Brian Williams’s Truth Problem, and Ours

Victor Davis Hanson

. . . "Obscure senator Walsh was forced out of his re-election race. Biden, on the other hand, became vice president. It did not matter much that the Obama biography by Pulitzer Prize–winning author David Maraniss contradicted many of the details from Obama’s autobiography.

"Hillary Clinton may well follow her husband’s trajectory and become president. The Reverend Al Sharpton helped perpetuate the Tawana Brawley hoax; he is now a frequent guest at the White House.

"Why do so many of our elites cut corners and embellish their past or steal the work of others?

"For them, such deception may be a small gamble worth taking, with mild consequences if caught. Plagiarism is a shortcut to publishing without all the work of creating new ideas or doing laborious research. Padding a resume or mixing truth with half-truths and composites creates more dramatic personal histories that enhance careers.

"Our culture itself has redefined the truth into a relative idea without fault. Some academics suggested that Brian Williams may have lied because of “memory distortion” rather than a character defect.

"Contemporary postmodern thought sees the “truth” as a construct. The social aim of these fantasy narratives is what counts. If they serve progressive race, class, and gender issues, then why follow the quaint rules of evidence that were established by an ossified and reactionary establishment?" . . .

http://www.danzigercartoons.com/cartoons/brian-williams-hillary-clinton

Look, Kanye! Another awards ceremony!

Lets see Kanye West crash this ceremony ; Rich Terrell

UPDATE: Dresden, 70 Years After the Firebombing

"She was burned to a cinder, had become very small, but her hand was held up and on it was her gold wedding band, shining, not blackened at all."

PJ Media

. . . "The survivors recall the bombing, in which an estimated 25,000 people were killed — burned alive, sucked into the vortex, their bodies exploding in the heat, heads raining down out of the sky like bowling balls as people were ripped apart in the maelstrom. Here’s one:

Soviet troops were pressing into Germany from the east and the other Allies from the west, but for 12-year-old schoolboy Eberhard Renner the war seemed far away. Dresden had been spared the destruction suffered by other cities like Berlin and Hamburg, and Renner clung to the hope that the Saxon capital would stay off the target list with the war so clearly near its end.

Even as air-raid sirens started screaming 70 years ago Friday, Renner’s father dismissed the attack as another reconnaissance mission. Then the bomb fell into Renner’s backyard. It blew the thick oak door off the shelter where the family had taken refuge, slamming him and his mother to the ground. Somebody yelled that the roof was on fire, and they ventured out into the streets as the bombs rained down.. . .

 "The Atlantic has a vivid and moving collection of photos of the destruction here. And then there’s this:"

UPDATE: BBC's insult to hero pilots: Veterans rage over Dresden coverage that attacks Britain as being 'worse than the Nazis' but ignores RAF's sacrifice

. .  ‘If the war had gone on for another year, how many millions more would have been killed at Auschwitz?

" ‘By all means cover it but the one-sided BBC coverage has incensed me.’

"A woman who wrote a letter to the Daily Mail added: ‘The BBC is beyond belief. Do we hear you “celebrating” the “hell” that was Swansea burning, or Coventry, or Plymouth, or Portsmouth – with the same unctuous sympathy as you are showing for Dresden? We have nothing to be guilty about.’

"Military historians and former military top brass defended the bombing of Dresden.

"Historian Frederick Taylor told the Mail: ‘Thousands of innocent civilians as well as soldiers were dying every day as battles raged in east and west – not forgetting the concentration camp inmates who were still being murdered by starvation, violence, disease, and forced marches.

"‘How could any resource – including the massive Allied air forces – be left unused in trying to shorten the war and save many, many thousands more innocent lives? There should have been more room for another view.’ " . . .

'Obama ignoring reality of Islamic terrorism,' deputy minister says after Paris attack remarks

Jerusalem Post  "Bayit Yehudi's Ben-Dahan takes offense at US president's comments that kosher deli shooting was "random.' " 

 . . . "Speaking to The Jerusalem Post on Thursday, Ben-Dahan of the Bayit Yehudi party said it was impossible that the Islamist terrorist who attacked the kosher supermarket, Amedy Coulibaly, chose the target at random, given the details of the case released by the French police.

"Coulibaly himself told BFMTV, a French radio station he called while he was holding the customers in the store hostage, that he had chosen the shop because he was targeting Jews.

“ 'If you close your eyes and pretend that anti-Semitism and Islamist terrorism doesn’t exist it just leads to more tragedies.

“ 'We’re in a very grave situation when the leader of the US, who is meant to be the leader of the democratic world, ignores reality and does not see with open eyes Islamic terror as it really is and how it appears in many places around the world.' ”. . .

$10,000 Muhammad Art and Cartoon Contest to be Held at Site of ‘Stand With the Prophet’ Conference in Texas

Breitbart Texas

"Pamela Geller is planning a “Draw the Prophet” event in Garland, Texas in the same location as a Muslim group held a “Stand with the Prophet” conference in January. The First Annual Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest will be hosted by the Curtis Caldwell Center, which is owned and operated by the Garland Independent School District.

