Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

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History Will Be the Judge

Sunday, January 18th, 2009

     I don’t know that we’ll ever hearken back to this period in history as "The Good ol’ Days."  But maybe even more than after the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s, we’ll look back and realize that it might have been a whole lot worse without pretty solid leadership at the top.  "Solid" doesn’t mean "Mistake-free," and there were certainly a lot of mistakes.  Lucky for us, the most of the mistakes (thus far) weren’t strategic ones (I take certain points of view from certain folks in the MSM who would disagree with me as confirmation that I’m correct).  The current Commander-in-Chief was no Ronald Reagan, but then as Victor Davis Hanson would point out, Ronald Reagan himself was sometimes "no Ronald Reagan." 

     That said, I was pleased (and not a little astounded) to read this.  (H/T Uncle D)

Posted in History, Internet, Media, What\'s Right | No Comments »

Weltanschauung Friends in the News

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

     Weltanschauung friend Bonnie is in the Chicago media for her work helping raise funds to build a Fisher House there (one near the Hines VA Hospital and later another in northern Chicago)! Congratulations, and thank you very much for supporting Fisher Houses.  For those of you who aren’t familiar, a Fisher House is a place where the families of service men and women can stay while their loved one recuperates from wounds. 

     Bonnie had some very nice things to say about Kevin Butler (Chicago Bears field goal kicker, rookie during Super Bowl ‘85) and also about Gary Sinise and his Lt Dan Band (they played in concert to raise money for the Fisher House in Chicago).  I second both, what great acts! It looks like the Lt Dan Band will be back to repeat the feat on 19 July 2008 at Cantigny Park in Wheaton, IL (Thanks also to Ms Deborah Rickert of Operation Support Our Troops–Illinois for the additional information about the upcoming concert; and thanks to Grant & Power Landscaping for helping support the overall effort)! 

     Below is the text of an e-mail from Fisher Houses for Illinois, Bonnie is mentioned in the second-to-last paragraph.

Debi Rickert of OSOT~IL presents a check for $75,000 to Fisher House on behalf of Operation Support Our Troops ~IL, Inc.

The following message was sent out by the Fisher House Chair to it’s Committee:

Hello to Fisher Houses for Illinois Board, Committees and Volunteers:

We have really great news to report. What a thrill and what a surprise!

Fisher Houses for Illinois received a generous contribution of $75,000 from fellow military support organization Operation Support Our Troops-IL (OSOTIL) at this non-profit’s July 21, 2007 Rockin’ for the Troops Benefit headlined by CSI:NY star Gary Sinise and the Lt. Dan Band.  These funds are specifically earmarked for the Fisher House for Hines VA Hospital.

Debi Rickert, President of OSOTIL, presented the check to Fisher Houses for Illinois representatives before 10,000 attendees at the Benefit at Cantigny Park, Wheaton, Illinois.    Added to prior OSOTIL contributions (in April 2007) for the first Fisher House in Illinois, this brings the total of OSOTIL-generated donations to $110,000.
  
This earns a permanent plaque for this generous donor in the Fisher House for Hines.

This organization’s volunteers have been a delight to work with from the get-go.   They are dedicated to their mission and to support the needs of our members of the Armed Forces of the USA deployed in harm’s way.

To date, OSOTIL has sent over 12,000 care packages to troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, 5,000 of those in 2005.   OSOTIL has also raised enough money to fund the purchase of two specially equipped vans for wounded soldiers.   Supporting America’s wounded military personnel is another facet of the mission that OSOTIL is looking to expand upon in the upcoming year.

Fisher Houses for Illinois is fortunate to have OSOTIL partnering with us to help veterans in Illinois and the surrounding 16 states with the Fisher House for Hine.

Please take a few minutes to e-mail OSOTIL President Debi Rickert at d_rickert@msn.com to thank her and her tireless workers for giving the Fisher House for Hines such a huge boost.

In addition, we want to express our gratitude to the volunteers who manned the Fisher House for Illinois exhibit at the OSOTIL Rockin’ for the Troops Benefit and those who volunteered to work shifts with OSOTIL.

Bonnie Chattler, Jim Boland, Rich Flatley and Barbara Kemp were magnificent as they built awareness of our mission by speaking with hundreds of attendees and distributing buttons and brochures.

Rich Goulet and his wife, Mark Garry, Madeline Bikus and Mary Vaughn plus VFW members Vito DeSimone and Mike Henning worked shifts with OSOTIL in a number of areas from traffic control to ticket-taking and clean-up.

 

Posted in Media, Weltanschauung Viewers | No Comments »

The New York Enquirer

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

     This may be the only thing I’ve ever read or heard from Michael Kinsley that was worth repeating.  This was hilarious!

     What’s fun is that I now get to find the Times’ most egregious errors, publish only their failures, claim that based on their ineptitude that their product is worthless, and call for everyone to stop reading the Times. 

