Molly Norris, the cartoonist who first suggested "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" to counter Muslim death threats, has been called out for death by Imam Anwar al-Awlaki.

In "Inspire," an English language Al Qaeda terrorist mag, Awlaki damns Norris and eight others for "blasphemous caricatures" of the Prophet Muhammed.

The other cartoonists, authors and journalists in Awlaki's crosshairs are Swedish, Dutch and British citizens.

The 67-page terror rag is seen by terrorism experts as a bald new attempt to reach and recruit Muslim youth in the West.

"The medicine prescribed by the Messenger of Allah is the execution of those involved," writes Awlaki, 39, a Las Cruces, N.M.-born American citizen.

Norris, herself, attempted to back away from the cartoon idea after it got international attention. She was "freaked" and, apparently, with reason. She gets to spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder for barbaric thugs.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:38 AM | Comments (113)
Post contains 165 words, total size 1 kb.

In the aftermath of the Obama Administration -- actually, in the follow-on commentary in mid-November 2012 -- commentators are going to go on at length about "how it all went wrong." Some are going to blame racism. Some are going to say it was all about a bum economy that ("of course, of course") cannot be blamed on just the President.

But the truest observation will be that the Obama Administration had the classic symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. The President's disinterest -- boredom, really -- in finishing what he's started is getting noticed.

Most recently, Democratic governors are wondering about his forgotten promise to do something about the economy:

"Universally the governors are saying, 'We've got to talk about jobs,'" Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, a Democrat, said in an interview. "And all of a sudden we have immigration going on."

He added, "It is such a toxic subject, such an important time for Democrats."

Constant motion, repeated inability to focus. The President, who already has a pretty full load given the horrendous economy his spendulus didn't even dent and an oil spill his Administration has made worse, can't seem to resist throwing something else on the pile.

Of note, on all three issues: the economy, immigration, and the oil spill, the President faces substantial public opposition from the American public. That hasn't stopped him from running back and forth from these issues to a dozen others -- for example, Israel, gays, ObamaCare, and carbon regulation -- most of which also put him on the wrong side of the public.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:24 AM | Comments (50)
Post contains 278 words, total size 2 kb.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:59 AM | Comments (24)
Post contains 8 words, total size 1 kb.

It's anybody's guess if the equities markets are going to be able to keep the rally going this week. I suspect not, unless companies report some truly exceptional numbers. And this seems...unlikely. The Dow and the S&P 500 are down slightly in futures trading, but promise to open fairly flat.

As Sophocles said: How terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise. more...

Posted by: Monty at 03:17 AM | Comments (93)
Post contains 894 words, total size 6 kb.

Live feed.

I don't see any of that gushy stuff we've been watching for a while. Hopeful.

I was gonna add something about Spain's victory over the Netherlands, it was a penalty kick superthing.

Yeah. That thrilling.

Oil link thingy via ChrisP over at H2

UPDATED: commenter rdbrewer says look at this link instead. Bitchface. (thanks)

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 07:00 PM | Comments (105)
Post contains 64 words, total size 1 kb.

Good news all you soccer-haters - your month long nightmare is over. Until 2014.

Troll Baiting: A Case Study

Within every ecosystem predators will eventually appear and a food-chain will form. And trolls are no exception to this.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:23 PM | Comments (782)
Post contains 545 words, total size 7 kb.

The self-importance is strong in both of them. Whose narcissism will reign supreme?

Washington (CNN) – White House press secretary Robert Gibbs left open the possibility Sunday that President Obama could take a turn on the hardwood with NBA super star LeBron James.

“Look, I can only imagine if the president had an opportunity to play against LeBron James, he would take it,” Gibbs said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“I don't know that we would make the game public or the outcome or the score public because let's just say somebody [like James] who is 6-foot-8, quite that size, starts with an advantage that is hard for the president to make up.

