The Taliban Are Training Monkey Soldiers Against the US

Well that's what a Chinese news outlet is claiming:

Reporters in the Waziristan tribal area, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, have allegedly taken photos of “monkey soldiers” holding AK-47 rifles and Bren light machine guns.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:07 PM | Comments (952)
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Sure by the end of the year we won't be able to put anyone in space any more but we still lead the world in throwing people under the bus.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday that NASA Administrator Charles Bolden must have misspoke when he told Al Jazeera last month that one of his top priorities is to reach out to Muslim countries.

"That was not his task and that's not the task of NASA," Gibbs said.

Bolden, though, said last month in the interview that it was President Obama who gave him that task. He made a similar claim in February.

The White House also backed up Bolden last week when his remarks first stirred controversy. A White House spokesman last Tuesday said Obama wants NASA to engage with the world's best scientists and that to meet that challenge, NASA must "partner with countries around the world like Russia and Japan, as well as collaboration with Israel and with many Muslim-majority countries."

NASA last week walked back Bolden's claim that Muslim outreach was the "perhaps foremost" plank of his mission, saying that Bolden was merely talking about his "outreach" responsibilities and that space exploration is still NASA's No. 1 job.

As you can see, this isn't any old bus throwing. No, this one has a bit of John F. Kerry, I was for making NASA reach out to the Muslim world before I was against twist. Not everyone can pull that off.

I have a confession to make, I wouldn't mind if part of what NASA did was to inspire kids around the work (including Muslims) to value science and dream big. I'd much rather Muslim kids aspire to be great engineers and astronauts than spend all their time in school memorizing the Koran and becoming embittered against the west. We aren't going to kill them all, so using whatever leavers we have at our disposal to win a some hearts and minds is a good thing.

The best way to do that of course is by example and success. You know, do some really cool space stuff. Believe it or not, NASA actually used to do that back in the day. If you want to throw in the occasional conference and scholarship aimed at kids in Muslim nations, that's fine with me. The problem, as always, is the way the administration went about this. They tried to score cheap points by saying it was the most important thing. They came off as valuing style over substance and dressed arrogance up as compassion.

I wouldn't be surprised if Obama never said any such thing to Bolden (though I wouldn't be surprised if he did). The thing is, given the unprecedented level of stupidity and arrogance exhibited by this administration Bolden had every reason to believe this is the kind of thing Obama would want him to say even if he never actually was explicitly told to.

Now that it didn't work out with the public....it's under the bus for Administrator Bolden.

NASA story via Keep America Safe, funny picture via Slublog.

Maybe when Bolden is done at NASA, which maybe sooner than later, he can start working on a Muslim version of this. more...

Posted by: DrewM at 11:30 AM | Comments (445)
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Good stuff.

Two nights ago I was trying to put together a t-shirt on Cafe Press.

Plus, a welter of Mel Gibson quotes.

Thanks for both to WickedPinto.

Apocryphal Mel?: I am saddened that I have't heard Mel Gibson's "I will burn your house down, but first, you will blow me" line. It has been reported in transcripts but I'm starting to fear the one good thing to come out of this is a botched quotation.

I Think This Has Been Covered, But In Case It Hasn't... Content warning for strong language.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:15 AM | Comments (132)
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And they don't care.

Most prosecutors are "belittling" the data. But more felons have been found to have voted illegally/fraudulently than Franken's 312 vote "margin."

A spokesman for both county attorneys' offices belittled the information, saying it was "just plain wrong" and full of errors, which prompted the group to go back and start an in-depth look at the records.

"What we did this time is irrefutable," McGrath said. "We took the voting lists and matched them with conviction lists and then went back to the records and found the roster lists, where voters sign in before walking to the voting booth, and matched them by hand.

"The only way we can be wrong is if someone with the same first, middle and last names, same year of birth as the felon, and living in the same community, has voted. And that isn't very likely."

The report said that in Hennepin County, which in includes Minneapolis, 899 suspected felons had been matched on the county's voting records, and the review showed 289 voters were conclusively matched to felon records. The report says only three people in the county have been charged with voter fraud so far.

A representative of the Hennepin County attorney's office, who declined to give her name, said "there was no one in the office today to talk about the charges."

But the report got a far different review in Ramsey County, which contains St. Paul. Phil Carruthers of the Ramsey County attorney's office said his agency had taken the charges "very seriously" and found that the Minnesota Majority "had done a good job in their review."

The report says that in Ramsey, 460 names on voting records were matched with felon lists, and a further review found 52 were conclusive matches.

Posted by: Ace at 10:27 AM | Comments (176)
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Ed isn't jazzed about this.

Neither am I:

1) The allegations are made by Hillary partisans, not disinterested parties.

2) The allegations are purely anecdotal in all senses -- that is, it seems to be anecdotal meaning "scattered claims" and anecdotal meaning "it's just this guy saying it." There is nothing documentary about the charges that I can see.

3) It will be difficult to charge the misbehavior of Obama's Army of Zombies to Obama himself. We all know they are cultish, extremist, and ruthless. It would be hard to claim that they needed direction from Obama to be this way.

Oh I forgot 4:

4) Even accepting this is true, this stuff seems... weak. I mean, we're talking about one guy saying "You're not voting if you're not voting for Barack" and a couple of his supporters being "unable to find" the registrations for Hillary caucusers. There is probably more there, but if you assume she's leading with her best stuff... well, this is not really all that great.

But, an attack's an attack, so the clip is below.
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Posted by: Ace at 09:19 AM | Comments (116)
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A Nation of Cowards, continued.

Despite some officials' claims that the law could lead to racial profiling, that concern was not cited as grounds for the suit.

