Birdman with $101.9 Million Worldwide Might Have Won the Oscar But American Sniper with $541.2 Million Won What Counts -- The Box Office Take!

THE PUBLIC HAS ALREADY VOTED WITH THEIR WALLETS!

Although I truly appreciate the critics picking Birdman as the best movie picture of the year and winners in all the other categories, but in the ONLY category that really counts – MONEY MADE – it appears the American and International movie going public had already made their decisions.  When it comes to picking movies, I normally "trust the mob" so here is how the movie going and paying public ranked this year’s movies as of 19 April 2015.

Worldwide Rank, Movie, Box Office Receipts (Worldwide & Domestic)

1. The Transformers: Age of Extinction -- $1,091M Worldwide - $245.4 Domestic
2. The Hobbit:  The Battle of the Five Armies -- $951.4M Worldwide - $255.1M Domestic
3.  Guardians of the Galaxy -- $772.4M Worldwide - $333.2M Domestic
4.  Meleficent -- $758.4M Worldwide - $241.4 Domestic
5.  Hunger Games: Mockingjay -- $751.4 Worldwide - $336.4M Domestic
6. X-Men:Days of Future Past -- $748.1 Worldwide - $233.9M Domestic
7. Captain America:  The Winter Soldier -- $714.8M Worldwide - $259.8M Domestic
8. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 -- $709.0 Worldwide - $202.9 Domestic
9. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes -- $708.8 Worldwide - $208.5 Domestic
10. Interstellar -- $672.7 Worldwide - $188.0 Domestic
11. Big Hero 6 -- $652.0 Worldwide - $222.4 Domestic
12. How to Train Your Dragon -- $619.0 Worldwide - $177.0 Domestic
13. American Sniper -- $541.2 Worldwide - $347.8M Domestic
14. Godzilla -- $528.9 Worldwide - $200.7M Domestic

Notice NONE of the eight nominated movies is the top money maker of the past year although the Top Earning nominee, American Sniper, was #1 domestically and #13 internationally and has made over $541 Million Worldwide.

Although it is obvious that The Transformers: Age of Extinction with over $1 Billion Worldwide and $245.4 Domestic should be this year's Oscar winner, the winner had to come from the nominees selected by their Hollywood elite peers so here is how “the Domestic mob”  ranked the nominees according to how they spent their money:

1. American Sniper -- $347.8M Domestic - $541.2M Worldwide
2. The Imitation Game -- $91.0M Domestic - $218.9M Worldwide
3. Grand Budapest Hotel -- $59.1M Domestic - $174.6M Worldwide
4. Selma -- $52.1M Domestic - $52.1 Worldwide
5. Birdman -- $42.3M Domestic - $101.9M Worldwide
6. The Theory of Everything -- $35.9M Domestic (#86) - $121.2M Worldwide
7. Boyhood -- $25.4M Domestic - $44.5M Worldwide
8. Whiplash -- $13.1M Domestic - $14.0M Worldwide

No contest ….and the WINNER is, bank statement Please (drum roll), the hands down winner by a country mile is (sorry Michael Moore, Seth Rogen and Birdman):

American Sniper!

Until next year, here’s the Old Colonel wishing you an enjoyable night at the movies!

District of Columbia 2014 Homicide Rate Once Again Tops Maryland’s and Blows Away Virginia’s! - for 2015, DC is on Track for a Record Year.

Each New Years Day I anxiously await the Washington Post article exposing the homicide stats for the District of Columbia, our Nation’s Capital, and the surrounding suburbs so I can confirm how luck I am to live in Virginia where I have the freedom to own a gun for self-protection.  From the stats it is very obvious that homicidal maniacs would much rather commit their crimes in jurisdictions like DC and Maryland that not only don’t have the death penalty but where they have little chance of being confronted by a law abiding citizen who just might have a gun of their own!

