De-commison The 9/11 Commission

The credibility of the 9/11 Commission has taken a severe mauling lately, and it's about time.

A "Disaster" To Be Proud Of

While working my day job back in June I came across a mail room employee at a company in Brighton, MA, who is an avid Air America fan and who apparantly no longer works there, as he has not been seen in my subsequent visits. (Yes, believe it or not, there are fans of Radio Moscow Redux) On the air was Stephanie Miller, who mixes being generally obnoxious with a high-pitched whiney voice more appropriate for WEEI's equally useless Michael Felger. Miller was talking about the "disaster in Iraq" and "George and Dick's excellent adventure," which might actually be funny if Air America didn't always play dumb by whining about "mean-spirited" Republicans.

What is amazing is that Comrade Steph cited US News & World Report to buttress an argument about terrorism in general - as if the Mainstream Media has any credibility anymore. Certainly the "disaster" in Iraq can only be called such by taking MSM seriously - which can't be done since the "disaster" isn't. The credibility of the MSM has long been absymal, especially on their military coverage.

Meanwhile, further disproving the kidiots of Air Amerika was the continuing Good News From Iraq, from several months ago, from more recently, and from the end of August. (Kudos to Winds Of Change) There is also the utter lack of logic in the Left's serial complaint about "breeding more terrorists" - a claim they've been making every time the US fights back against the enemy from the 1986 bombing of Libyan military bases after the Libyan-backed bombing of a Berlin discoteque (they also tried to deny Libyan involvement there, too) onward. It reminds me of a brief mini-popularity back in the 1970s among some psychiatrists against fighting back against rapists, their logic being that rapists become more violent and liable to kill if women fight back. No, it doesn't make any sense, and the new version of don't-fight-back perpetuated by the Left is akin to that.

It all boils down to that we have irresponsible people belitting what is truly a noble cause.

The Monkees And Robert Moog

With the passing of synthesized keyboard designer Robert Moog, numerous retrospectives have noted how music groups of the latter 1960s made use of his revolutionary compact Moog synthesizer. Virtually all these retrospectives note how The Beatles used the Moog synthesizer in 1969 and how it got substantial usage in the early-70s' progressive rock phase.

And I have yet to find a national retrospective that notes the group that introduced the Moog to pop records - The Monkees. In 1967 Micky Dolenz was among the first people to purchase a Moog synthesizer, and he integrated it into the making of the group's fourth long-player album, Pisces Aquarius Capricorn & Jones Ltd. Micky played the Moog for the album's cryptic exploration of 1967 rioting on Sunset Strip Daily Nightly while Moog retailer Paul Beaver handled the keyboards for the group's rip-roaring put-down of groupies Star Collector. The use of the Moog on the album was a mixed blessing; Micky's random Moog riffing on Daily Nightly is ultimately a distraction despite showing some cleverness, while Beaver's perfectly synched riffing on Star Collector (other than on the song's admittedly overblown and prolonged ending) adds enormously to the song's power.

It was the first time a Moog synthesizer found use on a mainstream pop album, and yet this fact goes unmentioned in media retrospectives. As Michael Nesmith once put it about media coverage of the Sunset Strip rioting, it is one of the goofball moments in press coverage.

Wanted: Iraq War's Peter Braestrup

"Mac" Owens took a look at the recent river campaign by Allied forces in shutting down ratlines from Syria and elsewhere trying to resupply Islamo-Arab guerrillas in Iraq. In discussing this campaign, Owens notes how recent coverage by the Boston Globe is inaccurate, and it is just the latest such example, going with a claim that "indig" Iraqi units aren't combat ready. And if coverage isn't just misleading (did you know that the US is REDUCING its forces in Iraq? I didn't, either, until I found this out away from the MSM) it is downright dishonest, and not only with regard to "indigs," but even more so to pre-war intelligence memos, and to Iraq's alliance with Al Qaida. And on that angle the deniers of Iraq's alliance with Al Qaida won't quit, nor are the know-it-alls of the press quitting about Guantanamo, even though there never was any "torture".

It all leads to a depressing reality - that even with the proliferation of media and the decentralization of media, the hard-left Main-Stream Media still holds sway in coverage of the war and the world, and it brings to mind the late Peter Braestrup, the reporter and scholar whose landmark 1977 book "Big Story" showed in vivid detail the sensationalism and inaccuracy that permeated media coverage of the 1968 Tet Offensive, covering what was a calamitous Communist defeat and portraying it as a colossal enemy victory.

The Iraq war is in need of a Peter Braestrup.