Snapped Shot

I think the photo editor manning the AP Middle East desk might be getting just a teensy bit overzealous with that dastardly quote key:



I've seen every possible level of doubt put on the story of the Anbar Awakening, but I don't know that it's really worth disputing whether these are "citizens," and whether or not they are really "concerned."

(NOTE: The above image has been retracted, and is no longer available on the Yahoo! copy of the photo wires. According to GettyImages, the caption has been corrected to read: CORRECTS BULLETS TO UNSPENT An elderly Iraqi woman holds up two unspent bullets at her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City, 14 August 2007. US and Iraqi troops carried out massive assaults against Shiite militants, killing four in Baghdad's volatile slum of Sadr City, and arresting several more across Iraq, the military said today.)

I saw this picture early yesterday afternoon, but got sidetracked before I got a chance to post anything about it. Of course, this may be the same woman that we covered here this past July:



Same photographer, same circumstances. Possibly even the same woman. (Hint: Check out the cheekbones, and the scar on the right cheek..)

What do you suppose the odds are that Wissam is trying to drum something up to try and make the Coalition troops look bad?

See-Also:

Blackfive, Anti-Protester, American Pundit, Hot Air, A Blog for All, Blue Crab Boulevard, The Jawa Report, Ace of Spades, Confederate Yankee, IMAO, Gateway Pundit

It would appear that the esteemed Agence France-Presse does not have any wire editors to spare. They seem to be mixing up the various terrorist factions who inhabit (nay, infest) the Palestinian terror-tories.



Of course, as we covered earlier, the body being carried belongs to a militant from an offshoot of Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigades, which is itself a "violent" offshoot of the violent Fatah faction. Who, by the way, hate Hamas with a passion:

Residents say it’s enough to wear a beard, associated with Islamist Hamas, to be taken as a target by fighters from secular Fatah. A black and white keffieh, the headscarf symbolic of Fatah, is enough to earn a bullet from Hamas.

A mistake like this could happen to anyone, right?

Y'all can send me a check for the correction whenever you'd like, AFP.

Apparently, fauxtography isn't limited to events in the Middle East. Allan Detrich, a photographer most famous for his storm coverage, has been terminated by the Toledo Blade after, Holy Toledo!, being caught Photoshopping a front-page photograph of a baseball team.

Of course, upon further investigation, the Blade has discovered that he's been at it for a while.

Oops.

... of Unintended Consequences will never fail us. It seems that, predictably, another environmentalist sham is going to be causing us some grief, and, as always, nothing comes for free.

Remember all that talk about how "Ethanol" fuels would change the face of the industry? Corn-gas would allow us to grow our own fuel, and let us be independent of the Oil Monopoly, we were told. Of course, when the numbers started coming in, we came to learn that the fuel efficiency of this Magical Mystery Material just didn't stack up to Plain-Ol' Petrol, which means that the laws of physics still remain in effect. (I like the "Bush Administration" angle in that last link, especially considering where the Ethanol push originated... and hint to you libtards: It Ain't Bush!)

Fortunately for all of humanity, we now discover that the laws of economics still rule as well:

Ethanol plants and foreign buyers are gobbling the nation's corn supplies, pushing prices as high as $3.40 a bushel, the Agriculture Department said Friday.

Farmers haven't seen prices this high for more than a decade. The monthly crop report forecast even better prices than in December, raising the estimate 10 cents to $3 to $3.40 a bushel.

The good news? This may encourage small farmers to once again grow corn, which could help save quite a few of them from certain bankruptcy. After all, I seem to recall a few other cash crops that've done wonders for my fair Commonwealth's economy sometime in the past.

In any case, my point remains the same: Liberals breed environmentalism, Environmentalism breeds pain, therefore Liberals breed pain. When they're not jet-setting around the nation in their 200-gallons-per-mile private jets.

The Democratic Party: Truly the voice of the little people.

... still utterly incompatible. It never ceases to amaze me how often the Democrats get their clocks cleaned when they try to quote or otherwise use an "historic" event to score some political points (h/t RiehlWorldView).

Thomas Jefferson purchased the Koran back in 1765. While studying law he looked at how legal systems around the world affected societies. Looking at how other societies governed themselves does not mean he agreed with them or held them in high regard. In the March 22, 2004 edition of the journal Early American Literature, Kevin J. Hayes wrote a piece titled "How Thomas Jefferson read the Qur'an". In the piece, while I feel Hayes was a bit critical of those who dislike Islam, he is totally honest about Thomas Jefferson's view of the Koran, Islam and it's followers. Because although Mr. Hayes starts his piece trying to be as kind as possible regarding Jefferson's view of the Koran, he has to tell the undeniable truth. That Jefferson thought lowly of the Koran.

If our press were "fair and balanced," you'd expect them to have done enough digging to present some of these facts with their story. Unfortunately, since they're gung-ho on selling the Communist Democratic party line, they accepted and repeated the Democratic Party's assertions as fact.

From Xinhua, which echoes other wire reports of the incident:

An Israeli F16 warplane by air-to- ground rockets destroyed on Wednesday night a Palestinian house owned by an Hamas Movement militant in northern Gaza Strip, witnesses and security sources said.

And from the somewhat sympathetic Ha'aretz:

A spokesman for the Hamas military wing on Thursday vowed the group would take harsh revenge for an Israel Defense Forces operation in Gaza, in which six people, including five members of the same family, were killed.

What's missing from these reports? Keep reading to find out! Continue reading »