This year’s WaPo article: Homicides remain steady in District, Prince George’s ( Link at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/homicides-remain-steady-in-district-prince-georges/2014/12/31/cccb5428-8606-11e4-9534-f79a23c40e6c_story.html ) showed that a DC resident, where firearms are virtually impossible to own, was 16.32 times more likely to be a homicide victim then one of us Gun Tottin Virginians living in the adjacent DC suburbs of
Alexandria City and, Arlington & Fairfax Counties where gun ownership is almost unrestricted.  Even a Marylander living in the adjacent DC suburbs of Prince Georges and Montgomery Counties, with increasingly strict gun laws under former Gov O’Malley, was 4.1 times less likely to be a homicide victim than a DC resident; much better than DC but a Marylander was still almost 4 times more likely to be a homicide victim than one of us Virginia Gun Totters!  Those stats have gotten much worse so far this year according to the WaPo website that tracks DC area homicides.  DC is on track for a record breaking year with 106 homicides so far and as of 5 September 15, a DC resident is now almost 31 times more likely to he a homicide victim than a suburban Virginian while a DC resident is now 5.6 times more likely than a suburban Marylander.  A Marylander is now over 5.5 times more likely to be a homicide victim than a Virginians.

Like in past years, the WaPo curiously makes no attempt to explain the disparity in rates among the various jurisdictions but even a cursory analysis of the stats might reveal a motive for why the Liberal WaPo does no analysis -- could it be because it would clearly demonstrate the dramatically inverse relationship between homicide rates and restrictions on gun ownership. 

For you doubters who might want to run the figures for themselves, here is the detailed math for the 2014 numbers using the latest population estimates from Census Bureau and the Stats in the article:

DC population = 646,449
2014 Homicides = 105
2014 Homicide Rate = 16.268 / 100,000 people.

Maryland DC-suburbs of Montgomery & Prince George’s Counties
Population = 1,906,758 (Montgomery = 1,016,677; PG = 890,081)
2014 Homicides = 76
2014 Homicide Rate = 3.986 / 100,000.

Virginia suburbs of Alexandria City, and Arlington and Fairfax Counties
Population = 1,504,722 (Alexandria = 148,892, Arlington = 224,906, Fairfax = 1,130,924)
2014 Homicides = 15 homicides
2014 Homicide Rate = .997 / 100,000

Comparison of DC to VA suburbs = 16.268/.997 = A DC resident is 16.32 times more likely to be a victim than a Virginian

Comparison of DC to MD suburbs = 16.268/3.986 = A DC Resident is 4.08 times more likely to be a victim than a Marylander

Comparison of MD surburbs to VA suburbs = 3.986/.997 = A Marylander is 3.998 times more likely to be a victim than a Virginian

As of 22 Aug DC has experienced 101 homicides while the Virginia adjacent suburbs have had 8 and the Maryland adjacent suburbs 49.  Plug those numbers into the above equations to get the 2015 stats to date.

Now I’m not opposed to registration and some reasonable limits on ownership such as terrorists, ex-cons and the mentally unstable but there should be no restrictions on ownership by average citizens – anywhere in the US. There is a “God-given” right of self protection, especially in one’s own home, and a gun is the only way to exercise that right. If you don’t believe me, just ask any Bostonian who was directed to “shelter in place” during the Marathon Bomber manhunt or upstate New York resident when Police were hunting the murders who escaped from their Clinton “maximum security prison” how they feel about owning a gun now! . One has to go no further than right here in our own DC-area backyard to clearly demonstrate that contrary to liberal rhetoric, it is an “inconvenient truth” that guns actually do make us safer. Case in point, Virginia has by far the laxest gun laws and the least gun violence of any of the surrounding jurisdictions.  Could it be criminals are not so anxious to attack law-abiding citizens if they might be "packing heat?"

I would add that for those of you that are sincerely worried about the safety of children in homes with guns, I would suggest that your energies would be far more productive in saving children’s lives if you were to crusade against home swimming pools.  In any given year in this country there is one child drowning death for every 11,000 residential swimming pools or 550 children under the age of 10 drown every year in our 6 million pools. Meanwhile there is one child killed by a gun for every one million (plus) guns in this country or with about 300 million guns, approximately 175 children die. This means a child is over 157 times more likely to drown in a pool than be killed by a gun. Hence, banning residential pools is a much more effective way of protecting children than banning fire arms.

DEMS LIE (ABOUT EBOLA) – PEOPLE DIE!

The absurd claim that only Republicans are to blame for cuts to Ebola research earned Democrats Four (4) Pinocchios from the Washington Post Fact Checker

According to Glenn Kessler, the WaPo Fact Checker, in his 15 October 2014 Washington Post column, The left-wing Agenda Project Action Fund ad “Republican cuts kill” blaming Republican spending cuts for Ebola deaths is TOTAL BS! 

