Great.

CBS and NBC have refused to air a provocative ad from the confrontational, well-funded National Republican Trust PAC that calls on Americans to oppose the building of a mosque two blocks from the World Trade Center site.

...

"On September 11, they declared war against us," says the narrator. "And to celebrate that murder of 3,000 Americans, they want to build a monstrous 13-story mosque at Ground Zero."

In her letter rejecting the spot, NBC Universal advertising standards manager Jennifer Riley wrote:

"An ad questioning the wisdom of building a mosque at ground zero would meet our issues of public controversy advertising criteria. However, this ad which ambiguously defines 'they' as referenced in the spot makes it unclear as to whether the reference is to terrorists or to the Islamic religious organization that is sponsoring the building of the mosque. Consequently, the ad is not acceptable under our guidelines for broadcast."

Presumably then if "they" is replaced by something more definite, they'll run the ad?

Or will they invent some new objection?

I think I know the answer.

Posted by: Ace at 10:30 AM | Comments (15)
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Nothing good will come of this.

The remark comes a day before the foreign ministers of the rival nations are set to meet in Islamabad to attempt to rebuild a fragile peace dialogue that was shattered by the attacks, which killed 166 people. It appeared to be an attempt to ratchet up the pressure on Pakistan to prosecute people whom India says were deeply involved in the assault.

In an interview published Wednesday, Home Secretary G.K. Pillai accused Pakistan's powerful spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence of playing a key role the attacks.

"It was not just a peripheral role. They (the agency) were literally controlling and coordinating it from the beginning till the end," Pillai told the Indian Express newspaper.

Pillai told the newspaper that new information about the role of the agency had emerged from the interrogation of David Coleman Headley, an American who pleaded guilty in the U.S. in March to being in on the planning of the attacks. He was subsequently questioned by Indian investigators.

The day before meetings aimed at easing tensions exacerbated by this attack seems an odd time for India to publicly accuse Pakistan of conducting what amounts to an act of war (Tom Ricks wonders if they are effectively at war now). Unless of course there are elements of the Indian government not all that interested in playing nice and pretending all is well. And who could blame them? No country can let an attack like that go by (and this isn't the first time India has blamed Pakistan for a spectacular terror attack).

As an extra bonus (as if two nuclear armed states with a long history of war isn't enough)...there's obviously going to be an impact on the US, which tries to walk the line between the two.

As Josh Trevino asks..."When exactly are we going to face up to the reality that Pakistan is an enemy state?"

Obviously the problem is we need Pakistani help in Afghanistan but India is an emerging power with over a billion people. Balancing those three relationships (US-PAK, US-India, US-PAK-India) is difficult at the best of times and it hasn't been the best of times in awhile. Now things are worse.

Just yesterday/today (hard to tell with the time difference) the US Envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke was talking this subject up.

"India has a very real role in the region for historic and strategic reasons," the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan said Tuesday briefing reporters on July 20-21 Kabul Conference aimed at bringing about an eventual political solution for the war-torn nation.

"And they can play an important role in resolving these issues, going down the - looking forward into the middle distance," he said.

But it was for New Delhi to decide "who will represent India and how that will be done," said Holbrooke, who met the Indian ambassador to the US, Meera Shankar, to brief her about his recent trip to the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.

...

Asked about the upcoming meeting of Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers in Islamabad, Holbrooke said, "Anything that reduces tensions and increases confidence and understanding between Pakistan and India is something we would encourage and support.

Um, what's Plan B?

Don't worry though, we're in the best of hands.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:50 AM | Comments (74)
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I appended a note to Drew's post on this below, stating I looked at this benignly -- benign, but entirely feckless. And the problem for me comes chiefly in Obama's eternal preference for the ineffectual and impotent over the effective and potent.

If it weren't an either/or proposition -- if it were a "both" situation -- I wouldn't mind so much.

Or at least I thought.

Andy McCarthy isn't having that.

Actually, he makes several of the same points Drew does. I guess I should have read Drew more closely before dashing off my disagreement. (I should say though that I formed my opinion on this last night before I read Drew; I just never expressed it. So now, having read two people disagreeing, I'm more inclined to disown my previous opinion.)

1. The race obsession of the Obama administration is a sight to behold. Remember, these are people who adamantly refuse to see the Islamic underpinnings of jihadist terror, although those underpinnings are obvious and undeniable to anyone willing to look. Yet, racism, their unified field theory for interpreting all human phenomena, somehow explains al Qaeda. Sure.

2. I think all this "hearts and minds" stuff is way overdone. But if I were a believer in it, I would say that it does us no good to make stupid arguments. Al Qaeda is not a racist organization, it is an Islamist organization. The goal of Islamism is to establish a global caliphate in which all people either convert to Islam or accept the authority of the Islamic state (and, as the Koran puts it in Sura 9:29, "pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued"). Over the years, al Qaeda has shown itself willing to work with anyone who can be persuaded to support that goal — including Shiites, even though Sunnis actually do bear animus against them. Al Qaeda has never had any problem working with black people, whether in Africa, America, or anyplace else. The audience the administration is trying to reach knows that — better, apparently, than the administration does. So once again, our government ends up looking clueless.

