International news, national news

'Bloviator' O'Reilly's war coverage challenged

Bill O’Reilly’s brand on TV news is one of confrontation and — some would suggest — self-serving excess.

OK, I’ll suggest it, too. O’Reilly is full of himself at times.

He’s been all over the Brian Williams story and the now-admitted “misremembering” about the NBC News anchor being shot down in Iraq in 2003.

Well, the self-proclaimed bloviator is now facing a challenge of his own, from Mother Jones magazine, over whether O’Reilly actually witnessed combat during the brief war in the remote Falkland Islands in 1982, when Great Britain sent a flotilla to its territorial possession to rid the place of Argentine troops who had taken the island illegally.

“I was there,” O’Reilly has contended all along. Mother Jones disputes O’Reilly’s assertion.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/bill-o%E2%80%99reilly%E2%80%99s-falklands-war-coverage-challenged-in-explosive-new-report/ar-BBhLZxs?ocid=ansWrap11

This story is still developing, but as MSN reported, O’Reilly has been quick — imagine that — to respond to the allegations that Mother Jones has made that the correspondent did not face hostile fire, as he has reported for more than three decades.

MSN reports: “The (Mother Jones) website’s David Corn highlights several instances where the Fox News primetime host claimed to have covered the 1982 fighting in the Falklands War between Argentina and England up close–the issue is few reporters were able to cover the conflict up close due to the remote location of the war zone.”

I’m not going to make an assessment here of whether O’Reilly fibbed about his war coverage. I will, however, suggest that the Fox News TV talk show star’s aggressive reporting of others’ troubles — such as Brian Williams — exposes him to careful scrutiny by other watchdogs to ensure that he’s as righteous as he claims to be.

Here’s the Mother Jones article that O’Reilly asserts is “bulls***.” It’s lengthy. It’s also quite interesting and carefully detailed.

Bill O’Reilly Has His Own Brian Williams Problem

See for yourself. Is David Corn merely a “left-wing assassin,” as O’Reilly asserts, or is he an aggressive reporter?

As for O’Reilly, it appears he has to explain himself — without resorting to name-calling.

 

religious news

‘Young Earthers’ enter creation debate

It’s probably good to pronounce this right off the top: The debate over the actual age of Planet Earth will never end — and by “never,” I mean absolutely never.

A fascinating element has come into focus about whether the planet was created less than 10,000 years ago, which many folks believe is contained in Scripture. A group called “Young Earthers” believes the Bible quite literally.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/religion/age-of-the-earth-controversy-heating-up-as-young-earthers/article_1fe82f62-1e34-5e77-a5b9-22ddd2c898cb.html

They say the Book of Genesis lays it out there: God created the world in six days measured the way we humans do it and then rested on the seventh day. The Sabbath is part of God’s plan for those he created in his image, they say.

There you have it. End of debate, yes? Not even close.

An interesting article in the Tulsa (Okla.) World discusses this debate as it’s occurring in Oklahoma. According to The World: “While an ancient Earth is considered settled science in academic circles, it has been discussed and debated for decades in some evangelical churches and schools and in some conservative Christian colleges.”

Man, this is why I love the Bible so much. It can be interpreted by anyone who can take away whatever they wish.

I’m thinking The Almighty had this in mind when he instructed the men who wrote those holy words. God must have told them, “Write all those biblical books in such a way as to ensure that humankind never stops debating whether to take these words literally or put their own interpretation on what’s written — as long as they’re believers, of course.”

Bill “The Science Guy” Nye and Ken Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis, staged a debate in Tulsa a year ago about the creation of the universe. As The World reported: “At the heart of the debate is whether the biblical record demands a young Earth scenario, with creation 6,000 to 10,000 years ago in seven literal 24-hour days. ‘Old Earth”’evangelicals insist that the young Earth position is just one among many possible ways to interpret the biblical record. And evangelicals on both sides of the debate are concerned that the issue is becoming divisive. Some young Earthers insist that old Earthers cannot be true Bible-believing Christians.”