However, Holder said on CBS' "Face the Nation" that the federal government was leading with its "strongest" argument in the suit filed Tuesday and would not rule out a second suit months down the road -- if the law ends up going into effect.

"It doesn't mean that if the law for whatever reason happened to go into effect, that six months from now, a year from now, we might not look at the impact the law has had ... and see whether or not there has been that racial profiling impact," Holder said. "If that was the case, we would have the tools and we would bring suit on that basis."

Oh, I see, you had no evidence about racial profiling but screamed about that anyway. But it turns out we actually have to wait and see if racial profiling occurs to file a suit ab out it.

Posted by: Ace at 08:55 AM | Comments (86)
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Awwww. They each found a fweind.

Click the link for a screen capture (i.e., you're staying on this site, not giving them traffic).

Slublog caught that.

Posted by: Ace at 08:31 AM | Comments (48)
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Oh dear.

It's not just the various awful things he says. Or the admission he hit the woman while she was holding his child.

It's the utterly pathetic quality of it. Yeah yeah, I can make excuses ("everyone gets mad during break-ups especially involving children"), but he just can't be credible in any sort of heroic role with his pathetic yelling and, strangely, his heavy panting from exhaustion from just screaming so much.

It seems to me that Gibson is obsessed with this woman. He keeps screaming "I don't love you anymore" and "Go away" but at the same time he's manufacturing reasons to contact her.

Best new Mel quote (and the accented word is delivered neck-vein-popping full-blast like "FREEEEEDOM!"): "You should just smile and BLOOOOWWWW me!"

I wondered why the South Park guys had been so nasty with Gibson, portraying him as a maniac. I can only guess now that rumors about his emotional imbalance were common in Hollywood, so they knew more than we knew.

Now that I think about it, it sort of makes sense. The first thing I ever noticed about Gibson, was, frankly, Good Lord, that might be the most handsome man I've ever seen.

Hey, that doesn't make me gay. Just means I can acknowledge reality.

I wonder if he's basically had the superstar athlete treatment his whole life, even before he was famous, and then became one of the biggest celebrities on earth, and so never really went through the crucial developmental phase of learning to deal with someone saying no or rejecting you.

That Sound You Just Heard... Was 100,000 DJs laying Mel Gibson's soundbites over a tasty beat.

There's going to be like five songs coming out based on this, and two of them will become big hits.

Posted by: Ace at 08:16 AM | Comments (131)
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The "Coffee Party" didn't work out so well but liberals are always willing to bet that a bad idea will work if they just try harder, spend more and just get the message right. To that end, they are back with another shot at their own tea party movement.

In an effort to replicate the tea party's success, 170 liberal and civil rights groups are forming a coalition that they hope will match the movement's political energy and influence. They promise to "counter the tea party narrative" and help the progressive movement find its voice again after 18 months of foundering.

The large-scale attempt at liberal unity, dubbed "One Nation," will try to revive themes that energized the progressive grass roots two years ago. In a repurposing of Barack Obama's former campaign slogan, organizers are demanding "all the change" they voted for -- a poke at the White House.

But the liberal groups have long had a kind of sibling rivalry, jostling over competing agendas and seeking to influence some of the same lawmakers. In forming the coalition, the groups struggled to settle on a name. Even now, two of the major players disagree about who came up with the idea of holding a march this fall

...

The groups involved represent the core of the first-time voters who backed Obama, including the National Council of La Raza, the Service Employees International Union, the NAACP, the AFL-CIO, and the United States Student Association. (The effort is separate from the Democratic Party's plan to spend $50 million trying to reach those same voters.)

Their aha! moment happened after the health-care overhaul passed this spring. Liberal groups, which focused their collective strength to push the bill against heavy resistance, felt relevant and effective for the first time in a long while. That health-care coalition, composed of civil rights groups, student activists and labor leaders, liked the winning formula.

Over a year from the start of the tea party movement (assuming you trace its origin to the beautiful Santelli rant on CNBC) and liberals, er progressives, still don't get it. They really think the tea parties are simply a product of Karl Rove and Freedom Works imagination. That those two simply pushed a button and millions of average Americans who had never taken part in political protests simply just marched out of their houses and showed up at local gatherings and congressional town halls. The liberals think the tea party types are deep cover sleeper agents who can be controlled by flashing the Queen of Hearts. It never occurs to liberals that a lot of normal people just don't like the progressive agenda and the big spending/taxing government that comes with it.

Naturally, if you're a liberal the only conceivable response to this scary movement is...a document outlining the goals of 170 existing groups that offer nothing new in the way of ideas. Yeah, that's how you fight a grass root movement whose main appeal and power comes from the simple and honest idea that government is getting too big and too expensive. Again, they really think if they just get the message right (aka fool enough people), they will win.

The fact that this is the response from liberals should warm all our hearts (well, if we had any) because it's clear they just don't get it. With a little luck, they never will.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:45 AM | Comments (147)
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I thought we were supposed to take the European feelings seriously? Or was that before they became ummm...inconveniently inconvenient.

...And there is considerable disdain for the rhetoric of President Obama and his advisers regarding Germany's export-orientated economic progress. Particular derision is reserved for the rhetoric of Nobel prize-winner Paul Krugman, who with his recent diatribes against an allegedly inflationary bias in German policies is widely regarded in Berlin as somewhat imbalanced.

"Obama is becoming increasingly transparent¹," says one satisfied German official. "With his arguments that we should become a bit less reliant on exports and allow the others to catch up, he's just trying to weaken us. Well, we're not going to take his advice." ...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 06:17 AM | Comments (79)
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