I like his first point especially -- his thinking is extremely limited, and one could even say (properly; dictionary definition) retarded. The Racial Justice Narrative is totalitarian in its completeness and ability to explain everything and anything at all.

It is the Grand Unified Theory of Everything, and I always object to such theories, because (wait for it...) they lack nuance and are strictly stupid in their reductivist drive to simplify everything into one simplified, simplistic bumper-sticker manifesto.

This is our nuanced, intellectual President? Babbling on with such simplistic, sophomoric credos?

Thanks to Dave @ Garfield Ridge, who also offers this observation.

One cynical angle to consider: if the Democratic leadership, NAACP, etc. considers the Tea Party movement racists, and now the White House considers Al Qaeda racist, ergo, logic argues that the Tea Party equals Al Qaeda.

Can't wait to hear more of that Lefty trope. Can't. Wait.

No, Dave, you're wrong; the left is eager to fight the Tea Party.

Posted by: Ace at 09:22 AM | Comments (105)
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57% support Arizona's law, CBS notes. But then they fail to include in the "support" category the 17% who think it's not tough enough.

They are cocooning themselves into oblivion.

I said on Twitter yesterday: I doubt you could find 74% support for cookies. Or bunnies. Or oral sex.

Public support for Arizona's controversial new immigration law has increased slightly, a new CBS News poll shows, with 57 percent of Americans characterizing the law as "about right" in the way it addresses the issue of illegal immigration.

Controversial? With 74% support, isn't it opposition to the law that's actually controversial?

Are you kidding me?

Posted by: Ace at 08:51 AM | Comments (204)
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This is a mixed bag. At least he calls them terrorist too, so there's that.

In an interview earlier today with the South African Broadcasting Corporation to air in a few hours, President Obama disparaged al Qaeda and affiliated groups' willingness to kill Africans in a manner that White House aides say was an argument that the terrorist groups are racist.

Speaking about the Uganda bombings, the president said, "What you've seen in some of the statements that have been made by these terrorist organizations is that they do not regard African life as valuable in and of itself. They see it as a potential place where you can carry out ideological battles that kill innocents without regard to long-term consequences for their short-term tactical gains."
...
Explaining the president's comment, an administration official said Mr. Obama "references the fact that both U.S. intelligence and past al Qaeda actions make clear that al Qaeda -- and the groups like al Shabaab that they inspire -- do not value African life. The actions of al Qaeda and the groups that it has inspired show a willingness to sacrifice innocent African life to reach their targets."

Allah thinks this is some kind of strategic communications strategy designed to put a wedge between blacks in Africa and AQ. I'd like to believe that but I stopped giving the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt over a year ago. Given the willingness of Islamic groups to kill blacks (see Genocide, Sudan), I'm not sure a terror bombing here and there or a Presidential scolding will make much difference.

Over the years AQ has made it pretty clear that when it comes to killing, it doesn't matter to them if people are white, black, brown, yellow they are willing to kill them. Hell, religion doesn't even matter too much to al Qadea, they've probably killed far more Muslims in Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, etc than they have Jews and Christians.

More to the point, it's getting harder and harder to avoid the conclusion that this President and his administration see everything through the prism of race. If this language resonates with anyone it may well be American liberals who have shown talking about, let alone fighting, Islamic fascism is beyond their interest and seem to think it's racist in and of itself.

That's what makes this quote from an administration official in the same story even stranger.

"Additionally, U.S. intelligence has indicated that al Qaeda leadership specifically targets and recruits black Africans to become suicide bombers because they believe that poor economic and social conditions make them more susceptible to recruitment than Arabs," the official said. "Al Qaeda recruits have said that al Qaeda is racist against black members from West Africa because they are only used in lower level operations."

"In short," the official said, "al Qaeda is a racist organization that treats black Africans like cannon fodder and does not value human life."

So, if AQ instituted and Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employment program they'd be less awful?

When it comes to AQ it's not the racism...it's the Islamic terrorism stupid. Anything that avoids that reality hurts the effort to combat them.

Well Intended But Futile [ace]: I look at this benignly -- Obama is trying to say something that will make Al Qaeda less attractive to Africans.

Fine. But it belies his jackass worldview and childish belief in soft power.

Newsflash: "Racism" is a big, mean word in the United States and decadent West but in the rest of the world it means nothing. The rest of the world affirmatively embraces racism -- the rest of the world has no qualms whatsoever about this stuff. None at all.

Ever talk to an Arab (as in, from an Arab country) about Jews? There is just no caution whatsoever about jumping immediately to things we get all excited about when Mel Gibson says them.

Even the Japanese, Western in outlook, liberal, and progressive -- why, a Prime Minister attempted to buck up George Bush the elder regarding the United States' poor performance in student achievement, noting, sweetly, that without all those blacks we'd do a lot better.

I mean, he was trying to be nice. He didn't think he was saying anything wrong.

