure the GOP picks conservative candidates.  In essence, it is the same argument we use about voting in general.  If you don't vote, your voice wont be heard.  If you don't help pick the candidates that the party puts forth, then your voice wont have been heard.  And lest anyone think that one man can't make a difference (although no one in Minnesota should ever believe that after the Coleman recount), consider this-

On Jan 19th, I attended my first local GOP meeting, because of the events of the next day-the inauguration of Pres Obama.  Less than eight months later, I started attending monthly meetings of the candidate search committee for the 1st Congressional District.  My voice is being heard.  Is yours?

Global warming? I'm all for it!

This attempt at a clever ad actually backfires terribly-it makes men want global warming to take place!  I think I'll go start up my pickup and let it run for a while just to melt the icecaps a little faster.

For my deer friend Spotty

who thinks that Fox is not a real network.

By Glenn McCoy

The simple things mean the most

When it comes to thanking a veteran for serving, the simplest little gestures usually mean the most.  Again this year, Applebee's has shown that it understands.

On November 11th, Veteran's Day, Applebee's all over the country will be offering a free meal for all those who have served in the military.  They aren't making PR hay out of it, they aren't running TV ads about how cool they are, they are just getting it done.

Deny, deny, deny

Update-two days late perhaps, but MPP finally issued an apology and retraction of the faux US military rape story.  More impressively, Grace Kelly, the blogger in question, called and left me a message yesterday.  She apologized and sounded quite genuine.  Just the fact that she called impressed me, since most of the bloggers at MPP consider me to be only half a horn short of the devil himself.  

Or in this case, just do your best to wipe the evidence clean and then refuse to comment.  MN Progressive Project removed the slanderous post from Grace Kelly claiming to have photos of US troops raping an Iraqi girl after it was proven that the photos in question were debunked over 5 years ago.

Now they have removed the post from Google's cache widget in an effort to hide the evidence from being seen by anyone.  Too bad for them that I learned from John at This Ain't Hell to always get a screen capture before they take it down.

The dumbest part about this whole thing is that MPP got sucked into an urban legend.  Rather than just admit to being wrong and moving on, MPP and Grace Kelly seem to prefer to deny it ever happened and just wait out the criticism.

Local blogger uses pornography to slander US troops

Update-the post has been removed from from MPP, but no explanation is given and no apology is offered.  The original post can is still available by searching Google.

Less than a month before Veteran's Day, local lefty blogger Grace Kelly at MN Progressive Project is showing her hatred of the military by claiming that recently released graphic photos show US troops and military contractors raping a young Iraqi woman at Abu Ghraib prison in 2004.

Grace hits the military derangement trifecta, showing ignorance of the military (the uniforms worn are clearly wrong), ignorance of a thing called Google, which shows that the 'new' photos have been floating around the internet for several years, and ignorance of basic standards of journalism by repeating a story that was debunked as false more than 5 years ago.

On behalf of the US military, I will be waiting for a retraction and apology from MN Progressive Project and Grace Kelly. I wont hold my breath.

Fake stories of US atrocities during war have been around far longer than Sen John (Genghis Khan) Kerry in Vietnam, but rarely have I seen a story so easily proven to be false, yet repeated as the gospel truth.

Warning-I am including a link to the story being cited as evidence, but please be forewarned that the photos are graphic, not because they are real, but because they are from a pornographic movie depicting a gang rape.

The story Grace links to is from the Asian Tribune, and the problems with the story start right away. First off, the dateline of the story is Oct 3rd, 2009, but all of the information in the story has been reported before (almost verbatim) as early as 2004. The source of the original story is an online journal called La Voz de Aztlan (the Voice of Aztlan), which carries 'news analyses and scholarly writings on La Raza', and gained notoriety when it claimed to have evidence that US contractor Nick Berg was killed in Abu Ghraib prison by the CIA. Clearly a non-biased news source.  It cites an anonymous Mexican-American soldier who says that the photos are genuine, but offers no corroboration. 

The photos themselves are clearly fake, as anyone serving in the military today could tell you. The uniforms worn are the older woodland BDU (battle dress uniform) that has green, brown and black in a jungle camouflage pattern. These uniforms were phased out of the Army in 2005, but even back to 2003, BDU's were never worn in Iraq. US soldiers were issued several versions of the DCU (desert camouflage uniform) that is tan and brown, and was made famous during the Gulf War.

A quick Google search shows dozens of results that debunk the story, and the most comprehensive explanation is given by World Net Daily. It recounts how the pictures were lifted from an amateur Hungarian porno and posted on several US porn sites, such as 'Babes in Iraq' and 'Sex in War'. The sites were shut down after the owner was told that the photos were being used by several Arab websites to fuel anti-American anger.  But apparently Google searches are beyond the journalistic standards at the MN Progressive Project.

Also listed on Google is the retraction that the Boston Globe had to run after publishing the photos in 2004.  The Globe actually printed the photos of pornography without altering them.  Not only did the media debunk the story, the US State Department did as well-

"We have done a thorough investigation of the origin of these photos and have conclusive evidence that they originated on a pornographic web site. They are clearly staged photos, done by actors, as the site itself states."

None of this has any impact on Kelly, who repeats the false story of US soldiers raping an Iraqi woman in order to argue against more troops in Afghanistan-

how can increasing a group perceived as being the bad guys, the US troops, make our political situation in Afghanistan better?

I think that perhaps Grace needs to go spend some time living in Afghanistan, and see what her rights are as a woman in areas of Taliban influence vs areas of US control.  Even Code Pink has seen the light that the US military is safeguarding woman's rights in Afghanistan.

Waiting for the sandbag to fall

You know that feeling you get when someone you think would never do a kind thing for you ever suddenly and out of the blue does something nice?  Like Darth Vader opening the door for Han Solo just to be polite?  Or maybe Kim Jong-Il sending you a birthday present?  You just know that there is some ulterior motive for the politeness and you swear you can feel the point of the knife getting ready to enter your back.

That's the feeling I got yesterday when the IRS sent me a letter.  After 6 months of back and forth correspondence trying to get a refund for a penalty I paid on a 401k disbursement in 2005 that Congress changed the law on, I finally got the letter I was waiting for that said, OK, we owe you some money and here it is.  It only took 5 letters and 3 phone calls (including the one where I had to explain the tax code to the supposed IRS 'expert'), but the check finally did come in the mail.

Now imagine my shock when they paid me not the $880 I filed for, but $1067 instead.  The reason?  Interest.  That's right, without having to ask for it, the IRS paid me interest on the amount of refund they owed me.

That kind of good fortune can't stand alone by itself.  I'm sure there has to be some corresponding stroke of bad luck to average things out.  Now I just have to wait for it.  Maybe I should look at my football picks again, just to be sure.