D-Day- and beyond- Airborne site; one of the best I've ever seen

Trigger Time  This site has links for the researcher, the historian and for those just learning about D-Day, perhaps after viewing "Saving Private Ryan" and "Band of Brothers". Those focusing on the upcoming anniversary of D-Day may find this of great interest. Just don't let the critique of the "Band of Brothers" series affect your appreciation of  it.

The site includes then and now photos of men and locations from England and France.

Among them is this photo of an Easy Co. reunion: Taken several years after WWII, this photo shows the following, standing l. to r.:Amos 'Buck'Taylor, Darrel 'Shifty'Powers, Herb'Junior' Suerth, Robert Rader, and Ed Tipper. Below l. to r.: Floyd 'Tab' Talbert, Wally Wentzel, Don Moone, and Walter 'Smokey' Gordon

Parachute infantry uniforms  Including advice for the collector.

 "This page offers examples of unquestionably original uniforms acquired directly from vets or their families BEFORE the insane prices started-up. My purpose in posting these is to inform collectors of what real stuff looks like (see also Insignia, Equipment, and Souvenirs pages), not to gloat about what I've got." Mark Bando.

Band of Brothers page in the site. A related site has this
critique of the BoB series by Mark Bando.

In addition, this TW post contains a wealth of information under this single link.

Photo from the Souvenirs page. Of a man presumably collecting a souvenir.

Huckabee’s Exit Paves Way for Bachmann

Bachmann

Commentary Magazine  "That may have disappointed those who voted for him in 2008 and would do so again next year. But it was music to the ears of the other Republican candidates. In a weak field, Huckabee, an outsider and ordained Baptist minister who would up being the runner-up in the 2008 primaries to John McCain, was a potential top tier 2012 candidate. His exit from the race potentially benefits almost all of the other candidates but some more than others." 
Later in this same article, Mr. Tobin has this to say about Gingrich:
"But whether they buy into Gingrich’s   attempt to portray himself as a redeemed sinner will be a fascinating test of conservative opinion. My guess is that social conservatives will consider his marital infidelity while leading impeachment efforts that were rooted in President Clinton’s similar behavior as something that is between the former speaker and his God. But they and other Republicans won’t forget the embarrassment they felt when his hypocrisy was revealed. The wonkish Gingrich can neither play the guitar nor push the right buttons with evangelicals. No sale."  Jonathan S. Tobin
I like Newt's intellect and his vision for America, but am afraid Mr. Tobin may be right.

Michael Barone: Obama's hypocritical rhetoric on immigration reform

President Obama gestures while speaking about
 immigration  reform in El Paso, Texas.-LM Otero/AP

Washington Examiner  "....Hypocrisy because while Obama complained about "politicians" blocking comprehensive immigration bills, he was one of them himself.

"In 2007, when such a bill was backed by a lame-duck Republican president and had bipartisan backing from Senate heavyweights Edward Kennedy and Jon Kyl, Sen. Obama voted for union-backed amendments that Kennedy and Kyl opposed as bill killers."



The New Transparency: White House Bans Reporter After She Uses Cell Phone To Record Protest

Crooks and Liars   "Marinucci was granted a press pass last month to cover an Obama fundraiser in San Francisco. During the fundraiser, a group that called themselves Fresh Juice Party stood up to sing a protest song against the treatment of Bradley Manning, after paying $76,000 for a table at the fundraiser (tangentially, Nicole Sandler interviewed Naomi Pitcairn of Fresh Juice, and I'm not entirely clear that Pitcairn is clear about what she was protesting). Marinucci recorded the event and uploaded the video for her online column. And that's where the trouble begins."
 
Update: Chronicle responds after Obama Administration punishes reporter for using multimedia, then claims they didn't    "Update: In a pants-on-fire moment, the White House press office today denied anyone there had issued threats to remove Carla Marinucci and possibly other Hearst reporters from the press pool covering the President in the Bay Area.
"Chronicle editor Ward Bushee called the press office on its fib:

Sadly, we expected the White House to respond in this manner based on our experiences yesterday. It is not a truthful response. It follows a day of off-the-record exchanges with key people in the White House communications office who told us they would remove our reporter, then threatened retaliation to Chronicle and Hearst reporters if we reported on the ban, and then recanted to say our reporter might not be removed after all.

The Chronicle's report is accurate.

A plague on both your houses  Don't feel too infatuated with the protestors, however. Here is what they were protesting:

Marinucci was covering the event when about a half-dozen protesters who paid a combined $76,000 to attend the breakfast broke into a song chastising Obama for the government's treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence analyst suspected of illegally passing government secrets to the WikiLeaks website.

They were supporting the traitor.

The Lutheran Church and the War Between the States

Via The Freedomist:

From: Unsettled Christianity  "The national politics of the 1860s was represented in the Lutheran church split. The Lutheran church was bitterly divided by theological and political issues; the same issues that divided a nation in a Civil War."