It’s the last sentence, the one about young Earthers doubting the faith of old Earthers that can be troubling as this debate rages on.

I’m simply inclined to ask: How can anyone question legitimately another person’s commitment to faith or belief?

Those who believe God created humans in his image — as I do — surely must know that he kept certain powers to himself. Only the Creator knows what’s in others’ hearts.

Let the debate continue — forever.

International news

Lighten up on the formality thing

Michael Strain needs to relax a little, maybe meet some folks and get on a first-name basis with them.

Strain is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and has written an essay for the Washington Post in which he express disgust that President Obama referred to German Chancellor Angela Merkel several times by her first name. It occurred during a joint press conference.

Strain was aghast at what he calls “false intimacy.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/02/18/please-address-me-as-mister-i-insist/?tid=sm_fb

Holy mackerel, Mike! Get a grip.

I’ll call him Mike, even though I don’t know the fellow. What’s he going to do in the remote chance he reads this? Will he come unglued the way he did over Barack’s faux familiarity with Angela?

I doubt it.

These kinds of exchanges don’t bother me. As a friend of mine, Dan, noted on a Facebook post, it might not have bothered Mike when President Bush rubbed Chancellor Merkel’s shoulders during a G-8 Summit some years back. For that matter, I recall only a few snarky comments about the moment that was video recorded for the world to see. Then it passed. Nothing else was said. No harm, no foul, right?

I have noted before, though, that the president does have a habit of referring to fellow members of the U.S. government by their first names while they refer to him publicly as “Mr. President.” I recall a meeting held at the White House with congressional leaders and Sen. John McCain was protesting a policy initiative coming from the White House. He referred to Obama as Mr. President, and the president referred directly to his 2008 campaign foe simply as “John.”

The exchange seemed oddly disproportionate and it bordered on disrespectful.

But such an exchange between heads of government? Hey, no problem.

Besides, has anyone bothered to ask the chancellor if she objects? Believe me, if she did, she’d say so and the president would refer to her differently.

So, lighten up, Mike.

 

national news

Obama echoes Bush on Islam

This video is worth watching as the nation debates whether the 44th president of the United States harbors some sort of bias that gives terrorists a pass just because they purport to be of the Islamic faith.

Listen to the words spoken here by the 43rd president, George W. Bush, just six days after the 9/11 attacks.

He quotes the Quran, noting that acts of evil will be the end of those who commit those acts.

President Bush refers to Islam as a great religion, that its tenets condemn violence committed against innocent victims.

Where was the outcry then as the president sought to inform the nation that our anger should not be directed at peaceful Muslims, those who pay their taxes and who go about their business daily without regard to harming other human beings?

Yet we keep hearing from those who suggest that President Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, harbors sympathies to those who have done us harm.

Listen carefully to the words spoken on the video.

 

national news, political news

Guiliani makes zero sense

So help me, I never thought Rudy Guiliani was capable of going around the bend.

That is, until I read about his remarks delivered last night at a dinner honoring Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

The former New York mayor, the hero of the 9/11 response and Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 2001 actually said that President Barack Obama doesn’t love America.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/giuliani-obama-doesnt-love-america/ar-BBhKLyD

What on God’s Earth has the mayor been drinking, smoking, eating or taking intravenously?

Has the man not heard the president speak of his love of a country where only his “story can happen”? How the mixed-race son of an immigrant and a young woman from Kansas could graduate from college, earn a law degree, become elected to a state legislature, to the U.S. Senate and then become elected — twice — to the presidency of the United States? How about how that son could be raised by a single mother after his father abandoned his family and how he spent time growing up overseas and then grew up listening to his maternal grandparents tell of their struggles while living in Middle America?

The president proclaims his love of country damn near every time I hear him speak in public. Doesn’t he wish God’s blessings on the United States of America at the end of every speech he ever gives?

Isn’t the former mayor paying attention?