. . .

"During the Free Speech Rally in Garland, Geller spoke with Breitbart Texas about her reaction to the large and loud crowd of protesters. She said that Muslims are trying to impose restrictions on free speech like they are doing in Paris. “Thousands of Americans said ‘no way!’”

“ 'The media can smear us and the President can stand with them,” Geller said. “We the people are not having it. If there is any proof of that, it’s today. We dwarfed them.”

Dogs Can Tell Happy or Angry Human Faces

MSN News  "If you ever get the impression that your dog can "tell" whether you look content or annoyed, you may be onto something. Dogs may indeed be able to discriminate between happy and angry human faces, according to a new study.

"Researchers trained a group of 11 dogs to distinguish between images of the same person making either a happy or an angry face. During the training stage, each dog was shown only the upper half or the lower half of the person's face." 

Read more.

Krauthammer: Crusaders and appeasers

Charles Krauthammer   

"His secretary of defense says, “The world is exploding all over.” His attorney general says that the threat of terror “keeps me up at night.” The world bears them out. On Tuesday, American hostage Kayla Mueller is confirmed dead. On Wednesday, the U.S. evacuates its embassy in Yemen, a country cited by President Obama last September as an American success in fighting terrorism.

"Yet Obama’s reaction to, shall we say, turmoil abroad has been one of  alarming lassitude  and passivity.

"Not to worry, says his national security adviser: This is not World War II. As if one should be reassured because the current chaos has yet to achieve the level of the most devastating conflict in human history. Indeed, insists the president, the real source of our metastasizing anxiety is . . . the news media.

"Russia pushes deep into eastern Ukraine. The Islamic State burns to death a Jordanian pilot. Iran extends its hegemony over four Arab capitals — Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and now Sanaa.

"And America watches. Obama calls the policy “strategic patience.” That’s a synonym for “inaction,” made to sound profoundly “strategic.' ” . . .Read the full article

Congress Passes Keystone XL Bill, Time For Obama To Veto Or Shut Up

WaPo via Weasel Zippers

"The House passed a bill to approve construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline Wednesday, setting the stage for the first veto showdown of the new Congress with President Obama.

"On a 270-152 vote that fell mostly along party lines, the House approved the bill, which has already cleared the Senate. The measure will now head to Obama’s desk. The president has vowed to veto the measure.

"Only one Republican, Rep. Justin Amash (Mich.), voted against the bill. Amash, a libertarian-leaning member, frequently clashes with GOP leadership.

"Twenty-nine Democrats crossed over to vote for the pipeline.[…]

Even the Liberal Media Doesn’t Want a Keystone Fight, So Why Does Obama?

"The strangest thing about the Keystone fight is that no one except Obama even seems to want it anymore. The media has backed away from the environmental arguments.

"The Washington Post’s editorial sneers at Republicans for the vote, but concedes that Keystone isn’t an environmental threat and that there’s no sense in fighting it." . . .

The man's temperament has been demonstrated to be that of a petulant juvenile; one who will spend millions of dollars barricading open-air monuments and even highways where people can see these monuments from a distance. He will try to prevent aged WW2 veterans on the trip of their lifetime from seeing these tributes that honor them, all for spite.

Scott Walker Once Ate Two Cookies at Recess When He Was Supposed to Eat Only One

They Always Tell You Whom They Fear — and the MSM Is Terrified of Scott Walker
. . . "We can’t have “questions lingering” about a man who might one day be president now, can we? So here we go with this thoroughly nasty piece of work that brings shame and disgrace on both its writer and the newspaper: . . .

Roger Kimball "Today’s funniest news item comes to us courtesy of the Washington Post. Here’s the headline:

As Scott Walker Mulls White House Bid, Questions Linger Over College Exit

"Not a side-splitter, I admit, but I did savor the humor. Listen:

MILWAUKEE — Scott Walker was gone. Dropped out. And in the spring of his senior year.
In 1990, that news stunned [stunned!] his friends at Marquette University. Walker, the campus’s suit-wearing, Reagan-loving politico — who enjoyed the place so much that he had run for student body president — had left without graduating.

"Gosh. I mean, you don’t say. This, you will have noticed, is the tone that newspapers reserve for Serious Revelations. The short sentences. Staccato. Ernest Hemingway meets Bob Woodward.

. . .

"Scott Walker is emerging as a formidable candidate. Hysterical melodramas about imaginary torts will make his opponents look craven and downright silly.  They will do nothing to derail his candidacy, which is yet another reason I found the story about him in the Washington Post amusing."

More on this from Legal Insurrection 
"The same mainstream media that refused to demand Obama’s (still undisclosed) Columbia University records in 2008 (while reassuring us that he was brilliant) has taken a keen interest in the academic pedigree of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

"Professor Jacobson repeatedly reminds us that the MSM always tries to kill Republican candidacies in the cradle. The Washington Post did it with Rick Perry’s hunting property rock. Jeb Bush’s high school antics are fair game, as were Mitt Romney’s.

"Now they’re trying to play the same game with Scott Walker’s unfinished college degree