Lorie Byrd at PoliPundit has been all over the false story of the Palestinian boy being shot by Isreali security forces. Powerline is now onto to it as well. This isn’t just a run-of-the-mill biased story. It may have been staged. What’s worse is that this story was a trigger point of the Palestinian intifada.

Setting off an uprising in a political tinderbox – I thought trying to influence a U.S. presidential election with forged documents was rock bottom. How low will it go?

Via RCP is an article by The Daily Star about ordinary Iraqis increasingly speaking out against the terrorist attacks. I’m glad the media is starting to report on this, but I don’t buy this “tired of terrorism” stuff. The article included the following:

While it may be too early to say public opinion has shifted, one thing is clear: Many Iraqis have grown tired of two years of constant insecurity, and some are directing their anger at insurgents for the first time.

As if the average Iraqi is thinking “hey, I didn’t mind watching my fellow countrymen get blown to bits on a daily basis, but this is getting a little tiresome.” As for “public opinion”, well we don’t have to rely on that elusive concept in Iraq any more. Iraqis actually voted and did so in spite of terrorists’ calls to stay away. Every Iraqi now knows he or she doesn’t stand alone against the tyranny. In a democracy people are allowed to speak their minds, and so they are.

The Democrats are predicting economic devastation as a result of Bush’s budget. How surprising. My question is this: aside from core Democrats who’ll drink any flavor of Kool Aid offered up by the liberal leadership, who’s actually going to take this attack seriously.

Leading up to the elections we heard the Dems compare the economy to the Great Depression. I’m no economist but a 5.4% unemployment rate and a growth rate over three percent is kind of the opposite of a depression. In Afghanistan the Dems warned that we would suffer the same fate as the Russian forces, but instead we got successful elections. Iraq and the greater Middle East…well, need I say more?

It also wasn’t as if the Dems were merely offering skepticism, reservation or another perspective that is a healthy part of democratic debate. No, it was blindingly rank, partisan bitterness that drove the Dems further and further away from reality.

Now we’re facing Bush’s budget. There’s no doubt that the deficit is a concern to any economist worth his salt. Instead of a healthy debate towards a reasoned solution, again the Dems will claim the sky is falling. Oh yes, except Social Security, that part of the sky is rock solid up there.

There’s a certain mystique surrounding the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. When living in America a few years back I recall a discussion I had with some collegues about their perception of the Mounties. Were they these brave, dedicated professionals driving to “always get their man”? “That’s what they say” was my response. I didn’t really know any.

After moving back to Canada over the last couple of years I was lucky enough to get to know quite a few “members” (that’s what the Mounties call themselves). To a person, they fit the stereotype.

Yesterday some scumbag killed four members.

They died getting their man.

Note: this post has been bumped/kimsch

We’ve heard a lot about the tipping point of Democracy in the Mid East. It seems we’ve reached a tipping point with the media as well. Even Bush’s most ardent critics are starting to see the light. From Jon Stewart and the New York Times in the U.S. to the Guardian and Spiegel in Europe…

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’.

(Bob Dylan)

Via PoliPundit, another invocation of Nazism from the Left. Senator Byrd draws a comparison between Hitler and Republicans in arguing against doing away with the filibuster.

It’s obvious that the Left doesn’t appreciate the fact that every time they compare Bush or Republicans to the Nazis they are belittling the horrors of the Nazi regime. I should clarify that, actually. They may or may not realize that they are belittling Nazi atrocities, but they don’t really seem to care.

Imagine being a Holocaust survivor, or a close relative of one, having seen or heard personal accounts of entire towns and villages rounded up, put on trains, marched into gas chambers and incinerated. Knowing brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, best friends who were put to death by the state because of their religious background.

Consider what it must be like to go through such horrors at the hands of the Nazis and then years later turn on your T.V. and watch some young woman at an economic development protest holding a sign comparing Bush to Hitler, crying out as a “victim” of republican policies. Imagine having lived through real atrocities and knowing that after the young woman has wiped away her tears of anger, rather than mourning the state sponsored killings of her friends she will get into her comfy Volvo and go with them to the mall.

Worse yet, consider what it must be like for our Nazi survivor to turn on C-Span and see Senator Byrd, an ex-klansman who actively promoted racism, attempting to leverage the suffering of millions of Nazi victims for his own political gain. Disgraceful.

The pace of transformation in the Middle East seems astonishing. In short succession Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and now Lebanon and Egypt have either gone democratic or are quickly heading towards democracy. There is no doubt this is unparalleled. I wonder though, just how astonishing this all would seem if the media showed a modicum of balance in their reporting and “analysis” of Afghanistan, Iraq and U.S. foreign policy in general.

From the outset of U.S. military intervention in the region, the media has almost exclusively focused on what was going wrong and what would go wrong in the future. A steady stream of experts and future tellers provided us with the skeptical downside. “Quagmire” was the catchword of the new millennium. Occasionally we would hear a press conference where Bush would tout the spread of democracy in the region. The media would give a collective condescending chuckle and go back to reporting from their hotel rooms, every car bomb story that came across the wires.

Imagine if the other side of the story would have been presented from the beginning. Imagine if the media had actually taken a serious look at the potential upside of U.S. foreign policy in the region. Imagine if Afghanistan had actually been covered after the shooting stopped. What’s happening now with Lebanon and Egypt would be no less history shaping. But it might have seemed a little less surprising.

From the International Herald Tribune:

More importantly, Iran’s admission came only after it was confronted with the evidence. I’m no expert, but 18 years seems like a long time to develop weapons systems. Awhile ago I wrote about the Left’s failure to appreciate the dangers of a false negative in such circumstances. Hard choices are approaching. The Left can await the outcome of this one and then preach about errors made in hindsight, but it would be nice for them to actually constructively enter the debate for the good of the country.

Even after raising the bar, Rall concedes that his ridiculous challenge has been met:

Believe it or not, no, I did NOT know that any of this stuff was out there. I’d read references by Republican bloggers to such things, but no one ever provided a link and I could never find it. Suffice it to say, this stuff pisses me off and should not be tolerated by anyone who purports to be a law-abiding American. And again: mainstream blogs like Kos should delete this shit as soon as it appears–as should the nasty right-wing sites like Little Green Footballs.

Has the challenge been met? Yes.

He has the nerve to express surprise, as if his ignorance wasn’t based on his own blinding bias, but on some blogosphere wide conspiracy to keep the truth from him.

Blindingly biased left wing media expresses bewilderment at their ignorance after being force fed the facts by conservative bloggers – pretty much an average day in the blogosphere. (Update: scroll up to get Rall’s admission, he doesn’t seem to have links for each posting.)

As usual Mark Steyn hits the nail on the head. His latest is an article entitled “U.S. can sit back and watch Europe implode.” He writes:

Europe’s problems — its unaffordable social programs, its deathbed demographics, its dependence on immigration numbers that no stable nation (not even America in the Ellis Island era) has ever successfully absorbed — are all of Europe’s making. By some projections, the EU’s population will be 40 percent Muslim by 2025. Already, more people each week attend Friday prayers at British mosques than Sunday service at Christian churches — and in a country where Anglican bishops have permanent seats in the national legislature.

Some of us think an Islamic Europe will be easier for America to deal with than the present Europe of cynical, wily, duplicitous pseudo-allies. But getting there is certain to be messy, and violent.

I seem to recall two previous implosions in Europe that were pretty messy and violent.

Update: Welcome Modern Tribalist readers.