And yet Guiliani said last night that he believes the president is a patriot. What? Which is it, Mr. Mayor? Is he a patriot or does he detest the country of his birth?

 

 

legal news

Change of venue? Sure thing … not!

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev thinks he can find a more impartial jury pool in a city other than Boston.

Sure thing, accused Boston Marathon bomber. Go for it. My hunch is that the man’s trial is staying put.

http://news.yahoo.com/the-boston-marathon-bomber-s-hail-mary-to-change-trial-venue-203602095.html

Tsarnaev is accused of detonating a bomb that exploded at the finish line of the world-renowned race. Surveillance videos captured images of him and his late brother moments before the blast as they were leaving a “package” near the blast site.

Jury selection in Boston has been delayed by many factors, including the horrendous weather that has all but buried the city under several feet of snow. Those delays apparently have given Tsarnaev’s legal team reason to seek a “Hail Mary” move to get the trial moved to another site.

Where, it is fair to ask, is there a place where residents don’t know about the bombing or haven’t formed an opinion on the incident?

The same question could be applied to, say, the change of venue that the judge granted for Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the federal office building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. The government moved his trial to Denver, where he was convicted anyway. The jury sentenced him to death and McVeigh was executed for his crime.

Tsarnaev’s trial should remain in the city where the crime occurred. The court will seat a qualified jury eventually, once the city clears the mountains of snow off the streets.

national news

Ted Cruz: Exaggerator in chief

Ted Cruz’s mother must have told him when he was a boy: “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times, don’t exaggerate.”

Or perhaps words to that effect.

Well, the Texas Republican freshman U.S. senator, is exaggerating in the extreme — once again — while criticizing the Obama administration’s approach to fighting the war on terror.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/ted-cruz-obama-radical-islamic-terrorists-115312.html?hp=l2_4

He can’t stop blasting President Obama for declining to use the words “Islamic terrorism.” He also ripped Obama a new one for the White House’s failure to acknowledge that the 21 Egyptians who were beheaded by Islamic State terrorists were Christians.

Oh, and then he was critical — naturally — for State Department flack Marie Harf’s statement that we need to work toward ending poverty in the nations that breed the terrorists. Cruz said this: “Now, with respect, that is idiocy. The solution here is not expanded Medicaid. The solution is the full force of U.S. military power to destroy the leaders of ISIS. They have declared war … jihad on the United States. Jihad is another word the president doesn’t say.”

I understand what the young man is seeking to do here. He’s trying to make a point by embellishing what Harf said, or meant. Medicaid? Come on.

As for the president being an “apologist for radical Islamic terrorists,” Sen. Cruz needs — once again — to examine the record. We’re killing these individuals every single day. We’re doing precisely what we’ve been doing since President George W. Bush sent us to war right after 9/11.

No, I don’t expect this kind of rhetoric to stop. After all, we’ve got a presidential campaign to wage and I expect fully to hear a lot more of it from other potential candidates for the White House. I’m just spewing my own frustration at what I keep hearing.

Bear with me, please. I’ll get over it — eventually.

 

military news

Hey, how does 'conflict' sound?

A good friend of mine has an idea about how to deal with the word games being played over what we call the current war we’re waging with international terrorists.

My pal Jim, who lives in Arizona, writes: “Let‘s call it a conflict. Didn’t we use that term before to soften the impact?”

Boy, howdy! We sure did.

Remember the Korean conflict? Or the Vietnam conflict? The “conflicts” in Korea and Vietnam turned into  “wars” eventually, but many headline writers and journalists writing about Vietnam often didn’t capitalize the “w” in “war,” as if to suggest that it wasn’t really a war.

Perhaps this sidesteps the issue. My earlier blog post noted the discussion about whether the Obama administration is right to avoid using the term “Islamic terrorists” to describe the enemy with whom we are at, um, war. My point is that we need not quibble over what to call the enemy, but we should instead concentrate our efforts solely on actually fighting these monsters.

Whatever we call the enemy, or the fight in which we are engaged, it’s a war by any known definition of the word.

