Online sources first noticed it (the American Spectator, I think, which I linked last week) but now the mainstream media has picked up on CBS' sham, at least if you count the NY Post as mainstream.

Given the fact that the primary demographic of the military (young males) has a suicide rate higher than the military itself, CBS News needs to either explain where it's getting its apparently false data or retract. As in: Immediately. Either they must show their work and demonstrate that their numbers are accurate or admit they we fooled.

I have a feeling I know where they got this story -- from one of the Soros-funded propaganda groups like Media Matters, which seem to be able to slip their bullshit into the MSM rather easily and with little fact-checking at all.

Reporting's hard work, isn't it? Sit back, wait for a liberal advocacy group to email you a "hot tip," type it up with minimal changes and no fact checking and report it as "news."

Thanks to CJ.

Posted by: Ace at 12:27 PM | Comments (16)
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From This Blog Goes To 11:

Posted by: Ace at 12:17 PM | Comments (16)
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"Undecided voters," indeed.

Some more links on the Wicked Garden at Gateway Pundit, including this killer quote:

CNN Washington Bureau Chief David Bohrman commiserated: "Nobody wants or expects planted questions," he said. "We booked the crowd and we pretty much know what their interests are. We think we've eliminated any plants."

Thanks to CJ.

Jim Geraghty thinks it's not such a big deal...

It would help if instead of calling these folks, "ordinary people, undecided voters," Wolf Blitzer and crew noted that they were undecided Democrats. I'm not quite up in arms - candidates want to reach the folks who will actually show up on caucus day, so naturally the audience will be diehard Democrats - but in the aftermath of the controversy over "planted" questions at Hillary events, one might think CNN would want to keep an eye on this sort of thing.

I agree with that except for the part about not being up in arms about it. I am up in arms about it -- well, figuratively -- because this is the media once again refusing to report relevant information to the public in order to help Democrats. The media consistently omits the party affiliation of Democratic malefactors, consistently mislabels strongly liberal groups as "non-partisan," etc.

There's nothing wrong with fielding questions from Democratic activists -- so long as the public is properly informed they are, in fact, Democratic activists and hacks and not "ordinary Americans" and "undecided voters" as claimed.

It might even be useful for CNN and other media groups to allow Republican activists to ask questions at Republican debates, because the media is simply clueless about what issues divide the GOP, and instead ask a welter of questions from a left-liberal vantage point. But of course they'd never do that; it's only the Democratic Party with whom they're politically sympatico to which they extend such license.

Posted by: Ace at 12:02 PM | Comments (15)
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Apparently deliberately conflalting AWOL rates with "desertion" rates. Desertion rates are, despite their claims, actually down or stable.

Wow. You have to read the thing to get the idea of it, but this seems a rather blatant bit of misinformation by the AP and, of course, NBC, America's most watched anti-war propaganda source.

Thanks to AliceH., via Discarded Lies.

Posted by: Ace at 11:57 AM | Comments (5)
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About 8 or 9 times more hate crimes against Jews than Muslims, and yet not even Abe Forman is screaming about an imminent pogrom in America, unlike CAIR and Christiana Amanapour.

Posted by: Ace at 11:51 AM | Comments (7)
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I see Drew beat me too this, but it's funny enough to post again.

Via Ari Goes Down.

Meanwhile, NRO is not quite so high on Huck as is Chuck. But then, Rich Lowry can't drive the cartiledge of your nose into your brain, either.

Incidentally, the ad seems to have lifted that "Chuck Norris doesn't endorse, Chuck Norris tells America how it's going to be" from AllahPundit, unless Allah got it from one of those previous lists.

Posted by: Ace at 11:34 AM | Comments (8)
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The review reads like the drill-kill sequence in Body Double.

Toward the end of Brian De Palma's Redacted, a pierced and tattooed antiwar protester hisses into the camera, "You don't see the My Lai massacre in the movies because the truths of that fascist orgy are just too hellish for even liberal Hollywood to cop to." This is the director's backhanded way of complimenting himself. You see, in 1989, a decade after Apocalypse Now and Coming Home and The Deer Hunter, De Palma (who had been detained in the interim directing films about cross-dressing slashers and power-drilled ingénues) at last offered his own bold take on Vietnam in Casualties of War, which focused on a My Lai-like atrocity in which American G.I.s raped and murdered an innocent Vietnamese girl. Take that, queasy liberal Hollywood.

Now, De Palma offers his measured commentary on another unpopular war with Redacted, a film in which American marines ... rape and murder an innocent Iraqi girl. Grant De Palma this much: At least he did not wait until 14 years after hostilities concluded to pull his catch-all war metaphor from the dark cupboard of his psyche.

But grant him nothing else. As anyone familiar with De Palma's rapidly declining oeuvre might have anticipated, Redacted is crude, exploitative, and politically simple-minded. Harder to predict given the subject matter is that it is also, for its first half at least, remarkably tedious.

