The Land of Ozz

I have been pleasantly surprised a few times in the past couple of days at the coverage by the MSM from the Gulf Region. That said I have also become sick to my stomach at the coverage at other times. Not just because of the death, destruction, pain, and suffering, but because of the amount of coverage given to the folks wanting to point fingers and cry racism.

I can not grasp why so much energy is going into pointing fingers in a time of such need in the Gulf Region. Why don’t the news reports take some pictures of their own helicopters hauling people out or bringing food and water into the area?

I can not believe the comments of those claiming racism in regards to the people affected by this tragedy. People are going on TV claiming one race is getting a bad wrap in the news coverage of the disaster. These are all humans even if some find themselves partaking in animal-like instincts to protect and feed their families. None of us outside the affected areas can comprehend what might be going through the minds of the people carrying anything from stolen bread to a TV. My first reaction was to say shoot the looters carrying TVs in the head so you don’t have to worry about adding to the work load already on the medical professionals. I later came to realize that many of these people even the ones with TVs are probably so disoriented that they don’t even realize that a TV is going to pretty useless for the next few months in the city of New Orleans.

I have just about the same feelings towards government officials as I do about the people of New Orleans right now. I don’t know what they are thinking or what information they had to work with at the time they made their decisions in recent days relative to the forces of nature. What we must all do is work with what we do know and have right now. There will be a time later to go back and look at who could have done things better, but that will not help today.

Give to the American Red Cross or other reputable organization who is directly involved and experienced in these types of efforts. If you can not give money then give blood. If you can not give money or blood then at least pray and thank God for those who are able to give.

A recent report of new construction growth shows churches at the top of the list for highest percentage of non-residential construction increases. Church construction grew by 23% in June according to McGraw-Hill Construction, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies.

Mark over at Tapscott’s Copy Desk turned me onto this topic when commenting that this is a “statistic you likely will not see in the MSM.”

What makes this an even more interesting story is when you factor in the numbers from creative ways that some churches are growing when they find themselves pinched out by the real-estate boom/bubble. I attend Seacoast Church in Mount Pleasant, SC. Seacoast Church has become a national poster church for multi-site growth. Multi-site church is where a church delivers the same message via video or tape to multiple services at multiple locations in a weekend. Each location and service has its own worship team and other church functions, but the message is common across all locations and service times.

The lead pastor at Seacoast, Greg Surratt, recently played tour guide to some visitors and got a look at multiple sites of Seacoast on one weekend. Pastor Greg reported, “It’s working, we’re healthy and I love it.” With this type of growth that is not represented in the construction numbers, the actual numbers on church growth have got to be much greater than the construction statistics could ever reflect. It is a great day for the Lord, but it is too bad that God will likely not get much more credit than what is given from a few of us bloggers. Seacoast started in 1988 in borrowed and rented space with 65 attendees. Today the membership is up to approximately 7,000 members across nine locations if I have my statistics correct. There have been some really creative moves by the staff at Seacoast to bring God’s word to this many people without building a bunch of new church buildings.

h/t: Bill Hobbs for the link to the construction data.

Hopefully Virgin Galactic can get a truly non-bias journalist into space for the first time without a major disaster. CNN Journalist Miles O’Brien was working as the network’s space correspondent while his employer was working a secret backroom deal to get him a ride on a shuttle mission back in 2003. Now there’s a conflict of interest if I ever saw it. This was NASA’s second attempt to put an American journalist into space. The first attempt was halted by the Challenger disaster in 1986.

All of the ethical concerns of NASA sending a journalist into space should be over within the next three years since there will be plenty of space flight seats for those with the cash. Virgin Galactic plans to build commercial space craft that they claim will be ready for flight in 2008. All you need is a $20k down payment on the $200k price tag for a seat on one of the first commercial space flights already being booked by Virgin Galactic. The Virgin Galactic web site has a place to sign up here if you have the cash.

The Virgin Galactic web site says:

Virgin Galactic is a company established by Richard Branson’s Virgin Group to undertake the challenge of developing space tourism for everybody.

Virgin Galactic will own and operate privately built spaceships, modelled on the history-making SpaceShipOne craft. These spaceships will allow affordable sub-orbital space tourism for the first time in our history…

The grand entrance of SpaceShipOne to AirVenture was the opening act to the announcement of this new service. Virgin Group’s Branson and SpaceShipOne builder Burt Rutan to form The Spaceship Company that will build the new commercial spaceships.

Space.com wrote on 7/27:

The announcement was made today at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s (EAA) AirVenture gathering being held July 25-31 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The yearly event spotlights homebuilt aircraft, antiques, classics, warbirds, ultralights, rotorcraft—as well as the emerging commercial spaceflight business.

This news comes only a week after the story broke about CNN journalist Miles O’Brien who reports that he nearly missed a chance to be the first American journalist in space. O’Brien was reporting on NASA operations in 2003 when the Columbia shuttle broke up on reentry. The day of the disaster obviously hit home with him according to a July 22, 2005 The San Diego Union-Tribune article that said:

His wife showed up at the studio and cried when she saw him. O’Brien told her to go home. He didn’t need the distraction.

That was pretty insensitive to say the least.

A story about how the MSM is or at least needs to change the way they do business was posted by a seasoned MSM member Jeff Jarvis. Reading blogs is as important as posting to them. Mark Tapscott’s quote of the Proverbs 18:2 in the description of his blog reminds us of that. Mark gives comments on the BuzzMachine “A new newsroom” posting by Jeff Jarvis. These postings are a must read for those who want to know how blogs might play into the future of MSM.

I have been meaning to post a link to this. It is great. You can always count on Michelle Malkin to dig up the good stuff. Here she pay a special tribute to the CNN 25th anniversary.

Yes the MSM is stinking up the airways again with reports of abuse of the Quran without giving the whole story. With the violence that erupted after the Newsweek story, you would think that the MSM would be a little more laid back on the subject. No. It’s like they want to see if they can stir another riot that kills more people. Then they could report on how it was the alleged abuse of the Quran that caused the riots and not their own reporting of the false or incomplete information.

The more disturbing fact is that the MSM continues to disregard the rest of the story. Michelle Malkin dug out some interesting facts from the original report from the investigation into the Gitmo Quran abuse claims. Her finds tell a different story than many of the MSM reports. She links you to several of the reports that are starting to spin up. Malkin says:

***Don’t trust the MSM reports. Read the Pentagon’s investigative findings for yourself here.

You can read her full story here. Mark Tapscott adds to Malkin’s findings here. The bottom line is that the MSM is not interested in telling the whole truth and sometime it seems as if they want to tell no truth. Black Five provides a quote from a Vietnam VET that says it best and you can read it here.

The truth about our military action around the world is available. Unfortunately you have to sift through the garbage to get to it or you can just pull up some blogs from the front lines. There are good stories about actual events on the ground in places like Iraq. These are not stories of soldiers targeting journalists. These are stories that tell the truth about what these men and women face daily. I was glad to hear that Black Five was invited to appear on MSNBC. He took the opportunity to highlight some blogs that provide the real stories from military members around the world. A good example is Howdy’s BLOG: Drunk Guy where he tells of his view of the MSM from the front lines. He believes that our country is not as divided as the MSM wants you to think. My favorites are stories like “The Power of a Piece of Candy” from A Day In Iraq.

MediaSlander is taking the fight to News Guild’s member papers to see if they support her unsubstantiated claims that US troops are targeting journalists. Go get’em gang!

The Quran is to the Muslims as the Bible is to Christians. Well, almost. The major difference is that most Christians would not run out in the street and start killing people if they heard from a magazine article that some foreign military officials were flushing pages from the Bible down the toilet. True or not the story was published. I have not read the story from Newsweek and I probably will not. Newsweek is something I read for comical entertainment while waiting to see a doctor. Others that I find amusing are parenting magazines that run the “let’s keep our children happy at any cost” stories. These magazines are great examples of I believe is a big problem in our country today. Too many people are worried too much about pleasing other people by telling them what they want to hear and they have stopped worrying about doing the right thing.

I listen to talk radio quite a bit. One of my favorite shows is the Glenn Beck Program. Glenn has folks respond to Newsweek’s recent incorrect story on the treatment of the Quran by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Well, it may have been incorrect, or maybe not. There is a CNN story saying that the Red Cross Warned U.S. over Quran with no specific references to Quran mistreatment.

The bottom line is that the Quran probably is mistreated at times. There are people in the US military and other government agencies that break the rules. You can make all the policies you want on how the Quran should be handled, but that does not guarantee that all people will follow these rules and polices. That should not be news to anyone.

There are wackos wearing uniforms in our military. Why do you think they have two man control on nuclear weapons? I worked on nukes for over five years in the Air Force. No single person was ever allowed access to missile silos. That is because the military knows that there are wackos that might take advantage of the opportunity if given unmonitored access to a nuclear missile silo.

I agree with the former Marine who called into the Glenn Beck Program on Monday. He said that he went through interrogation training in the military. He was kept from urinating for a long period of time before his trainers took him and other trainees to a pit. The bottom of that pit was covered by an American flag. The trainees urinated on the flag. They were able to do so because they viewed the flag in that pit as a piece of cloth. The flag has a meaning, but it is just a colored piece of cloth. They were not disgracing their country by what they did. I do not like to see the flag burned or even touch the ground, but I am not going to spill my guts to the enemy because the flag was defaced or destroyed.

I feel similar about the Bible. It is a book. It is ink and paper. Pressing a bunch of trees into paper and plastering ink on the pages does not make that paper sacred. Heck, the Bible in on the Internet. Does that make the Internet sacred? NO! What it represents is sacred, but the book itself is not. I know people that would argue with me on this one. I was raised to respect the Bible. I was taught not to put other things on top of the Bible. I still practice these beliefs as much as possible. I would not spill secrets as a result of the enemy flushing it down the toilet. The Muslims might spill their secrets as a result of the Quran being flushed. They don’t think like us.

The problem is that Muslims do not view things the way Christians do. We have a pastor at our church that has immediate family members who are Muslims. He says that Muslims take care of you if they like you and the will kill you if they hate you.

I am sure that Newsweek would not have run this story if they thought it would cause riots that would kill people. I am not sure that the riots were solely in response to the Newsweek report. For all I know this may be a case of my unconfirmed story is bigger than yours. The kansascity.com story did not cause riots. These riots would have happened for some other reason if it were not for this Newsweek story.

Weather the Quran was flushed, burned, or chewed by a wacko military member or a legitimate interrogator does not matter. I believe that it is entirely possible that it did happen at some point. I would even support flushing a book if it were effective at extracting information from the terrorist captives that can save American lives no matter what is written on the pages of the book. Muslims Riot Over Spelling of ‘Quran’ in U.S. Media indicates that the reason for the riots may not be because of the flushing of the Quran, but because of the spelling of the word Quran.

Other interesting views from:

Patrick Ruffini - A Test for Liberals
Conservative Outpost - Newsweek lied…people died
Right Wing News - The Newsweek “Qu�ran In The Toilet” Fiasco? It’s Just Another Karl Rove Conspiracy!
Black Five - Haven’t Read Newsweek Since May 26th, 2003