So what does the Agenda Project Action Fund do?  They double down with another lie-filled ad which the Fact Checker labels as “simply a more extreme version of a new Democratic talking point — that GOP budget cuts have harmed the nation’s ability to handle the Ebola outbreak” when nothing could be further from the truth! The actual article is included below this blog posting if you want to read what the Fact Checker really said.

Then the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launched online a slightly more nuanced version of this theme ridiculously equating a congressional budget vote in 2011 with a vote for the House GOP budget in 2014 that they falsely characterize as protected special interests.

This attack was precipitated by remarks by the now thoroughly discredited Obama appointed National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins.  He told the Huffington Post (other than MSNBC the only quasi-news outlet that would believe him) that the agency has been working on an Ebola vaccine for more than a decade but was hampered by shrinking budgets. “Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would’ve gone through clinical trials and would have been ready,” Collins said.  This turned out to be totally untrue but being an Obama appointee why should this surprise anyone.

The Facts, according to the Washington Post and verified by NIH are that the differences between the budget requests submitted to Congress by the NIH and the CDC and what they got amount to rounding errors.

For NIH, since 2006 there has been relatively little change in the size of the budget, going from about $28.5 billion in 2006 to $30.14 billion in 2014. That’s a slight increase, but in real terms that’s a cut given the impact of inflation. (The agency also received a $10 billion windfall in 2009 from the stimulus law.) Here’s an illustration of the budget in real terms.

Congress usually gives NIH about what the president requested in his Budget and in 2013 Congress even gave the NIH more than what the White House requested.  This was affected by Sequestration but don’t forget that Sequester was a White House proposal designed to force Congress to either swallow painful cuts or boost taxes. The law mandating sequestration passed on a bipartisan vote!

Then, for fiscal year 2015 it was the Obama White House budget that proposed to cut the NIH’s budget from the previous year. It was Republican President George W. Bush that was responsible for significantly boosting NIH’s funding while the high point for the Obama administration NIH funding request was 2011.  For the specific NIH branch that deals with infectious diseases, funding jumped from $1.8 billion in 2000 to $4.3 billion in 2004 — but funding has been flat since then. Funding in 2014 was again $4.3 billion – exactly what the White House requested but that’s effectively a cut over time because of inflation.

The CDC experienced a similar pattern with their budget around $6.5 billion in recent years.  Since 2010 CDC receives both a Congressional appropriation and hundreds of millions of dollars from the Prevention and Public Health Fund established by the Affordable Care Act.  Before 2008, CDC received less than $6 billion a year but in 2013, the White House proposed a cut in CDC’s funding, but Congress added about $700 million. Again In 2014, Obama proposed reducing the budget, but Congress boosted it to $6.9 billion.  CDC also is funded by nearly $4 billion in mandatory fees not reflect in the congressional appropriations.

The Washington Post Pinocchio Test found the Democrats attack absurd on many levels.  While Obama’s Republican predecessor oversaw big increases in public-health sector spending, in recent years both Democrats and Republicans have supported reining in federal spending. Sequestration was an Obama initiative that resulted in a bipartisan agreement and Congress often allocated more money for NIH and CDC than the Obama administration requested!  Contrary to the DCCC ad, there has never been a vote on Ebola funding.

It is true that spending has been cut because it failed to keep pace with inflation, but the fingerprints of both parties are on the knives. This blame game garnered a breathtaking Four Pinocchios MAX from the Washington Post – certainly no beacon of Conservatism – and when the WaPo criticizes a Dem, that real news!

Four Pinocchios

Although NIH and CDC and their Dem lackeys have been crying about not having funds for Ebola vaccination research because of Republicans, here is a sample of the wasteful programs they did spend money on totaling spent $15,135,574,669.00 which they could have used to find a cure for Ebola:

Telling Taxpayers How to Eat ($15 billion) – Obamacare gave the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) $15 BILLION which they then gave away through “Community Transformation Grants” (CTG) in a futile attempt to coerce Americans into making “healthy” choices by modifying behavior through anti-obesity and anti-smoking campaigns and pro-sin tax regulations and legislation.

