My 2 ½ year old son Ryan is stable this morning - we took him into the emergency room Thursday morning, and he has been in the ICU since Thursday afternoon. We’re hoping he’ll come out of ICU today or tomorrow.
He’d fought off a cold for about a week, with a low grade fever. We noticed Wednesday night that one of his eyelids was a bit droopy, but didn’t worry too much about it; he’d had the cold for a week and conjunctivitis just before that. When he woke up on Thursday, he wasn’t able to roll over in bed, and when he tried to walk, he took two steps and collapsed, unable to get up.
The life and death of a hero. It seems so long ago that I read the story of Fabrizio Quattrocchi; it was four years ago, but seems like much longer. It was a time when al-Qaeda had not yet been schooled by the U.S. media on how to create a narrative; they seem to have really believed that the shock value of the dull-knife beheadings would rally the jihadis and terrify and intimidate their enemies, the infidels.
The enemy is us, by the way; me and you, you and me and our children. I would think that the beheadings of Daniel Pearl and NicholasBerg, the murder of Fabruzio Quattrocchi and the murder of Christian priests and bishops would have established that one inconvenient truth. But no; I still see the “God Bless the Whole World, No Exceptions” and “Coexist” bumper stickers. As if the problems was ours for not being “coexistent” enough to accommodate their hatred, and our unmitigated gall in standing up them and not accepting our role as dhimmis under Islamic law.
I was reading a posting on Talk Left about the Obama “waffle controversy”. Seems that Obama has not had a press conference in 10 days, so reporters are getting antsy about gettting his comment on various current events, like Pres. Carter’s dealings with Hamas. One reporter made the mistake of asking a question while Obama was eating his waffle.
As Sen. Hillary Clinton was preparing to campaign here today, Sen. Barack Obama was meeting with voters at a diner and apparently pretty hungry. “Why can’t I just eat my waffle?” he said, when asked a foreign policy question by a reporter at the Glider Diner.
Jeralyn answers the question that immediately springs to mind.
What’s the big deal? Why is this news? Because, as Jay Newton-Small at Time’s Swampland explains, Obama hasn’t given a press conference in 10 days and the reporters had no other opportunity to ask him.
What stood out is the one photo above, in which Obama has his middle finger extended in what appears to be a one-finger salute. Below is another example of the “middle finger extension”. Somebody needs to explain to the senator that extending one’s middle finger is offensive, juvenile and petulent to most working-to-middle class voters. He might not actually be flipping the bird, but it’s an appearance that he doesn’t need to project.
I knew this was coming, I just didn’t expect it so soon. Both Democratic presidential contenders have promised to tax the hell out of the rich in order to make the system even more “fair”. Seems like an easy sell, especially when they’ve both been going out of their way to fan the flames of class envy among their base. But you have to figure there’s going to be at least one not-so-insignificant slice of their voter base that might be impacted. The rich.
The Associated Press reports that violence spiked in Barack Obama’s hometown of Chicago last weekend on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary, although media outlets and Obama’s campaign failed to acknowledge a connection between the uptick in deadly attacks and tomorrow’s crucial vote.
In the bloodiest day of the campaign season, militants launched several attacks across the city, in a series of simultaneous attacks that many analysts say bear the hallmark signature of al Qaeda. A police officer on the scene, who presumably wished to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak to the press, dismissively declined to attribute the attacks to al Qaeda but would not definitively rule out the possibility. The Associated Press confirmed that heavy machine guns were used in the attacks.
John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei of the Politico blog talk in depth about the media’s bias toward Obama, and the firestorm that ABC ignited by daring to ask questions that made Obama feel uncomfortable.
The shower of indignation on Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos over the last few days is the clearest evidence yet that the Clintonites are fundamentally correct in their complaint that she has been flying throughout this campaign into a headwind of media favoritism for Obama.
Last fall, when NBC’s Tim Russert hazed Clinton with a bunch of similar questions - a mix of fair and impertinent - he got lots of gripes from Clinton supporters.
But there was nothing like the piling on from journalists rushing to validate the Obama criticisms and denouncing ABC’s performance as journalistically unsound.
They do a great job analyzing the shift in the media’s modus operandi over the last couple of election cycles. A great read.
Wow - just read Ben Smith’s column; he sent an e-mail from the Clinton campaign criticizing the media’s coverage of the debate to the Washington Post. The real fun is in the comments. Yowza!
Black Five comments on Time Magazine’s decision to run a “global warming” cover modeling Iwo Jima. Hasn’t gone over all that well with veterans. The real diamond in the dirt is a comment made by Time managing editor Richard Stengel regarding the role of the press in reporting the news.
Just got done reading the AP coverage of the latest tape released by al Qaeda’s number two in command. He had very little good to say about our execution of the war. I was impressed, however, by the AP’s use of snarky little editorial comments to support the main ideas of the text. It was a nice little artistic flair, like adding shadowing to provide more depth to an otherwise flat work. My favorites? So much to choose from. The lede was a perfect, and gives you a feeling for what is coming.
