Some Rarely Seen WW2 Color Photos

I have on my bookshelf an interesting book of WW2 photos, taken by regular servicemen using what was then a tremendous luxury: color film. Some memorable photos: Immediate post war Germany, and a row of Mustangs in a field being cut up and burned by German civilians.

An American Spitfire squadron (didn’t even know that there was such a thing).

Anyway just got my Smithsonian Air and Space magazine today and as usual, there were plenty of good articles. They must be if not unique, nearly so, in that they post to the web most of their articles in their magazine.

Here’s an article on some more WW2 color photos – bet you haven’t seen them.

Whittle on Breitbart

Posted By lex, on March 5th, 2012

Worth watching, if you haven’t already seen it.

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Shut Up, They Explained

Posted by lex, on October 5th, 2011

Almost alone among mainstream media outlets, CBS News reporter Sharyl Atkisson has been digging away at the Gunwalker Scandal. In an interview yesterday with Laura Ingraham, she told how she that White House and Justice Department spokespeople have been “screaming at her” in response to her questions about what the Attorney General knew, when. They told her that, “the Washington Post is reasonable, the LA Times is reasonable, the New York Times is reasonable, I’m the only one who thinks this is a story, and they think I’m unfair and biased by pursuing it.”

And now, CBS seems to agree:**

Rush Limbaugh

With the news this morning of Rush’s passing, I thought I might bring a few remembrances of his early days. He arrived rather suddenly to Sacramento’s KFBK radio. Not as a syndicated host, but the host. He had had a number of radio jobs, all resulting in termination. I think that he chaffed at what station managers wanted him to do, versus what he wanted to do.

KFBK has over the years, been a very influential radio station in that they have many alumni around the country. I read his autobiography years ago, and he admitted that after so many failed radio gigs, if this Sacramento post didn’t work, he would have left the industry.

Fortunately the station manager gave him a lot of latitude.

Cooler Heads, and that

Posted by lex, on September 9, 2010

Gainesville Pastor Terry Jones has agreed under the pressure of overseas world leaders, General Petraeus, the Pope, the president and 301 million (-50) other Americans that his stupid pastor stunt was, well: Stupid.*  In light of the fact that site of the GZM project has been moved (it hasn’t).

Let us put aside for the now the exceptional phenomenon of the leader of the free world having to inject himself in this sordid spectacle, architected by a mean little man in a mean little shed masquerading as a church.

Let us focus instead on the new-found delicacy of our media, two members of which – having helped fan the flames of absurdity – decided to decline covering the actual act had it occurred.

A Game of Inches

Posted by lex, on June 7, 2010

If the Helen Thomas meltdown proves nothing else, it demonstrates that the spectrum from responsible journalist to opinion reporter to advocate to self-important lunacy is infinitely gradated, according to Jonah Goldberg:

If there was a right-winger who’d spouted so much bile, hate, and ideological agenda-driven nonsense in the White House briefing room for half a century it would be . . . oh wait, no such person would have ever been allowed to become a Washington “institution” in the first place. According to the media graybeards, it’s always been a sign of seriousness and unwavering truth-seeking for reporters to attack from the left (c.f. Dan Rather, Daniel Schorr, et al.).

See? She’s not biased she asks Obama and Clinton tough questions too! Yes, from the hard, loony left.

All of these condemnations, equivocations, repudiations, and protestations are all fundamentally silly because they are part of a D.C. Kabuki that treats the last straw as if it was wholly different than the million other straws everyone was happy to carry.

Of course, the alternative explanation is that within the press corps she wasn’t really all that strange until she went off the deep end. One of those “tipping point” kinds of things.

That and a regrettable tendency to stay on stage long past the last curtain call.

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How it Looks from the Other Side

Posted by lex, on December 13, 2008

Media Matters for America: After an 8 year holiday on unfairly criticizing national level politicians, the media are back to their old games.

But this week brought signs that much of the media is set to resume the absurd and shameful behavior that defined the 1990s — guilt by association, circular analysis whereby they ask baseless questions about non-scandals, then claim they have to report on the “scandal” because the White House is “besieged by questions,” grotesque leaps of logic, downplaying exculpatory information, and too many other failings to list.

If that happens — if the media continue to behave as they did in covering Whitewater — they will damage the country. It’s really that simple. We cannot afford to be distracted from serious problems by overheated conjecture and baseless insinuation masquerading as journalism.

Unfortunately for the hystericals at Media Matters, the MSM are well rested after having spent the last 8 years resting on the bench, taking no notice whatsoever of the Plame Affair (at least after it came to land in the lap of a politician outside Bush’s inner circle), pornographically dwelling on the barbarisms of pointy-headed twits at Abu Ghraib (and inferring that 4AM dog trots of humiliated POWs were authorized at the highest levels of American policy), shrieking from atop the kitchen chair at the excesses of the Patriot Act (which President-elect Obama seems content to continue pretty much as it always has done), Guantanamo (about which, no one knows quite what to do), the whole “16 words” thing (much ado about nothing, as it turns out),  and the firing of politically appointed at-will employees (for whatever reason or no reason at all, that being what “at will” means).

Not to mention actively sabotaging the efforts of the national command authority in a time of war.

So, investigating the Clinton’s various and sundry sordid acts during peacetime was “absurd and shameful behavior” but undermining the actions of a command-in-chief in time of actual war was, well: Unremarkable. Because taking an militantly adversarial stance against a Republican administration is honest and admirable, while shining a flashlight on the potential corruptions of a Democratic administration is “overheated conjecture and baseless insinuation.”

Because political ideology and party trumps country.

We always knew that some people felt this way. It’s just surprising to see them come out and say it.

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Stings a little, duddn’t it?

Posted by lex, on June 9th, 2007

Having spent the last six and one-half years determinedly attempting to achieve through shaded narratives and biased reporting a reversal of the 2000 Supreme Court decision that installed George W. Bush as president – or, failing that, at least minimizing what it apparently regards as that decision’s pernicious effects, the New York Times comes face to face with the results of its own inveterate malice: Reviewing yesterday’s destruction in the Democratically-controlled Senate of a presidentially-sponsored immigration bill the newspaper had favored, the paper of record labels the fiasco a “failure of leadership.”

Well, there you are.

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That’ll fix it

Posted by lex, on January 3, 2007

Hmmm.

Hands up who likes criticism – even the constructive kind?

But who thinks criticism – especially the constructive kind – is important to prevent stagnation, stultification and terminal self-satisfaction?

Not the New York Times, apparently.

After the Jayson Blair fiasco, the Times hired Dan Okrent as its “Public Editor,” essentially an ombudsman role. In that role, Okrent is chiefly remembered for answering the question, “Is the New York Times a liberal newspaper?” with, “Of course it is.” Even though he went on to say that it didn’t matter, Okrent was respected, but not much loved at the paper.

Some Recent WSJ Headlines That Intrigued Me

I used to think that all actors and actresses wanted to see themselves on the screen as soon as they were shown.

Apparently that is not so, and one apparently had never seen herself even 20 years after starring in an epic series.

That would be Meadow Soprano.

I mentioned in a past post that for screenwriting, the first decade of the 2000’s was an amazing time. Most of the great shows were on cable TV.
The Sopranos was about a typical New Jersey middle class family, with one exception.

The father was a Mafia crime boss.