Grant Money to China ($90 million) – NIH awarded over $90 million to Chinese researchers to work on projects that benefit only China such as a vaccine for a parasite disease common only in China.  Don’t they already hold over a trillion dollars of US debt?

Duplicate Agricultural Programs ($22 million) – CDC spent $22 million on their Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing Program that is nearly identical to another ongoing Department of Agriculture program.

“Why Are Lesbians Fat?” Study ($2.87 million) – so far but the study continues into 2016!   This ongoing study is searching for why “women of minority sexual orientation are disproportionately affected by the obesity epidemic.”  For some reason Obama believes three-quarters of lesbians are obese.

Drunken Monkeys ($3.2 million) – NIH spent $3.2 million getting monkeys drunk just to see what would happen.  The agency apparently has quite a fascination with excessive drinking, since it also wasted money researching binge-drinking in mice, inebriated gamblers and pilots seeking the sensation of flying drunk.

Bizarre Sex Studies ($1.5 million) – NIH is spending $1.5 million to spend on these 4 ridiculous obscure sex studies: “Mood Arousal and Sexual Risk Taking,” “Sexual Habits of Older Men,” “San Francisco’s Asian Prostitutes/Masseuses,” and “American Indian Transgender Research.”

Funds for Homosexual Activists in Public Schools ($1.4 million) – CDC gave The Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a homosexual activist group, $1.4 million to create “safe spaces” in public schools.

Centers for ‘Gun Disease’ Prevention ($2.6 million) – CDC spent $2.6 million on studies that favor greater gun control and for FY 2015, the Obama budget is asking for CDC to get $22.2 million in new funding – is this a health issue?  Fortunately, Obama’s previous year similar requests have been shot down by Congress.

National Institutes of ‘Gun Control’ ($5 million) – Separate from the CDC, NIH also handed out about $5 million for research promoting gun control despite the issue being well outside the organization’s domain.

Cocaine Enhances Japanese Quail’s Sex Drive ($181,406) – This ridiculous NIH sponsored study uses quails because they provide a convenient and interesting alternative to standard laboratory rats and pigeons.  Go figure?

Empowering Women to Choose Contraception … in Jail ($279,789) –NIH allocated $279,789 “to improve contraceptive use for incarcerated women” to reduce unexpected pregnancies and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) among recently jailed women.  Wonder who exactly who these jailbirds are having sex with … Guards?  Other women?

Bogus AIDS Experiments ($4.9 million) – Results of a $19 million NIH funded HIV/AIDS vaccine study were faked by researcher at Iowa State University to made the vaccine appear far more effective than it actually was. Thankfully NIH refused to pay ISU the final installment of the grant money, but the university was allowed to keep more than $4.9 million after having to pay back nearly three-quarters of the original grant.

Sex Workers Spreading STDs ($675,786) – Although the answer to the question why sex workers spread HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) might seem obvious, NIH is spending $675,786 in search of the answer.

Examining ‘Barriers to Correct Condom Use’ ($423,500) – It seems “young, heterosexual adult men” weren’t using condoms as frequently or in a manner NIH would prefer. Hence, NIH spent $423,500 to get to the bottom of this perplexing problem.

And these are just a sampling of NIH/CDC waste.  Other items include: $2.4 million for a new condom design whose inventor is now being investigated for fraud,” $939,000 to discover that male fruit flies prefer younger females, $257,000 to create a companion website for first lady Michelle Obama’s White House garden,” a whopping $592,000 to determine that chimpanzees with the best poop-flinging skills are also the best communicators, and another $117,000 to learn that most chimps are right-handed. The NIH also spent $325,000 to learn that marriages are happier when wives calm down more quickly during arguments with their husbands and $548,000 to find out if 30-something partiers feel immature after they binge drink while people in their mid-20s don’t.

VIRGINIANS STRONGLY SUPPORT MARYLAND LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR ANTHONY BROWN TO SUCCEED O’MALLEY AS GOVERNOR – SO WE CAN CONTINUE TO “EAT YOUR LUNCH” IN BUSINESS!

We Virginians LOVE Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley and, short of you Marylanders changing your laws so he can have a third term, the best thing for Virginia is that you elect O’Malley’s hand chosen successor and present understudy Anthony Brown as your next Governor!  Electing Brown will ensure Virginia can continue eating your lunch in business for at least another four years.  As a matter of fact, on 20 Oct the Washington Post just reported this headline:  "Construction giant Bechtel's Reston move shines spotlight on Md-Va business rivalry."  Keep up the Good Work!

