This photo shows the press area for the trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell. Notice just how INTERESTED the national press is in this story… Here’s info from the staff at Twitchy:

“Prosecutors and former employees of Kermit Gosnell say his abortion house of horrors was a place of real-life nightmares: Babies screaming and moving after abortion procedures, living infants beheaded and babies’ feet severed and kept as trophies. A woman testified that starting at age 15, she assisted with abortions and saw two newborns move after being pried from their mothers’ wombs.

But according to the national media, this is just a “local crime” story, not worthy of their attention.
{…}
President Obama quickly condemned the killing of late-term abortionist George Tiller, but has nothing to say about these horrific accusations of baby murder. The complicit media won’t even feign interest in covering this story. As actress Patricia Heaton noted, “There was more coverage of Manti Teo’s imaginary girlfriend.” ”

Obama voted against protection of babies being born alive from botched abortions [Born Alive Infant Protection Act] when he was in the Illinois state Senate, why would he have changed his mind now? He hasn’t “evolved” on this issue like he did on gay marriage!

Bottom line is, this outrageous HORROR STORY of grisly infanticide does not fit the Leftist narrative that abortion is a sacrosanct “woman’s right”, so WE don’t have the right to know about it. “All the news that’s fit to…” and all that jazz.

However, the conservative side of the blogosphere is putting the screws to them: “PJ Media Sets Up Tip Line for Reporters to Anonymously Name Editors Who Have Spiked any Gosnell Coverage” :

Adoption / Abortion — they both start with “A”… One’s noble, one’s a heinous abominiation! Don’t KILL your unborn child, let someone else love it like it is their own.

It’s the “noble” thing to do.

A blessed Easter to you and yours,

Okie

Bob Woodward, the Bob Woodward of Woodward & Bernstein that took down Richard Nixon over Watergate, has had the temerity to criticize our thin-skinned POTUS on the Sequester.
“Can you imagine Ronald Reagan sitting there and saying, ‘Oh, by the way, I can’t do this because of some budget document?’” Woodward said.

“Or George W. Bush saying, ‘You know, I’m not going to invade Iraq because I can’t get the aircraft carriers I need?’” Or even Bill Clinton saying, ‘You know, I’m not going to attack Saddam Hussein’s intelligence headquarters,’ … because of some budget document?”

The Defense Department said in early February that it would not deploy the U.S.S. Harry Truman to the Persian Gulf, citing budget concerns relating to the looming cuts known as the sequester.

“Under the Constitution, the President is commander-in-chief and employs the force. And so we now have the President going out because of this piece of paper and this agreement. ‘I can’t do what I need to do to protect the country,’” Woodward said.

“That’s a kind of madness that I haven’t seen in a long time,” he said.

Not long after that Woodward charged that a Very Senior White House staffer “threatened” him over those remarks. Over at Twitchy you can see the Lefties piling on. How dare their darling Nixon Killer cast dispersions on the Mighty O?

Ace of Spades HQ’s Ace writes, “Obama hatchet man David Pflouffe works energetically to spread the word that Woodward is an old horse who should be put down for glue.”

Even former Clinton White House aide Lanny Davis is now acknowleding threats for criticizing Obama:

A day after Woodward’s claim that a senior White House official had told him he would “regret” writing a column criticizing President Obama’s stance on the sequester, Lanny Davis, a longtime close advisor to President Bill Clinton, told WMAL’s Mornings on the Mall Thursday he had received similar threats for newspaper columns he had written about Obama in the Washington Times.

Davis told WMAL that his editor, John Solomon, “received a phone call from a senior Obama White House official who didn’t like some of my columns, even though I’m a supporter of Obama. I couldn’t imagine why this call was made.” Davis says the Obama aide told Solomon, “that if he continued to run my columns, he would lose, or his reporters would lose their White House credentials.”

Now, Democratic spokesman Chuck Dodd is saying that Woodward is now a spokesman for the Republicans.

We certainly live in a Mad, Mad World — and our leader is “mad as a hatter”!!!

The president, down in Florida for vacation without his family, will spend the day golfing. The press, meanwhile, is on a “party bus,” according to the pool report:
{…}
“Today, the President will be playing golf at the Floridian. We will release a list of those in the President’s foursome this afternoon. At this time, there are no public events scheduled or plans for the President to leave the grounds of the golf club. If those plans change, we’ll let you know promptly.”

Toadies all of ‘em!!!

Meanwhile, Obama works on his slice with one, maybe two, $1,000 per hour golf pros.

“I wonder what the peasants are doing tonight?” — Camelot

Keeping it simple and close to home “again” this year . . . counting our blessings that are more plentiful than we deserve.

Merry Christmas to all…

I originally posted this in 2005 and have updated it a couple of times. I like to present it every December 7th as the story is as poignant as ever, especially with our troops still in theater in Afghanistan. They really are our best and brightest — far too many were lost 71 years ago today. According to the Christian Science Monitor:

More than 2,000 people are gathering at Pearl Harbor on Friday to mark the 71st anniversary of the Japanese attack that killed thousands of people and launched the United States into World War II.

Ceremonies get under way with a moment of silence at 7:55 a.m., the exact time the bombing began in 1941.

We came together as a nation after the attack on Pearl, and after our own generation suffered the attack on 9/11. Here in 2012, we find the United States about as divided in ideology as it was just before the Civil War. We must never forget what happened 71 years ago, as well as only 11 years ago. There are still tens of millions of radical Islamists out there that want ALL of us dead. Like the Talking Heads song says, “Same as it ever was . . . same as it ever was.”