I’ve noted before that we’re in a form of a world war, although it doesn’t resemble the two previous world wars in which we fought — Nos. I and II. Those wars involved nations declaring war on other nations. It involved mass mobilizations of men, who then were sent to battlefields to fight men from other nations that had done the very same thing.

Our wars since WWII, though, have materialized differently. We’ve had no formal declaration since President Roosevelt asked Congress on Dec. 8, 1941 to declare that “a state of war has existed” between the United States and Japan.

But we’ve fought actual wars. The men and women who’ve died in battle have been killed just as dead as they were in World Wars I and II.

I told my friend Jim that I’ve always hated the term “conflict” to describe war.

Instead, I prefer to call these fights what they are. And what we’re fighting today is no less gruesome and deadly than any war we’ve ever fought.

 

International news, national news

Let's stop quibbling over branding of war

President Obama went on offense today in declaring that the enemy in our current war against terror doesn’t comprise “religious leaders.”

We are fighting terrorists, pure and simple, he said.

So, the president will continue to resist referring to the enemy as “Islamic terrorists,” or “Islamist terrorists,” or some such derivation of the use of a word describing a great religion.

Obama: ISIS ‘aren’t religious leaders, they’re terrorists’

While some of us — including yours truly — disagree with the president’s decision to avoid using the term “Islamic terrorist” in describing our enemy, I am willing to drop the argument.

We’re now quibbling over semantics.

“We are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam,” he said.  “No religion is responsible for terrorism. People are responsible for violence and terrorism.”

Obama sounds just like his immediate predecessor, former President George W. Bush, on this matter. President Bush made precisely the same point when we went to war in Afghanistan immediately after the 9/11 attacks. Was there an outcry then about how we defined the enemy? If there was, well, it’s gotten lost on me.

Yet the outcry continues to this day about the current president’s use of language to describe the war that is on-going.

What difference does any of this make? What ought to matter is what we’re doing on the field of battle. We’re bombing Islamic State targets, along with aircraft being flown by our allies. I’m certain we’re killing terrorists; we’re even killing some of their leaders. We’re seeking to disrupt the terrorists’ command and control operations. We’re attempting to blast them into oblivion. We are deploying special operations units to hunt them down on the ground. We’re putting men and women at supreme risk of being captured.

OK, so we’re not calling them Islamic terrorists. The bad guys know who they are and what they represent. So do the good guys — and we’re acting accordingly.

Let’s stick to the mission in the field and quit arguing over what to call it.

 

business news, national news

What about consumers of oil?

The media and others keep reporting about the impact that the collapsing price of oil is having on the oil industry and those who work in it.

I feel for them, with their jobs on the line. It’s getting less cost-effective to explore for oil and produce it when the price falls from $100-plus per barrel to less than $50.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/oil-rally-seen-reversing-as-rising-us-supply-deepens-glut/ar-BBhHhF7

But what about the consumer? What about the family that is now spending considerably less for gasoline then it was a year or two ago? How about those folks who suddenly find themselves with more disposable income, money to spend on other essentials — such as, oh, food and clothing?

The recent uptick in fuel prices is now expected to revert to recent trends as the nation’s oil glut continues to grow. It’s been an amazing spectacle to watch as street-corner gasoline dealers drop prices as many as three times daily.

I’ve talked here about the “new normal” in gas pricing being elevated to heights none of us imagined when we were much younger and were spending about four bits for a gallon of gas. I remember my parents pulling up to the gas pump and telling the attendant, “I’ll take a dollar’s worth of regular.” We won’t return to those days, but we’re a lot closer to them today than we were in 2013.

It’s that result that prevents me from crying too heavily over the fortunes of those who work on the oil field pipelines or at the refineries that turn crude oil into gasoline or diesel.

My wife and I will keep driving our hybrid motor vehicle — just like millions of other Americans — and will keep working to build up that supply of fossil fuel that contributes to the plummeting price of gasoline.

 

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience