Say Anything Blog

Apparently this is what a “concert for peace” look like. Pretty vacant, isn’t it? When I went to the park for the eagle statue pics for my blog at www.bismarckmandanblog.com I noticed some handmade signs declaring a “Free Concert for Peace” from 1:00 to 4:00 and a stage at the south end of the park. At this point they were about a half hour or so into the concert according to my watch, but it didn’t look like anything was really going on. So maybe they weren’t able to put a stop to war after all, really.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe that the peaceniks have every right to their feelgood events, bumper stickers, and PEACE signs in their yards. That’s what America is all about, and it’s their right of expression. I just think they’re horribly naive and have a tenuous grasp on reality, and that’s my right as well.

Let’s take Africa, for instance. Do you think the murdering thugs in Zimbabwe, Congo, or the Darfur region of Sudan care one iota what a bunch of pacifist liberals in the USA think? They’re already murdering, raping, dismembering, and torturing their own people. Feelgood liberal attempts at “dialoguing” with someone like that will have little result. Not only are the people subject to violent oppression worldwide oblivious to the choice of bumper stickers affixed to your Prius, they’re also unaffected by it.

Evil people understand only one thing: consequences for their actions. If all they have to fear is some finger-waving UN adviser or tie-dye wearing liberal peacenik, then there is no fear. Consequently, the violence goes on unhindered. All the concerts, awareness campaigns, and other such nonsense have zero effect outside the idealistic bubble that these folks have made for themselves.

I suppose this is the product of so much humanism, secular and otherwise. In order for a peacenik utopia to ever take form, there would have to be an inherent goodness in man. Guess what? It ain’t there. And if you remove that item from these folks’ ideological house of cards, the whole thing comes crashing down.

Well, I hope the folks at the concert had a good time. They sure had the right weather for it. I also hope nobody walked away with the illusion that this was actually “for peace.” Even if they persuaded a hundred people at a concert like this, it wouldn’t make a single difference; the only people whose hearts need to change are the murderous thugs all over this world, and you’re not going to do that with a guitar.

Litany of Failure is the subheading of a portion of this Air Force Times article that caught my eye. 

“Inspectors watched as a security forces airman played video games on his cell phone while standing guard at a “restricted area perimeter,” the DTRA report said. Meanwhile, another airman nearby was “unaware of her duties and responsibilities” during the exercise.”

...

* An internal security response team didn’t respond to its “pre-designated defensive fighting position” during an attack on the weapon storage area, leaving an entire side of the maintenance facility vulnerable to enemy fire.

* Security forces didn’t clear a building upon entering it, which allowed inspectors to “kill” three of those four airmen.

* Security forces failed to use the correct entry codes, issued that week, to allow certain personnel into restricted areas.

* Security forces airmen failed to properly check an emergency vehicle for unauthorized personnel when it arrived at a weapons storage area, or search it correctly once it left.

* While wing airmen simulated loading an aircraft with nuclear weapons, security forces airmen failed to investigate vulnerabilities on the route from the storage area to the flight line, and didn’t arm three SF airmen posted at traffic control points along that route.

* While on the aircraft, one flight of security forces airmen didn’t understand key nuclear surety terminology, including the “two-person concept” — the security mechanism that requires two people to arm a nuclear weapon in case the codes fall into the hands of an airman gone bad.

How could things get this bad?  I don’t know.  It’s going to take a long time for the Minot AFB personnel to build a decent reputation again.  But the Air Force is going to set about doing just that, apparently, with the addition of another B-52 squadron to the base.  At first glance, a cynic might think it’s typical of government to reward failure, but I think that’s the wrong way to look at it.  According to the article I linked above, they’re going to use the extra active-duty resources to allow for more training.  Hopefully that’s the case.

It really does seem as though MAFB’s problems were a top-down issue.  The first article I referenced described leadership that was detached from the servicemen.  It’s hard to make changes at the top in any government organization, civilian or military, but hopefully the recent shakeup at the top of the Air Force command structure will ripple downward.  Oh, and someone please teach these kids how to leave their cell phones behind.

I was at the ceremony today south of Mandan and took a lot of photos of the goings-on.  You can view them by clicking here.

Get the full story, including debate about compact flourescent bulbs in the comments section, by clicking here.

I’m not a rifle guy, although I am in the process of tricking out a new custom AR-15.  I did, however, perk up at the news that Winchester is about to discontinue manufacturing many of its trademark firearms here in the United States.

Collectors, now’s the time to scarf ‘em up!

From this link to a London Times article I found this interesting quote:

Russia is awash with cash largely because of soaring revenues from its oil and gas.

Wait a minute...I thought that only rich Republican fatcats were making “unfair” amounts of money by selling oil.  Isn’t that what Senator Dorgan and his cronies want us to believe?

I suggest we send our oddly-coiffed Senator over to Russia to get to the bottom of this!

Tonight while watching the news, I heard something that really stood out to me. KXMB was running coverage of the sentencing of 17-year old Jeff Brown Otter for a crime spree a while back. What caught my ear was not the report, but what I heard on the 911 recording. It was played for the court, and a portion of it aired during the KX report. The women who he carjacked had run to a nearby house and called 911, and during the call they exclaimed that it was “Indians” outside.

I’d just like to ask a quick question: if someone forces you to take them somewhere against your will, using a shotgun, and firing a shot in the air as they leave...what does their race matter?

Stating someone’s race to help identify the perpetrator of a crime is prudent, but the voice on that 911 recording sounded to me like they were especially traumatized that the person who had just fired a gun while stealing their car was of Native American descent.

Click here to read the rest on the Bismarck-Mandan Blog.

Here's an angle you won't get from the ND media. I'm not talking about the combover, but I do recall the local media stays clear of that too, in order to preserve their access to the Senator.


I saw this article yesterday talking about how Kildeer Mountain Manufacturing ("Manufactuing" according to KX News) is looking forward to “sharing the award” of a big defense contract with U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan.

According to this press release, KMM’s “director of business development” is one Kristin Hedger, who tried a horribly misleading campaign against Secretary of State Al Jaeger last election cycle.

According to this post on the official ND Dem-NPL blog, Kristin Hedger offered as proof of her ND citizenship: “a letter from the North Dakota Tax Department and also the form that shows she lists North Dakota for tax withholding during her time working in Senator Byron Dorgan’s office, starting in May 2001.”

Is there something the Hedger family and Dorgan should be disclosing?

Upon visiting the KXMB website this evening (a website which syndicates my blog content, by the way) I was met with the top story: a dramatic accident on I-94 in north Bismarck. Complete with video and a slideshow, KX viewers are treated to a dose of sensationalism, KX style. Let me quote anchor Donnell Preskey:

“This is video we just got into our newsroom, and because the accident just happened, we don’t have very much information about it.”

How’s that for journalistic responsibility?

Shots included in this story are of a stretcher with someone’s foot protruding from under a blanket, and the front of the “mangled” (in the words of Ms. Preskey) SUV. While she goes on to say that “initial information” is that there are no life-threatening injuries. Way to wait for solid information, folks.

If I sound pretty ticked about this, you can read my original post about this type of “reporting” by KXMB in an earlier post by clicking here. That article got me threats of a lawsuit from Darrell Dorgan last year, by the way. Regardless, I stand firm in my stance that this kind of reporting is unnecessary and unprofessional.

How would you like to catch a news story about one of your loved ones on TV like this? Since my original post I’ve been contacted by others with similar horror stories of seeing loved ones in media. It isn’t a trivial matter.

While turning on my TV just now I caught the tail end of a KFYR-TV story on this same accident. Apparently their cameras were there, too. But did they run to get it on the air before details were known? I see their website has a story on this (with a shot taken from a distance) with a timestamp of 4:35pm. That means KFYR probably had their story on their 5 o’clock news. The KFYR story has details including the speed of both vehicles, the extent of injuries, and the fact that the payloader involved was travelling legally. In other words, they WAITED.

By the way, I’m not railing on KXMB because I worked for KFYR-TV for all those years. When I watch local news, I watch KXMB. The nature of KFYR’s four-station setup means they have to focus on regional news and don’t go into much detail on local Bismarck-Mandan stories. I love Kevin and LT, tho. I will say that when I was at KFYR, we had written policy against sensationalism. Maybe I can find my old employee manual and send that page to KXMB for inspiration.

Look, folks...we’re in DMA number 158...that’s pretty much the hind end of television. There’s no need to rush to sensationalism just to say “we’re first!” Show a little responsibility. Dashing from accident scene to air doesn’t do your stations or your viewers any favors. Think of the victims’ families...please?

(This ain’t the Onion, but I couldn’t resist a little satire.  After all, it doesn’t take an intellectual giant to make these people look silly.  They do 99% of the work themselves.)

(Bismarck) The North Dakota Peace Coalition called for immediate withdrawal from North Dakota this week, after describing the situation here as “a quagmire with no end in sight.” In light of numerous homicides and other violent crimes in 2007, said NDPC representative Karyn Van Possum, “the continued cost of the North Dakota occupation in the lives and health of our citizens is exceeding our expectations...not that the deaths of North Dakotans should have ever been within our expectations.”