I have no problem with Obama saying this. My problem comes with all of the liberal pansies' soft-power crap, that they think this is an effective substitute for stuff that actually has a chance in hell of working.

So African jihadists are going to give up murder because Obama called them racist?

Shit, Obama calling Americans racist couldn't even get them to stop jeering at town halls.

Obama is singularly well-positioned to make this sort of gambit, but singularly-well positioned to make a wholly ineffectual and meaningless gambit is still not all that terrific.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:51 AM | Comments (224)
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Urmph. Wednesday.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:30 AM | Comments (276)
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NOTE: NSFW-ish pic at the bottom of full post.¹

Stocks had another good day, with both the Dow and the S&P 500 indexes gaining one and a half percent. The S&P 500 closed at 1,095.34, and the Dow closed at 10,363.02. The gains were driven by optimism over corporate earnings, and not a little bit of wishful thinking. I'm happy because my 401(k) is gaining back some of the equity it's been hemorrhaging over the past, oh, two years or so; I'm sad because I know that this is a sucker's rally and it won't last. (DOOM!) more...

Posted by: Monty at 03:05 AM | Comments (91)
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Evening all.

A Woman's Worst Dating Nightmare

A blind date with....an engineer!

Though to be technical the engineers depicted are really more Nerds which is an independent but overlapping category. Real engineers don't wear ties and are able to properly super-glue their glasses back together. And more likely to talk about video games, movies, and swords rather than their personal optimized tip scoring system.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:47 PM | Comments (835)
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Let me tell you why PolitiFact did this -- why it claimed some kind of ambiguity.

It's because they want to give Gibbs a supposedly neutral third-party citation so he can claim "that claim has been debunked."

Now, we all know what the facts are. Obama said it. His administration put out the chart. But PolitiFact offers them the soundbite "that's been debunked." Despite the fact that they basically confirm the facts, but then just say, "But we are parsing about this word or that word so that our liberal friends can point to us as having 'debunked' it."

Same deal with these "independent panels" scrutinizing the behavior of the CRU "scientists." We all know the facts -- these guys hid data, destroyed data, ran models with inaccurate data, gamed the rules of the system to get un-vetted papers helpful to them published, and conspired to keep dissenting science out of science journals.

Do these panels refute these facts? No, they just look at the facts and offer a conclusory take: "These facts do not in and of themselves consitute an ethical breach."

Note that since that friendly conclusion was "reached," all the MFM wants to do is talk about that one-sentence "Well we think what they did wasn't that bad" and avoid discussing the facts.

Because the facts are truly awful. But they have these "independent review boards" certifying the facts are not awful enough to be censurable, and so that's what they now get to talk about: Some liberal buddy of these guys gave them a "hey, it's not that bad" conclusion, as was inevitable, and now all the liberals get to say "those claims were debunked."

Um, no, actually. The claims remain as sturdy as ever. The only new thing here is some liberal fuckwit's estimation that the claims are no big deal.

I need an expert opinion to tell me if shady behavior is shady-shady or just shady?

So, now PolitiFact delivers the liberals the quote they need -- "ambiguous," they seem to be claiming, which is enough cover for Gibbs to now say "debunked."

Uh huh.

Posted by: Ace at 04:34 PM | Comments (188)
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I'm not trying to suggest that PolitiFact is wrong in their 'barely true' analysis of George Will, but...

President Barack Obama, February 10, 2009
Town Hall in Ft. Myers, Florida

The situation we face could not be more serious. We have inherited an economic crisis as deep and as dire as any since the Great Depression. Economists from across the spectrum have warned that if we donÂ’t act immediately, millions more jobs will disappear, and national unemployment rates will approach double digits. More people will lose their homes and their health care. And our nation will sink into a crisis that, at some point, will be much tougher to reverse.

I don't believe it's too late to change course, but it will be if we don't take dramatic action as soon as possible. If nothing is done, this recession could linger for years. The unemployment rate could reach double digits. Our economy could fall $1 trillion short of its full capacity, which translates into more than $12,000 in lost income for a family of four. We could lose a generation of potential and promise, as more young Americans are forced to forgo dreams of college or the chance to train for the jobs of the future. And our nation could lose the competitive edge that has served as a foundation for our strength and standing in the world.

In short, a bad situation could become dramatically worse.

Charlie Rose Show
June 2, 2010

CHARLIE ROSE: As you know, the unemployment rate went up to 10 percent

JOE BIDEN - That`s right.

CHARLIE ROSE: Above 10 percent. There were predictions it would only go up to 8.5 percent.

JOE BIDEN -Right.

CHARLIE ROSE: The president and you have acknowledged you were wrong in those predictions.

JOE BIDEN : By the way, not only us. Every major blue chip index said that because we didn`t understand just how bad the economy we were inheriting was. I mean, I`m not -- We`re responsible. But that prediction was not a -- That was a consensus prediction of the blue chip measurements out there as to what would happen in terms of unemployment. It was higher.

Those words are "projections" not "predictions." more...

Posted by: Slublog at 04:12 PM | Comments (62)
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