Verum Serum has been covering this claim, and now Glenn Beck picks up on it.

This story pits the word of three groups of people who have no credibility whatsoever against each other: Cenk Uygur, MSNBC's executies (who deny it), and Jay Carney (who also denies it).

Posted by: Ace at 01:30 PM | Comments (196)
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Quote:

Grassley said he does not know definitively if there was a political motivation, but he suspects there was:

“My suspicion is they don’t like the Second Amendment the way it is, and they are going to do everything to hurt guns and restrict guns. So they could have been building a case for that. But I can’t prove that.”

I doubt he'll be able to prove that, given that specific motive is hard to prove anyway, and this is the sort of thing that won't be mentioned much in documentary evidence.

And if it is, that evidence will be destroyed.

So far we've seen one mention of a this sort of thinking.

Posted by: Ace at 12:48 PM | Comments (54)
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Unconfirmed reports that police think the shooter was also the bomber -- obviously, in this scenario, he parked his car bombs earlier in the day, then went to the island to kill people with a gun.

Earlier someone said they saw 20 or 25 "bodies" on the shore of the island, or floating in the water.

Still not hearing any kind of verification for claims that the killer was "blonde-haired and blue-eyed." I think that's likely wishcasting.

Update: A guy being interviewed on BBC just said he had also heard the attacker in custody appears "Nordic." But this is what he heard. He doesn't seem to know a lot.

Update: A guy claims that Jihadist Claim of Responsibility was debunked as a hoax.

I don't know. I'm listening to the BBC. Obviously they have a big cheerleading section for the White Rightwing Terrorist Scenario.

I still haven't heard anyone who actually saw the shooter confirm his ethnicity as "Nordic." It just keeps buzzing around as "something people heard."

Eyewitness: Allah directs me to the 3:35 update here, where an eyewitness describes the island shooter as "tall, blonde, and and Nordic-looking."

Posted by: Ace at 11:46 AM | Comments (379)
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Not a single media mention that I know of.

Think of how skillfully they did this. First, they accused him of "editing" the videos in a misleading way. The only evidence of that was that comical flashes of O'Keefe and Giles in pimp and ho attire was thrown in for laughs -- and that has become the basis for the left's lament of "misleading editing."

Having repeated an allegation never proven enough times, the media can now say "Well we can't run his videos; they're misleadingly edited." Despite the fact that the unedited videos all run in their entirety after the highlights that begin each reel.

Posted by: Ace at 11:26 AM | Comments (68)
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This seems ill-advised.

Germany now becomes the one-nation Marshall Plan for the debtor nations of Europe. This only works if it works. When you strap yourself to a drowning man, there's a very good chance you will be dragged under, rather than holding the drowning man afloat.

In addition, democracy is effectively suspended in Greece as European Union technocrats will be managing its affairs.

It’s not quite what some are portraying it as – the day that Europe signed up to the creation of a superstate – but it’s another big step in that direction...

By creating extreme moral hazard through ultra low interest rates for the afflicted nations, it also threatens to sow the seeds for an even worse eurozone debt crisis at some stage in the future.

Agreement on the package is one thing, deliverability is quite another. Once Germans realise that what is being proposed is a transfer union by stealth, you have to wonder what political future there is for the leaders who agreed it. Angela Merkel is staring election defeat in the face, rather in the way that agreeing to German participation in the euro was arguably what did for Chancellor Helmut Kohl back in the late 1990s.

...

The agreement refers to a “European Marshall Plan” to restore competitiveness to Greece. This doesn’t appear to mean money. Instead it seems to refer to the provision of “exceptional technical assistance to help Greece implement its reforms”. In other words, someone else will be running Greece’s affairs. That might be regarded as a positive development. Greece has, after all, proved quite incapable of running them for itself. Democracy has nevertheless been suspended.

Monty calls this a default by Greece. I believe he means this: Credit rating firms have stated previously that any failure of Greece to pay its obligations would be charged as a "default," even if the creditors agreed "voluntarily" to take a haircut. (No one really "volunteers" for a haircut; this is done just to get some money out of a bad investment.)

I think the theory is that more and more of Greece's debt is held by the European Central Bank and by lending them vast amounts of money at low interest rates (which they clearly haven't earned), this is as a much as a "default" as simply not paying up.

This all seems very bad.

Oh: Monty now explains. Apparently the bondholders did take a haircut:

It's a default because bondholders have to take haircuts -- willingly or not, it's still coercive. (I.e., if I read the deal correctly, getting their bonds at par with the full coupon is not an option.)