     The parallels here compared to what they’ve been doing to us in the military with respect to Iraq are uncanny. 

     It’s like poetic justice. 

     Hat tip to HoyStory.

Posted in Internet, Media, Politics, What's Left | No Comments »

Let’s See if This Makes Prime Time

Friday, November 9th, 2007

     I sent the following e-mail to a nationally syndicated television show host.  The host in question seems to like vocabulary words even more than I do.  Let’s see if this makes the e-mail review section!

    I applaud you for disallowing tergiversation during your interviews.
    I like to employ words like tergiversation* to bifurcate the
quotidian pedantic from the lucid enlightened.

Grammercy,
CLP

*(1:  Evasion of straightforward action or clear-cut statement; 2:
desertion of a cause, position, party or faith), from Merriam-Webster’s
Online Dictionary http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/tergiversation)

Posted in Media | No Comments »

Color Me Skeptical

Saturday, September 1st, 2007
     I thought el chupacabra was some sort of vampire version of sasquatch.  Not this. 

Posted in Internet, Media | No Comments »

Interesting Thoughts on Journalism

Monday, August 13th, 2007

     My buddy Matt has some incisive comments for the journalism profession in this article.  Newsrooms across the country should take heed. 

Posted in Media | No Comments »

Stars & Stripes Goes Flying

Saturday, August 11th, 2007

     Here’s an interesting report from a new Stars & Stripes reporterette who got to fly at one of my alma matter squadrons.

     The Air Force likes to try to make sure our Public Affairs staffs and some corresponding media personnel really understand what it’s like to operate in the aerospace environment.  The best way to do that is to take them up for a familiarization orientation flight in a fighter.  It looks like she got selected to on a 2v2 ACT ride, and at one point her D-model wrapped up with one of the Red Air into a BFM engagement to the floor. 

     Any Viper driver in the world would walk away from a flight like that with a sense of absolute ecstasy.  Going all the way from a CAP to a merge and BFMing the bad guy all the way to the floor for a simulated ‘kill’ is something like the ultimate expression of what being a fighter pilot is; it’s like training for hunting a lion knowing that at the end, you wrestled it down with your bare hands. 

     From reading the article, it didn’t sound like our fearless writer came away with anything like that worth mentioning.  I can’t really blame her, we spend over a year training for this type of flying.  Still, I wish she’d talked more about the flying and less about how sick and sore she got. 

Posted in F-16 Operations, Media, USAF | No Comments »

Rabid Fox on FoxNews

Friday, July 6th, 2007
     From FoxNews.com (who else!?):  A five-year old took down a rabid fox and kept it from attacking six other kids.  Nice going, Rayshun!

Posted in Media, What\'s Right | 1 Comment »

A Special Comment Just for Keith Olbermann

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007
 

     Take your own advice. 

     Your basic worldview is, to put it nicely, screwed up.  It’s so screwed up that it causes you to not understand events happening in the world around you.  You’re not ‘misinformed’ so much as you are ‘clueless.’  What it all really boils down to is since you don’t understand the way the world works, you don’t support good causes, and therefore you don’t support the President.  But you’re so rabid yourself that you can’t abide a chief executive that guides the country on morality and conscience, so you feel compelled to suggest he leave office.  Your rage has unbalanced you.  Your rage makes you a poor source of information.  You cannot be trusted. 

     What more needs to be said about a clueless commentator whose show has a segment called ‘The Worst Person in the World?’ 

     You Shut Up

Posted in Media, What's Left | No Comments »

Much Better!

Friday, June 15th, 2007

     Hannity & Colmes followed Countdown on AFN News this morning.  Their first guest was Army Lt Col Ralph Peters (ret).  I agree with almost everything Col Peters says, except that he thinks the Air Force should be disbanded, with the strategic assets going to the Navy and the tactical assets going to the Army (see his recent book New Glory). 

     Col Peters writes extensively and can be seen in USA Today, the New York Post, and RealClearPolitics.com, in addition to his books. 

     Col Peters isn’t just controversial with his views on the Air Force.  The Bundeswehr pulled out of the 2004 Land Warfare Expo because of his famous criticism of the European (and especially German) defense establishment.  My friend Paul and I met him there.  He explained to Paul that perhaps his criticism struck too close to home, and the Bundeswehr’s absence was proof he was right.  He was a little surprised when I told him I’d read his first book, Red Army; he told me that that was actually based on a script for a large-scale command post exercise back in the 1980s.  He thanked both of us for our service (Paul actually spent an entire 15 months in Iraq, compared to my nearly negligible 32 days).  It’s always nice to be thanked, though!

     Thank God for Fox News.  Otherwise, I’d go insane from having to run the political-left-brain filter all the time. 

Posted in Media, What\'s Right | No Comments »

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