 

Under the O’Malley-Brown Team and his liberal Democrat fellow-travelers, Maryland has acquired a well earned reputation as a state that is so extremely unfriendly to business and job creators that they are fleeing in record numbers.  Virginians are confident that Anthony Brown will continue the current anti-business crusade that has allowed your neighbor to the south to flourish while Maryland has been hemorrhaging businesses, jobs and even taxpayers in record numbers.  As a result of additional taxes and fees stemming from 40 separate O’Malley-Brown increases, wealthy Marylanders are fleeing the state faster than the state can drain their bank accounts!

 

The well respected CNBC business network scored and ranked all 50 states using the “51 Measures of Competitiveness” developed with input from business groups including the National Association of Manufacturers and the Council on Competitiveness. States received points based on their rankings in each metric. Then, they separated those metrics into ten broad categories, weighting the categories based on how frequently they are cited in state economic development marketing materials. That way, their study ranked the states based on the criteria they use to sell themselves.   The entire 50 state ranking is appended at the bottom of this entry but here is a snap shot of how Maryland and Virginia compare.  I would note that Maryland, at #40, did beat out #41 Mississippi by “a smidgen” while Virginia came in a strong #5!

Overall Rank	State	Cost of Doing Business	Economy	Infrastruc- ture	Workforce	Quality of Life	Technology & Innovation	Business Friendliness	Educa- tion	Cost of Living	Access to Capital
5	Virginia	38	10	21	6	18	12	6	8	20	13
40	Maryland	41	33	46	20	25	9	45	2	42	9

To reinforce that the CNN ranking was not an aberration, the nonpartisan Tax Foundation ranked Maryland even lower at #41 in the nation for business climate.  Today Maryland's unemployment rate is 75% higher than when the recession began and the main cause is it costs too much for job creators to stay in let alone come to Maryland. According to data released on 20 Jun 14, by the U.S. Department of Labor, Maryland shed 1,300 jobs in May 14 in both the public and private sectors and the unemployment rate jumped to 5.6 percent.  By contract, Virginia’s unemployment rate is a full half percent lower at 5.1%.  Hence, that sucking noise you Marylanders hear all the time is jobs and businesses fleeing your state!  Within the past couple of years Maryland lost out to Virginia when Northrop Grumman, SAIC and CSC all relocated their headquarters from your clone state, California, and after looking at Maryland they all decided Virginia was a much more business friendly location.  

According the Washington Post's Washington Technology publication, of the 100 largest Government Contractors, 41 are headquartered in Virginia and just 5 are in Maryland; only one is in DC.  Of the Top 20, 11 are in Virginia and only one in Maryland.  Given over two-thirds of the Nations Capital is surrounded by Maryland, business climate and not proximity is the reason for Maryland's dismal performance.  And the main factor driving businesses (and Marylanders) away from your state can be summed up in one word – TAXES!

 

The O’Malley-Brown administration has levied 40 consecutive taxes on Marylanders in their term in office.  From increases in sales and income taxes, to regressive taxes such as the gas tax and rain tax, Marylanders are paying more for just about everything than they were seven years ago. These taxes have taken $9.5 billion from Maryland’s economy and are projected to cost $20 billion by 2018.  Maryland is now one of the highest taxed states in the country and the O’Malley-Brown Team has been innovative in dreaming up new ones – Maryland is the ONLY State that taxes citizens for the rain that falls on their property!

 

Over 31,000 Marylanders have voted with their feet since 2007.  As a result of the O’Malley-Brown historic tax increases, those 31,000 Marylanders that left the state took $1.7 billion yearly out of Maryland’s economy and took it to the more tax-friendly states, such as Virginia and North Carolina.  Along with those 31,000 taxpayers, Maryland lost over 6,500 small businesses, the worst in the region, thus showing the state’s inability to support business, produce jobs and maintain its tax base is eroding. The state has lost 10 of its 13 Fortune 500 companies.  This is a sharp contrast to 24 large corporate headquarters in Virginia.  In a recent pole, almost half of All Marylanders said they would leave the state if they could.