When asked if a resolution in the state legislature along the lines of the Mathern/Kretschmar Pacifism Resolution was being considered, Van Possum indicated, “...that’s certainly a possibility.  What better way to demonstrate support for our citizens than to get them out of harm’s way?  Staying in North Dakota will not work and is not worth the price.”

Van Possum continued: “The list of atrocities committed in North Dakota include: an asphyxiated newborn in December, the high profile killings of two college coeds in Minot and Valley City, the beating to death of a man in Grand Forks in October, and the April slaying of a Sykeston couple in which their home was burned to the ground in an effort to conceal the crime.  That’s only the tip of the iceberg.  Even now, the local news is reporting a possible kidnapping in central North Dakota.  In August, someone hit a young man in the head and tried to run him over with a pickup.  Obviously North Dakota is not safe for North Dakotans.  We need to keep our citizens safe.  We support North Dakotans, just not their mission.  It’s time to bring them home...er, well, somewhere safe, anyway.”

When not busy fighting to end all fighting, many of the ND Peace folks keep busy by forming an endless array of coalitions, councils, and other “dot orgs” to champion such causes such as deviant sexual practices and preferences, pseudo-peace through capitulation to all enemies of freedom, and the worship of the Earth rather than its creator.  Populating these organizations, attending the occasional protest and/or drum circle, and standing in black in front of the capitol keep many of them too busy to find a productive place in society.  “But we care,” stressed Van Possum, “and that’s the important part.”

While they concede that our presence in North Dakota is unlikely to diminish any time soon, the peaceniks vow to remain resolute.  “There’s no giving up on giving up,” Van Possum said.  “It takes courage to stand up for running away.”

I am a casual football fan, but I have to admit I kept an eye on the controversy surrounding Saturday night’s game.  Those who don’t have the NFL Network were peeved that such a historic game would not be available to them for free, and the matter finally aroused the interest of Congress.

I don’t know the motivations behind the whole matter, but a deal was struck to simulcast the NFL Network game on CBS and NBC.  Presumably it was to keep Congress off the back of the NFL.  I was under the impression that the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 allowed Congress some oversight authority in exchange for granting the NFL anti-trust exemption.  So the NFL made a deal with the devil, in the parlance of our times.  I was eager to see how it all panned out.

What I saw, in addition to a good football game, was something of a win-win for the NFL Network.  They turned it into a three hour commercial for their network.  Game interstitials promoted NFL-N exclusives such as draft coverage, game recaps, NFL Films presentations, and the like.  And NBC & CBS were forced to carry it!  Imagine if the NFL had tried to buy three hours of commercial time...something they got for free Saturday night.

I have NFL Network on my satellite dish, so I’m no stranger to it.  Frankly, I think Bryant Gumbel is one of the worst announcers to ever call the game.  But I do like a lot of their exclusives, and they were granted access to two national broadcast networks last night in order to promote those exclusives to millions of potential subscribers.  I bet there are NFL Network executives laughing themselves silly now that it’s done.

I couldn’t help but wonder what NBC and CBS execs must have thought while watching plug after plug for the NFL Network airing on their networks.  I had to chuckle, because I think the NFL Network has every right to do so and were “sticking it to the Man” in a way.  I hope they sent NBC and CBS a belated Merry Christmas card, because they got a heck of a freebie: 3 hours of promotional time on TWO broadcast networks during the game of the year, a game which set a historical record for the league.  At the same time they got Congress off their backs (for now) and came out looking like the good guys.  Good for them.

A while back I wrote to Senators Conrad and Dorgan about their participation in a letter sent to Clear Channel to influence political speech on their stations. You can read that original post here.

I got a response back from Senator Gaylord Kent Conrad which admitted that he didn’t know the context of Rush Limbaugh’s comments, so apparently he was simply being a good Democrat so he could continue to receive the over 90% of his out-of-state campaign contributions. You can read the post about his response letter here.

I just got my response from Senator Dorgan in the mail. He maintains that Rush Limbaugh was critical of soldiers who disagree with the war...no problem there, we’ll just have to disagree. To his credit, the letter contained the following: “However, in retrospect, I wish we had not started down this road of having the Senate involved in expressing support or opposition to various kinds of speech.” Later on he says, “...I think it would have been better had the Senate not rushed to express itself on either of these issues involving Moveon.org or Rush Limbaugh. Frankly, there will always be people on all sides of controversial issues that say things we might object to, but I think we should not have started down that road.”

While Senator Conrad gave me some sort of nonsense answer and apparently stuck to his guns on the issue, at least Senator Dorgan agrees that the Senators participating in the letter should not have done so. He’s not afraid to say so in a letter to one of his constituents. We’ll just agree to disagree on the intent of the comment on the radio that started it all. I’m fine with that.

