Another Emily Litella moment for the Hedgemony from Danger Room: U.S. Navy Unsure Iranians Made Threat

The spokesperson for the U.S. admiral in charge of the Fifth Fleet clarified to ABC News:

“We’re saying that we cannot make a direct connection to the boats there,” said the spokesperson. “It could have come from the shore, from another ship passing by. However, it happened in the middle of all the very unusual activity, so as we assess the information and situation, we still put it in the total aggregate of what happened Sunday morning. I guess we’re not saying that it absolutely came from the boats, but we’re not saying it absolutely didn’t.”

The supposed threat was part of a US Navy agitprop mash-up video released to the media, but we now know that the “threat” was on an open radio channel used by every ship and shore installation in the area. It would certainly have been embarrassing if we had launched an all out air attack on Iran, and then had to apologize. 😈

Update: It wouldn’t be the first time.

After a minor bit of research it turns out that there was nothing wrong with the New Hampshire polls, other than they were conducted before a large group of people made up their minds. The numbers for Obama and Edwards held, and the undecideds broke heavily for Clinton. When better than 15% of those polled are undecided, you don’t try to call a winner unless someone has a 51% approval rating.

The weather was unseasonably mild, and the turn out was, as should have been expected under those circumstances, much larger than normal, so the undecideds showed up and voted. I don’t doubt in the slightest that the media attacks on Clinton for the non-event of her getting “teary-eyed” made a number of people annoyed enough to vote for her.

The real polls that the media should be looking at are those on the favorability of certain groups or professions. For some time they have been showing that people don’t really like or trust the corporate media. The talking heads are really getting on people’s nerves, and their track record for accuracy is abysmal. Most people are aware that if they screwed up half as often as the pundits, they’d be fired.

A bit of advice: having two “experts” on your show, one “liberal” and one “conservative”, doesn’t advance the level of trust when both are equally wrong.

The BBC reports that Sir Edmund Hillary dies aged 88

Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb the world’s highest mountain, Mount Everest, has died aged 88.

New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark described the explorer as a heroic figure and said all New Zealanders would deeply mourn his passing.

Sir Edmund’s health had reportedly been in decline since April, when he suffered a fall while visiting Nepal.

He was the first man to climb the 8,850m (29,035ft) peak with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay on 29 May 1953.

Returning to Everest base camp, he famously greeted another member of the British expedition group with the words: “Well, George, we’ve knocked the bastard off.”

After the ascent, Sir Edmund led a number of expeditions to the South Pole and devoted his life to helping the Sherpas of Nepal’s Khumbu region.

He was almost the definition of the adventurer. He set his goals and then accomplished them.