The Good News for Virginia is, with leaders like the O’Malley-Brown Team in Annapolis, we don’t need to worry about competition from our neighbors to the North.  We Virginians LOVE the O’Malley-Brown Team and many of us even contributed funds to their elections because they are the best thing that's happened to the Virginia economy in years.  Their anti-business policies are directly responsible for driving down our unemployment rate to the lowest on the Atlantic seaboard and now with their other harebrained initiatives like their off-shore wind turbine fiasco Virginia will do even better.  Their wind turbine fiasco, which locks Maryland taxpayers into paying for a 20 year binding contract to buy uneconomically feasible electricity from a bunch of their political cronies, will accelerate the loss of the few manufacturing jobs left in the State!.  Already electricity in Maryland averages 12 cents/kW hr while it’s only 8 cents across the river in Virginia but off shore wind will drive it up to 18 cents/kW Hr in Maryland.  Although the O’Malley-Brown Team only “intends” to tack on $1.50 for residential and 1.5% onto industrial monthly power bills, the rest of the costs will just be paid by other taxes such as your new 9% State Income Tax (on top of 35% Federal), increased sales tax and your new 24 cent/gal gas tax.  Don't forget your new "flush tax!"  Marylanders can't even take a crap without being taxed!

So PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE Marylanders, Elect Anthony Brown as your next Governor so Virginia can continue to grown and prosper.  My only advice to you is, in your haste to flee the State is don’t forget to leave someone behind to turn out the lights.

And here is the side-by-side Maryland-Virginia comparison recently published in the Washington-Post and below it are some other observations about how the two states stack up.

Here are some observations -- More are coming:

• Virginians have 2.7 Times more Registered Firearms yet Marylanders are 2.5 times more likely to become a victim of violent crime!
• Maryland has 30% more Lawyers by population - guess that's to service all the additional criminals Maryland has than Virginia.
• Maryland teachers' salaries are 8th highest in the nation and 20% more than Virginia teachers (tied for 32nd) and Maryland is 9th in the nation in per pupil spending at $14,616 while Virginia is 20th spending $11,192 yet Marylanders SAT scores were 30 points lower than Virginia students in 2012.  In the past year while O'Malley has been off running for President and his approval ratings have plunged 13 points to a mere 41%, Brown has been running the state with disastrous results.  Brown's mismanagement of the state's ObamaCare website rivals his ineptitude in managing the education system.  He has managed to double last year's 30 point gap with Virginia to 62 point in the last round of SAT testing.  According to a 7 Oct 14 Washington Post article, state-wide the Maryland SAT average dropped 1468 while Virginia's average increased to 1530.
• Maryland does NOT even meet the requirements of the Individual & Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) "guaranteeing students a free and appropriate education" while Virginia had no problem satisfying the law.

Completely CNBC State Rankings for Business Competitive.

Why Does the Liberal Press Continue to Lie About General Eric Shinseki’s Tenure as Army Chief of Staff?

Isn’t It About Time the Liberal Press Puts to Bed the Myth that General Eric Shinseki Was Fired as Army Chief of Staff and Cashiered Out of the Army for Confronting Defense Secretary Rumsfeld Over Post Invasion Troops Levels that would be Required in Iraq?

Since the day in December 2008 that President-elect Obama announced retired Army General Eric Shinseki to be his nominee to be the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, the Liberal Press with NPR in the vanguard has advanced the myth that the General had been fired from his job as Army Chief of Staff by then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and “cashiered” out of the Service for disagreeing with him over the number of troops required to stabilize Iraq after the invasion – when NOTHING could be further from the truth.  Although this false narrative might have enhanced the General’s bona fides with Liberal Democrats, NPR's natural constituency, it does not comport with the facts.

FACT:  General Shinseki served as Army Chief of Staff for every minute of his entire four year tour.  To be completely accurate, he served two terms as a term is two years but with few exceptions Army CSAs serve two terms.  He did not leave one minute early and even he has repeatedly stated this.