Case closed, I suppose. I wish that our state’s Senate delegation had not signed on to the letter in the first place. It seems that only half that delegation can at least own up to it and say it was the wrong thing to do.

A while back there was a big controversy about a letter from 41 US Senators to put pressure one Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk show host who used the term “phony soldiers” on the air one day. It was in reference to people like Jesse Al-Said, AKA Jesse MacBeth, who claimed to have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, witnessing atrocities committed by US soldiers, but who actually lied about their service in the US military.

North Dakota’s delegation to the Senate signed a letter to the CEO of Clear Channel, the syndication partner of Limbaugh’s show, attempting to pressure Clear Channel to influence what Limbaugh says on the air. Doesn’t that fly right in the face of the first amendment? Here we have nearly half the Senate, acting in official capacity, attempting to influence political speech by a private citizen by bringing the presence of the US Senate to bear. This is precisely the kind of thing that the Constitution prohibits!

I don’t care if it’s Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken on the receiving end of this letter, it’s an affront to the idea of free speech in this country. And who’s jumped on board like the good little lap dogs we know them to be? Conrad and Dorgan. And you can bet they didn’t do it because North Dakotans were flooding them with complaints about Rush Limbaugh.

I wrote a letter outlining the points above, because I believe in free political and religious speech. I want to beat the crap out of anyone I see burning a flag, but I won’t...in fact, I believe it’s their right under our nation’s Constitution. I think most liberal talk show hosts are out of their skulls, but I defend their right to spout their lunacy for their dozens of listeners. So my motivation in going after our Senators is not conservative vs. liberal. It’s simply a free speech issue.

Back to Gaylord’s return letter to me. He states “I do not know what Mr. Limbaugh was thinking when he uttered the words “phony soldiers.” Okay, Senator Conrad...if you didn’t know, then why would you enter some very frightening territory, constitutionally speaking, attempting to influence political speech by using the power of the Senate as a bludgeoning tool? Because the national Democrat Party told you to, I’m sure.

Rather than behaving like a North Dakotan, Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan showed their true colors and act like east coast liberals. Maybe that way they’ll continue to get the support of the DNC to keep their Senate seats. In the mean time, this Congress has accomplished pretty much nothing while wasting its efforts on trampling the Constitution for political gain.

Why do people continue to vote for these idiots? Haven’t they run out of farmers and senior citizens to scare into voting Democrat?

It seems that, aside from a chance encounter in a Grand Forks Starbucks one chilly morning, the only time I ever see Earl Pomeroy is when there’s some sort of photo op or grandstanding opportunity.  That’s the nature of politics I suppose, since our congressmen are busy.........well, I’m sure they’re busy doing SOMETHING.

Here we see Earl the Pearl walking the Mandan July 4th Parade.  With his experience at moving BS, he should actually be working behind some of the horses!  Yet he had the guts to walk in the same parade as our brave National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers...this after voting against American soldiers on a resolution that could have boosted their morale.  Yet he pretends that never happened when he comes back to North Dakota.

Once again I caught a glimpse of good old Earl at the festivities at the State Capitol.  While they played the Armed Forces Salute, Earl took the opportunity to clap and glance around at the folks behind him (he was in the first row).  Mr. Pomeroy, you had a chance to show North Dakotans how you feel about the proud men and women who serve this country.  You failed miserably.

The PDF of the resolution he voted against, HR 861, can be found by clicking here. All the resolution did was give our troops a little morale boost by declaring that we WILL be victorious.  That was too much for a dedicated liberal Democrat like Earl Pomeroy, yet he still wants to play like he’s a good patriot when he comes back home for the PR opportunities.  That’s the perfect picture of hypocrisy.

The people of North Dakota should bounce this hypocrite out of office at the nearest opportunity.

A lot of the news linked from the Drudge Report comes from MyWay.com. Most of it seems pretty level headed, at least compared to the drivel the major TV and cable networks report.  Tonight I clicked on this link to read about President Bush granting Executive Clemency to Mr. Libby.  Note the first part of that URL if you click on it:  apnews.myway.com.  There’s also a tag at the bottom:Associated Press writer Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report.

Proof that the AP had something to do with this?  How about this sentence, appearing on its own as a paragraph:

Testimony in the Libby case revealed the extraordinary steps that Bush and Cheney were willing to take to discredit a critic of the Iraq war.

The joke of the matter, although it’s not funny, is that nobody in the White House “outed” Valerie Plame.  It was a witch hunt.  But the leftists don’t want to report that.

And they wonder why we don’t believe what they report.