Ahmadinejad: Bin Laden’s Death Was a Political Stunt – That’s Why They Didn’t Show Pictures

Gateway Pundit  "Iran’s Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi had also earlier announced that Tehran had genuine intelligence showing that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had died of disease long before the United States’ alleged raid."....
“If the US military and intelligence apparatus have really arrested or killed bin Laden, why don’t they show him (his dead body) why have they thrown his corpse into the sea?”

…US officials claimed that they have dropped bin Laden’s body in the Arabian Sea after conducting the necessary postmortem examinations and DNA tests to make sure of his identity.
Yet, a US official later announced that bin Laden’s hasty burial was in accordance with the Islamic law, requiring burial within 24 hours of death.
However, burial at sea is not an Islamic practice and Islam does not have a timeframe for burial.

...."Once again, it looks like Barack Obama created an international clusterfark by trying to appease the Islamists."


Ahmadinejad greets Israel-hating Jews at the conference

Former Dem Rep. Cynthia McKinney Blasts US Policy at Tehran Peace Conference

McKinney wearing head covering

“As an American, I am upset with the policies of my country, but the measures adopted by the first Afro-American president of the United States has ashamed us all,” she said.

“If there is no truth, there won’t be any justice, and today the US policies are rooted in lies, injustice and war,” she continued.

"Noting the United States’ aggravating economic conditions, she said the high rate of infant death toll in the United States is even worse than the European Union."  FARS News Agency
If the Iranians take her hostage, what will she say about the SEALs who rescue her?  Just asking.

Obama and Air Force One: It's good to have a 747

LA Times Blog  "We are privy to some of these numbers thanks to CBS' Mark Knoller, a bearded national treasure trove of presidential stats. According to Knoller's copious notes, during the last year Obama made 65 domestic trips over 104 days and six trips to eight countries over 22 days. Not counting six vacation trips over 32 days.
"He took 196 helicopter trips, signed 203 pieces of legislation and squeezed in 29 rounds of left-handed golf."

Hat tip to Val Brose, Santa Maria, Ca

Do You Feel Like We Do

Mike Adams "That night at UNH a good discussion of an important topic was hijacked by self-absorbed students who could not stop talking about their feelings. One could almost say that higher education is over-run by students who are possessed of an endless range of emotions and a boundless desire to share them with others. But one emotion is notably lacking from their repertoire: Humility.
"It’s really easy to sit around and talk about your feelings. It means never having to defend an idea on its own objective merits. It means our nation can continue to feel smarter while its collective mind continues to atrophy."
Mike Adams is a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and author of Feminists Say the Darndest Things: A Politically Incorrect Professor Confronts "Womyn" On Campus

Professor Mike Adams Wins Court Victory  ""No individual loses his ability to speak as a private citizen by virtue of public employment," wrote the court. "Adams' columns addressed topics such as academic freedom, civil rights, campus culture, sex, feminism, abortion, homosexuality, religion, and morality. Such topics plainly touched on issues of public, rather than private, concern.""

Fantasies, Present and Future

Victor Davis Hanson  "...How in the El Paso speech can one pontificate about and deplore partisan politics and “ugly rhetoric” on immigration when at the same time asking the audience to log on to a White House website to lobby for the president’s political agenda — a few months after asking “Latinos” to “punish” their Republican “enemies”? Is the latter “ugly rhetoric”? If not, why? And was it not more ugly rhetoric, when his whipped-up audience interrupted his own cheerleading with “they’re racists!”."
Obama's election healed few racial divides; it has mainly served to open more wounds where many had not existed before. Without Barack Obama, we would never have heard the words of Rev. Wright, Van Jones, Father Pfleger and other purveyors of racism from the left. It counts for nothing that many conservatives admire men such as Herman Cain, Allen West, Thomas Sowell and so many others; these people are dismissed by the left with vile, racist terms that no conservative would ever dream of uttering.
And they are given a free pass by a press with not a shred of integrity. TD

Interrogating terrorists: Imprecise Language Breeds Dangerous Policy

Bruce S. Thornton  "In the case of the Times and most other liberal critics, I suspect partisan advantage and ideology lie behind the continued misrepresentation of the techniques that have generated a torrent of actionable intelligence. Unfortunately, their distortions led to Obama’s Executive Order rejecting the same techniques that have generated such useful and life-saving information. This means that the next Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a goldmine of information after he was waterboarded, will remain mute, and the next Osama bin Laden will never be brought to justice. Worse yet, attacks like those thwarted over the last decade will have a better chance of success."