...

Thanks to Redacted's clumsy, transparent politicking, the crime it portrays never feels remotely real, despite being closely based on an actual atrocity committed by American troops in Mahmudiyah in 2006. (De Palma evidently relocated the events in order to wedge in an awkward, pseudoliterary reference to John O'Hara's Appointment in Samarra.) Redacted is intended to be shocking, controversial, and, yes, offensive to some viewers. The surprise is that De Palma is now too inept even to offend.

I remember really liking DePalma... when I was 14 years old, and found his mixture of graphic violence and soft-porn pretty intoxicating. I felt like an "adult" watching Blow Out and Body Double.

I've seen them since and, while neither film is bad, I realized neither was good, either. They are, for me, the cinematic equivalents of Quiet Riot's Cum on Feel the Noise. For a teenager, awesome. For an adult, kind of crappy.

DePalma has always felt rather shabby for not making it in the business like his contemporaries Coppola, Spielberg, and Lucas. He's said he in Hollywood he always feels like he has the box office from his last film glowing in neon letting on his coat; given his dismal history, it must be a tough thing to walk the street. While I've come to really like The Untouchables, it's hard to forgive him for disasters like Bonfire of the Vanities. A book about that fiasco, The Devil's Candy, noted how DePalma was always seeking to do tricky and gimmicky shots because he didn't want people to think he was an "old man" and off his game.

It seems that this film is an attempt to capture some amount of respect among his peers or at least a very narrow segment of the public through simple political sympathizing. Now confirmed as walking box-office poison and indeed an "old man" whose small number of tricks (chiefly, alternating ripping off a Hitchcock film and Coppola's The Conversation every single damn movie) are by now very tired indeed, he's narrowcasting to a tiny cadre of anti-war leftists and of course the kneejerk award-givers overseas. And even in this latest bid for respectability -- only one critic ever seemed to think him especially good, and that was Pauline Kael, who died years ago -- he seems to have failed disastrously.

Posted by: Ace at 11:00 AM | Comments (71)
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Kids these days:

Three boys, ages 8 and 9, were being held Monday in a detention center on charges of kidnapping and raping an 11-year-old girl near a suburban apartment complex, officials said.

Acworth Police Chief Mike Wilkie said said one of the boys was accused of threatening to hit the girl with a rock before the alleged assault. Wilkie also said the investigation is "far from over," and investigators are looking into claims that after the alleged attack, the girl talked about it with her friends at a slumber party.

The father of the 8-year-old boy said his son had been falsely accused and had not had sex with the girl.

The sexual activity was consensual, and the girl accused her playmates only after her parents had learned she had sex, said the father, Brandon LeBlanc.

Am I alone in thinking that 8 and 9 is rather young for rape or, for that matter, any sexual activity? I don't really remember much about when I was that age, but I'll tell you what I'm sure of is that I didn't have, uh, "fully operational equipment" at that point (IYKWISAITTYD).

To be honest, I blame the reporter for not making it clear that some sexual activity probably went on here, but not sexual intercourse. That explains the young ages of the boys and also the apparently contradictory statement from the father:

The father of the 8-year-old boy said his son had been falsely accused and had not had sex with the girl ... The sexual activity was consensual, said the father, Brandon LeBlanc.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 10:23 AM | Comments (23)
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I don't actually have much interest in this story (I'm not a fan of American Idol or celebrity interviews in general), but it did have a funny headline: "YES I use Botox, NO I am not gay."

This also amused me:

"It's probably my mother's influence,' he laughs. (She is a former dancer, and he does tend to glide around the room, although you could just put that down to expensive shoes). But no, he says he is not gay.

"If I was, why hide it? It's not as if the music business would be an odd place for a gay man to work. And anyway, if I was trying to hide the fact that I was gay, I would be off playing rugby every Saturday, wouldn't I?"

Wha?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:54 AM | Comments (22)
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Try selling this one to your spouse:

Can being unfaithful save your relationship? Marital therapist Andrew G. Marshall reveals the unexpected benefits of betrayal
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It seems like the ultimate irony – the least likely outcome to an act of betrayal that for most people spells the end of a marriage. Sometimes, however, instead of causing a death blow, being caught out can end up saving it. In some cases, an affair can improve a relationship that has for years been stuck in the doldrums; it can be a desperately needed wake-up call, a chance to reflect and face painful truths. Of course, this is a high-risk strategy and many couples cannot get past the bitterness and resentment that the infidelity inevitably brings, but some can and do get through the pain of an affair and end up stronger.

Via Hot Air.

A female friend of mine has long subscribed to the theory that marriages need two amnesty weekends per year to chase strange to wind up lasting.

Posted by: Ace at 09:50 AM | Comments (46)
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