– Okie, 12/7/2012

This post is one that I wrote in 2005 to commemorate this tragic, special day. Instead of just linking to it I decided to post it anew, as the stories of those that worked valiantly to save as many lives as possible deserve to be told again. The comments that I made about our brave men and women serving in Afghanistan and Iraq are even more true today. Our fathers, mothers, uncles and aunts — The Greatest Generation — stepped up, took on the mantle of terrible responsibility and did their duty — history awaits whether we will stay the course and complete the tasks that destiny has assigned to our own.

[From 'Okie' -- 2005:]

It’s Pearl Harbor day, and most veterans, especially those that saw battle, never talk to non-veterans about their military service. In my own family, I know that all of my uncles served, many in WWII, but only much later, most after their passings, did I find out only a little of what they had done in the war.

My wife’s and my father were Navy guys, mine a pharmacists mate on a troop/supply transport ship named the “Mighty A”. The most dangerous thing that he ever told me about was his ship being hit with a dud torpedo. If it hadn’t been a dud, the story would have been more exciting, but he would not have been the one to tell me about it! I know nothing about my wife’s father’s Navy experiences, I just have a picture of him in his dress blues, dashing in appearance, with a small earring worn in a defiant manner, along with a scan of his honorable discharge that I worked into a pictorial tribute that accompanied his funeral almost a decade ago. Several of his brothers were also in the Navy, a couple were in the BUDs area of service that later became the Navy SEALS, and were covert operatives in Naval Intelligence and served in later branches of the intelligence services during Korea and Vietnam.

Which brings me to today, Pearl Harbor Day. I don’t know if any of my uncles were at Pearl Harbor. If they were, they never talked about it with me. In reading the LA Times this AM, I learned that the USS Oklahoma, a 27,500-ton Nevada class battleship, and the men who served and died aboard her, have finally been given their own special acknowledgment.

Tribute to Pearl Harbor Battleship Is Unveiled

From Times Wire Reports

Sixty-three years after the surprise attack that plunged the United States into World War II, hundreds of men who died aboard the battleship Oklahoma are finally getting their own special tribute.

A new exhibit of photos, artifacts and oral histories was unveiled in Honolulu to honor the 429 men from the Oklahoma who died in the Dec. 7, 1941, attack by the Japanese.

That is the second-highest number of Pearl Harbor casualties behind the battleship Arizona, where most of its 1,177 killed crew members remain entombed after the ship sank in the attack.

I guess King Neptune had plans for this mighty ship, other than allowing her to be scrapped. The Kansas City Star adds more information to the above.

The Oklahoma was refloated in 1943 and sold for scrap after the war, but it sank in the Pacific Ocean while being towed to California.

Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and other military bases on Oahu lasted two hours. Twenty-one ships were heavily damaged, and 320 aircraft were damaged or destroyed. In all, about 2,390 persons were killed and about 1,178 were wounded, according to the National Park Service, which maintains the Arizona site.

Powerline has a wonderful tribute that includes President Franklin Roosevelt’s speech asking Congress for a declaration of war and Churchill’s reaction.

As we remember those lost and those who fought so bravely on this day, 63 years ago, let us reflect on the fact that Japan is now one of our strongest allies and important trading partners. It took a long time to help them overcome the damage to their country and society caused by their leaders’ wartime ambitions, but with our guidance and financial help, Japan was brought into the modern world and became an important part of the world’s economy. They are a part of the “Coalition of the Willing” in Iraq.

We must look to our past and not be too impatient in our present. The same fighting spirit of our fathers and forefathers exits within the warriors that are helping the Iraqi people even at this very minute. Many will come back, and not tell their stories for years to come, if at all, but they will be valiant stories, none the less! . . . db

[Update] LGF provides this link to the Navy’s archive of images and information, with some of the pics taken from Japanese warplanes.

According to the Navy site the following is what was going on here, as taken from a Japanese fighter:

Torpedo planes attack “Battleship Row” at about 0800 on 7 December, seen from a Japanese aircraft. Ships are, from lower left to right: Nevada (BB-36) with flag raised at stern; Arizona (BB-39) with Vestal (AR-4) outboard; Tennessee (BB-43) with West Virginia (BB-48) outboard; Maryland (BB-46) with Oklahoma (BB-37) outboard; Neosho (AO-23) and California (BB-44).
West Virginia, Oklahoma and California have been torpedoed, as marked by ripples and spreading oil, and the first two are listing to port. Torpedo drop splashes and running tracks are visible at left and center.
White smoke in the distance is from Hickam Field. Grey smoke in the center middle distance is from the torpedoed USS Helena (CL-50), at the Navy Yard’s 1010 dock.
Japanese writing in lower right states that the image was reproduced by authorization of the Navy Ministry.

U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph.

Vertical aerial view of “Battleship Row”, beside Ford Island, during the early part of the horizontal bombing attack on the ships moored there. Photographed from a Japanese aircraft.
Ships seen are (from left to right): USS Tennessee with USS West Virginia moored outboard; USS Maryland with USS Oklahoma moored outboard; and USS Neosho, only partially visible at the extreme right. West Virginia and Oklahoma are gushing oil from their many torpedo hits and are listing to port. Oklahoma’s port deck edge is already under water. Nevada has also been torpedoed.

Rescue teams at work on the capsized hull of USS Oklahoma (BB-37), seeking crew members trapped inside, 7 December 1941. The starboard bilge keel is visible at the top of the upturned hull.
Officers’ Motor Boats from Oklahoma and USS Argonne (AG-31) are in the foreground.
USS Maryland (BB-46) is in the background.

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives.

I hope that the Navy won’t mind that I’ve “borrowed” these three images and descriptions to help make this a better presentation and memorial for this day. I urge anyone interested in Pearl Harbor to follow the links to the Navy Archives site to better comprehend the full extent of the tragedy and valiant courage that defines this “day that lives in infamy”!

(Okie)