LEAVWORLD: GRAFFITI POLITTI

Crossposted, with permission, from Sweet Spirits of Ammonia , by BobG: Yasser Arafat's legacy of death is still bearing its rotten fruit in the Middle East. At a rally in Gaza City to commemorate his death, at least six have died from gunfire. The opponents are the secular Fatah and Isalmist Hamas. Hamas has banned opposition rallies since its takeover of Gaza. However, stopping a ceremony to honor Arafat would not have been possible. So great is the Palestinian worship of this devil's spawn, it crosses all factions. The demonstration became chaotic as Hamas security began shooting. Hamas officials said they fired toward Fatah protesters for throwing stones at the security compounds. Others said the shots were fired when the crowd began taunting Hamas security forces, accusing them of serving the interests of Shia ruled Iran. The crowd chanted the word "Shia" repeatedly. That's enough to get you shot by Isalmomaniacs. And we want these lunatics to have their own ...

In a strange, almost "karmic" co-incidence, I started reading Ann Coulter's latest column, " McCarthyism: The Rosetta Stone of Liberal Lies ," at the same time that PBS was broadcasting " The Manchurian Candidate ," Friday morning. I had never seen the movie, and was shocked to witness the very same historical liberal smears of Sen. Joe McCarthy that Ms. Coulter was writing about! In the movie, released in 1962 (which was long after McCarthy's "fall from grace"), a fictional version of the senator is portrayed as totally subservient to his domineering wife, who is also a Communist agent (Angela Lansbury, in an outstanding performance). Here's an excerpt from Coulter's column that explains this in political terms: Rather than own up to their moral blindness to Soviet espionage, Democrats fired up the liberal slander machine, which would be deployed again and again over the next half century to the present day. In hiding their own p...

No one can dispute the lack of reporting on improvements in the Iraqi front of the war. Here are three (make that four) stories that haven't seen much exposure, but they are far from the only ones. Let's start with the number of US casualties dropping greatly in the last months. This excerpt is from Special Report, with Britt Hume : Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz spoke Sunday with Post reporter Robin Wright and CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr about why the media paid so little attention to the shrinking casualty numbers coming out of Iraq. Kurtz asked Wright if the story should have received more play. She responded - "Not necessarily. The fact is we're at the beginning of a trend - and it's not even sure that it is a trend yet... The numbers themselves are tricky." Starr said she needed more than one month's numbers before she "gets too excited" about the subject. But when Kurtz asked if an increase in casualty figures would ...