The unemployment rate is at 9.5%. America is fighting two wars. Tens of thousands of barrels of oil are still flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. The economy is still in the toilet.

Obama's response? Ridiculous spinning on the economy. Another broken promise not to rest until the oil spill is dealt with, a promise that is parodied well in this video.

Oh, and the golf. Let's not forget the golf.

And now, they float the possibility of playing basketball with the most unpopular man in Ohio. It's almost enough to make one think this administration is fundamentally unserious about governing.

Don't worry, though. Obama will deal with the nation's problems soon.

Maybe right after he gets back from Maine.

Posted by: Slublog at 04:21 PM | Comments (160)
Post contains 252 words, total size 3 kb.

Well duh.

Joe Barton.. blah blah...ugh. Joe Barton.. more.. ugh.

Will this resonate?

Yeah, a little. Sorry, I think Joe was right in spirit but wrong in tactics.

But the good news is they're on the defensive regarding the upcoming mid-terms, and we need to keep them reeling. The other good news is if this is all they got to hammer about, they ain't got a helluva lot.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 01:52 PM | Comments (489)
Post contains 104 words, total size 2 kb.

And so the most-watched sporting event in television history comes to an end. Holland takes on the Spanish national team at 11:00am Pacific on ABC.

Neither team has won a World Cup championship and the two teams have only met nine times in history. (They're tied at 4-4 with one draw.)

In this tournament they've had very different styles so far. The Netherlands have been playing a defensive game, taking few shots, but making them. The Spanish have been doing the opposite, batting the ball every which way and hammering the goal repeatedly.

Also at stake is the Golden Boot award for top goal scorer. The Netherlands' Wesley Sneijder and Spain's David Villa are both contenders, though they're tied for the moment with Thomas Müller of Germany.

So, who to root for? I'm pulling for Spain, as I said I would back when the Cup got going. Paul the Octopus also says Spain's going to win, despite the death threats. However, the canny cephalopod cannot be said to be unbiased. After Germany's loss in the semifinal, Spain offered asylum to keep angry Germans from eating the poor fellow.

As for Holland, um...they wear orange. So, they have that going for them.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:05 AM | Comments (483)
Post contains 211 words, total size 1 kb.

Michael Bellesiles last work of "history" was a proof, he alleged, that early America had in fact never had many privately-owned guns, and that our "gun culture" was an invention of relatively recent vintage.

His evidence for this surprising proposition was a meticulous accounting of probate records, which he carefully combed through to find that very few Americans owned a gun at their deaths, at least in the first hundred years or so of the Republic.

He got some major awards and was instantly lauded as important historian. The political-education complex loved him.

One problem: the probates he supposedly checked showed far higher incidences of gun ownership than he reported, and, alas, a good many of the probate records he checked turned out to not exist.

He was exposed as a fraud and fabricator to such a degree even the political-education complex couldn't cover for him, and he was cast out of his professorship at Emory University.

He's now teaching at a small, second tier (if that) school in Connecticut. One would think he's ready to bear down and really do some solid research this time around, to maybe earn a little of his reputation back. And avoid just making stuff up that will sell to the liberal political-education complex.

Well... you may think that but you'd be wrong, it seems.

What is sort of remarkable about this is that Bellesiles story here -- about a student whose brother is killed in Iraq, and another veteran who only suddenly (under Bellesiles' instruction) realizes the men he's killed have families of their own, and hence decides to not re-enlist -- is so minor, so weak, so lame. It does of course have a liberal-pleasing moral to it, but a fuzzy and weak one.

It's as if he constructed a tale that was as unimportant as humanly possible in order to avoid drawing attention to it and getting it checked out.

Well, Jim Lindgren checked anyway, and he can find absolutely no men killed in Iraq during the time frame in question (or even nearby timeframes) whose deaths correspond at all to the details provided by Bellesiles.

Thanks to dri.

Posted by: Ace at 08:26 AM | Comments (131)
Post contains 370 words, total size 2 kb.