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/brianfarrington

Charles Krauthammer: Obama’s Demagogic immigration speech was meant to gin up votes, not advance sound policy

Demagoguery 101 "Constructive and civil debate — like the one Obama initiated just four weeks ago on deficit reduction? The speech in which he accused the Republicans of abandoning families of kids with autism and Down syndrome? The debate in which Obama’s secretary of health and human services said that the Republican plan would make old folks “die sooner”?"
Also this: Krauthammer Scolds 'Inside Washington' Host for Calling GOP 'Mediscare' Letter HypocriticalSaluting Obama, Our Demagogue in Chief  "It’s dangerous when the 4th Estate utterly abandons any pretense of unbiased reporting, simply operating like brain addled celebrity hacks; functionally no different than a star-struck high school girl “reporter” doing a feature on the quarterback/homecoming king."  Kelly O'Connell, Canada Free Press

Obama’s Demagoguery Knows No Bounds  "Use the class-warfare rhetoric to demonize Republicans and the rich. Blame Wall Street and Big Oil for high fuel prices. Rig the game for unions against business while paying lip service to the need for new jobs.
"All that’s left is to stoke racism, right?
"Wait – we have that, too."

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/chipbok

Aftermath of the bin Laden killing

Massacre in Pakistan: A Teachable Moment for the West  "There’s something particularly poignant about news that at least 80 people were killed in Charsadda, Pakistan, by a Taliban attack on a police training center there. It isn’t that the event was so unique — except for one feature — but it is a suitable symbol of the situation in the Muslim-majority world today and how messed up is the Western perception of that part of the world." Barry Rubin

http://iowntheworld.com/blog/

Osama: Release the Porn, Not the Photographs  "Besides that, the promulgation of bin Laden’s porn choices would reduce this holy man further and continue to mock him as a pathetic old man. This, I imagine, was the intention of letting the news of the porn collection out today. More, please. Don’t spare the details." Roger L Simon is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, novelist and blogger, and the CEO of Pajamas Media. His book, Blacklisting Myself: Memoir of a Hollywood Apostate in the Age of Terror, was released in February 2009.

The Death of Bin Laden and Obama’s Re-Election Prospects  "Barack Obama’s election victory in 2008 was one that made many Americans feel good about their country and the racial progress that has been achieved. Americans bought into the hope and change monikers of the Obama campaign. But the second time around, the president will be judged by his record, not the promise of what is to come."...

U.S. officials: “Fairly extensive” porn stash found in Bin Laden’s compound  "Speaking of incoherent White House messaging, here’s Bob Gates warning America that Navy SEALs and their families are now at risk for retaliation thanks to the media frenzy over the raid. You can thank our semi-moronic vice president for revealing which unit carried out the operation... What did they think would happen to U.S. servicemen, either the SEALs or others, once they did so?"

After bin Laden: Bringing Change to Pakistan's Counterterrorism Policies  "After years of denying bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan and complaining that Pakistan was unfairly labeled the “epicenter of terrorism,” Pakistani military officials must now accept the reality that the world’s most wanted terrorist was found in their backyard. U.S. Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta admitted that the U.S. had conducted the operation unilaterally because Washington decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize its success."  Lisa Curtis, Senior Research Fellow, Heritage.

Bin Laden Is Dead: Is It Time to Leave Afghanistan?  "The mostly Pashtun fighters we had armed and the mostly Punjabi officials we had partnered with in Pakistan felt that we had used them when convenient and abandoned them when they were no longer immediately useful. And Pakistanis have never forgiven us for it. Fairly or not, our promises of a strategic partnership ring so hollow among the Pakistani people today because, in their view, they’ve seen this movie before. If we leave behind an unstable Afghanistan, we run the risk that an entire generation of Afghans might come to feel the same way, and it is not clear we can afford to have two countries in that region of the world filled with people who mistrust us that much." Emphasis added.
Robert D. Lamb is senior fellow and deputy director of the Program on Crisis, Conflict, and Cooperation (C3) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

Bin Laden stayed obsessed with mega-attacks in US  "The captured files show Bin Laden is attaching no strategic importance to lone wolf operations of the kind the US Secretary of the Interior referred to Thursday – unless they use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. So far, there is no indication that Al Qaeda ever had the practical ability for this sort of attack."  DEBKAfile

From one captive to another, welcome to our new home.

Killing Osama bin Laden is justice, but waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is an outrage? 
"Because KSM violated the most fundamental laws of war, he does not merit the rights and privileges due an honorable soldier who, once captured, becomes a prisoner of war obligated only to reveal his name, rank, date of birth, and serial number, and entitled to such privileges as cooking implements, musical instruments, and a modest salary.
"Nor should an unlawful combatant be regarded as a common criminal entitled to Miranda rights, a speedy trial by a jury of his peers, and the presumption of innocence. The distinction between a terrorist who targets innocent civilians for mass murder and a guy who holds up a grocery store should not be as difficult to grasp as it apparently is for many who fancy themselves “human-rights activists.”"
Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism and Islamism.