This week as VA Secretary Shinseki was actually being cashiered by President Obama, NPR continued to perpetuated the Rumsfeld firing myth and I heard several NPR commentators describe the General’s Pentagon departure as “being fired,” “cashiered,” and “removed from his job.”  Here are just a couple of examples:

On 30 May NPR Morning Edition Steve Inskeep: Can I just mention briefly, this is a difficult thing for a Democratic President to do because Shinseki as a general became a hero to many Democrats. He was a serving general who was perceived anyway as having lost his job because he spoke forthrightly about the pending cost of the Iraq war that was on the way at the time

On 30 May All Things Considered Quil Lawrence: That contradicted the George W. Bush administration's plans of a quick invasion with a much smaller force. His candor effectively ended a 38 year Army career, which included two combat tours in Vietnam, two Purple Hearts - one from the landmine that caused most of Shinseki his foot.

And now the Real Story:

I’ve known General Eric Shinseki since we were Fort Leavenworth CGSC Classmates back in 1978, and back in 2008 I blogged the truth when NPR and even the Washington Post tried to enhance his reputation among Liberals by broadcasting these outright falsehoods about his tenure as Army Chief – a post he served in until the last minute of his term and from which he was NOT Fired.

The best explanation of GEN Shinseki “relationship” with then Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and his now-famous February 2003 Senate Armed Services Committee testimony was contained in an 8 Dec 2008 article by Jamie McIntyre, the CNN Senior Pentagon Correspondent.  In that article, Mr. McIntyre made the following points:

Shinseki told the Senate Armed Services Committee a month before the invasion that something on the order "several hundred thousand troops" would be necessary to keep order in a post-invasion Iraq…. Still, Shinseki wasn't advocating 300,000 troops be dispatched into Iraq… he said specifically that the forces mobilized in the region to that point were probably enough, and he made it clear he would have defer to the combatant commander, Gen. Tommy Franks…."I would have to rely on combatant commanders' exact requirements," he said…. pressed by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, to make an off-the-cuff guesstimate, Shinseki said "it would take a significant ground force." …. At the time, that observation drew loud scoffs from then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and from his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, who dismissed the prediction as "wildly off the mark."

Since that day, critics of the war have lauded Shinseki's prescience and his willingness to speak truth to power….   It's an appealing narrative, but the facts as we know them are not nearly so complimentary to the retired Army chief…. Shinseki never made any recommendation for more troops for Iraq…. According to senior military officers who were in the pre-war meetings, Shinseki never objected to the war plans, and he didn't press for any changes…. When the joint chiefs were asked point-blank by then-Chairman Gen. Richard Meyers if they had any concerns about the plans before they went to the president, Shinseki kept silent.

…. Washington myths like the popular misconception that Shinseki was fired for standing up to Rumsfeld…. is so pervasive the authoritative Associated Pres repeated it …  saying "Shinseki was removed from [his] post after challenging the Bush administration." ….  He did not stand up to Rumsfeld, nor was he fired.

There's no question that Shinseki was on the outs with his civilian bosses, especially Rumsfeld.

He retired after serving a full four years as chief at a ceremony in 2003 that neither Rumsfeld nor Wolfowitz attended.

To be fair, NPR and the Washington Post were not the only Liberal news outlets that perpetuated the Shinseki firing myth.  As usual, NBC in general and Tom Brokaw in particular fell right in line and on Meet the Press on 7 December 2008, when President-elect Obama made the following announcement: "I'm going to be making announcement tomorrow about the head of our Veterans Administration, General Eric Shinseki" -- BROKAW made the following comment: "He's the man who lost his job in the Bush Administration because he said we will need more troops in Iraq than Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld thought we would need at that time."

For the record, GEN Shinseki stepped up from Vice Chief to become the Chief of Staff of the Army (CSA) in June 1999 and served his entire COMPLETE four year term until June 2003. Characterizing this as "losing his job" is par for the course for "history revisionists" like Brokaw and NPR.

What is true is the General was treated very shabbily by Rumsfeld after his prophetic but controversial testimony with his replacement being identified earlier than usual and Rumsfeld not attending his retirement -- All inexcusable. As a retired 30-year Army Officer and CGSC Shinseki Classmate, I like most Soldiers was no Rumsfeld fan, but even GEN Shinseki has corrected interviewers when they mistakenly mention he was dismissed early.

I would also mention that GEN Shinseki did not counsel NOT to go into Iraq, only correctly that we needed more troops to maintain order after that government was toppled.

Isn’t it about time the Liberal Press put that "firing" myth to bed?