It's a legalism, though, as I explained in my solvency article. [This will be posted later -- ace.] "Default" is a legalism, and one that sovereigns (especially the ECB) play a lot of tricks to avoid.

An extension of term is still a haircut even if the par value is retained. A bond is a contract, and if I buy, say, a 1-year Greek bond with a 2% coupon, that's a contract. An extension of term means my principal remains "locked up" for longer than I wish, and I may or may not get the agreed-upon coupon rate at the end of the renegotiated term. (Just because the sovereign *promises* a higher coupon -- interest rate -- on the extended bond doesn't mean they'll actually pay it. After all, the previous defaulted bond was a promise too.) In other words, I'm incurring an opportunity cost (not getting my principal plus original interest back) without being properly compensated for it. And there is the reality that there will be a sure-enough bond default not long from now because this whole "voluntary" thing won't have enough takers, I'm betting -- Greece would need to impose haircuts of at least 50%-70% on outstanding debt to even have a *chance* of paying it back. This whole "Brady Bond" approach is yet another delaying action, not a real solution.

Nevertheless, it is also a technical default on bonds -- the only reason markets aren't freaking out about it is that they priced in default a long time ago. (The Euro actually got a small bump on the
news.)

Posted by: Ace at 10:43 AM | Comments (155)
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From listening to the BBC, the other attack involved someone dressed as a policeman who entered a "youth camp" and began firing on them indiscriminately. The attack took place at a "youth camp" (I'm not getting a clearer description of what this is) on an island called Utoya near Oslo.

That man has been arrested.

By the way, George Gooding, who you might remember as "Seixon," was 750 meters away when the blast went off at the government building. He files his own picture of the destruction.

More: At least seven are dead in the "blasts;" I'm not sure, but there seem to have been multiple bombs.

Seven people were killed in the blast. I just heard over BBC that seven people were also killed at the "Youth Conference" (it's now being called) in Utoya. I get the sense it was some kind of political party conference for younger people. Confirmed: It was a Labor Party political conference.

A "prominent jihadist" has taken blame for the bombing, stating it was meant to penalize Norway for contributing troops to Afghanistan.

More: It seems like a coordinated attack, designed to hit the Prime Minister.

Shortly after the apparent bomb attack, a man dressed as a police officer opened fire on a youth political meeting on the island of Utoya in the Oslo fjord, about 25 miles from the city, the police said. There were initial reports that Prime Minister Stoltenberg was scheduled to attend the meeting.

“The situation’s gone from bad to worse,” said Runar Kvernen, spokesman for the National Police Directorate under the Ministry of Justice and Police.As fear spread through the capital, the police moved to lock down a wide area of the city center, where the streets were already nearly deserted.

The BBC reports that Norwegian police now suspect a "connection."

The shooter was arrested attempting to swim away from the island.

Claim: Some, on Twitter, are claiming the shooter was "blonde-haired, blue-eyed." But no one has confirmed that. Other reports say he was "foreign-looking."

Posted by: Ace at 09:40 AM | Comments (438)
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Debuting in October (or at least that's the plan).

Apparently they're not watching videos anymore, but instead are watching reality tv.

First I was put off by this, but then I realized I don't watch videos myself and don't really want to so Beavis and Butthead's commentary on R. Kelly and Kellis or whoever would probably be a drag for me.

Also, the B&B compilations always omitted the videos, because they never secured the rights to those, apart, I guess, from the general license MTV had to air their videos. I'm thinking (hoping) that reality tv is so cheap and so desperate for cash they've signed the rights over this time around.

Is it good? Eh, the clips are okay. Not really top-drawer B&B. The cartoon/story parts were always a little lame, and this one's slightly better than lame... but it features Cornholio, so that's a big deployment of a fan favorite, and it's still only okay.

The show's strength was always the on-the-couch-making-comments part. There's only a brief one shown here, about Snooki from Jersey Shore. I guess I have hopes, but not expectations.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:19 AM | Comments (61)
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The best? In the right-to-work low-tax states of Texas and Florida.

Blue states only manage a single entry in the top ten of public high schools. In the top one hundred, it's perfectly even -- 50/50 -- but this then raises the question, "What are blue states getting in exchange for bankrupting themselves, exactly?"

Posted by: Ace at 08:49 AM | Comments (135)
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The quote Althouse pulls out seems to actually be from the legal complaint, which avers that, due to this defect, the new legislative maps must be "unconstitutional."

Under the legislation, Democrats have little chance of attaining and retaining a majority in either the Senate or the Assembly, or in the congressional delegation, giving them little ability to overcome minority status at any point over the next decade."

I'm sorry, what? I thought you just said that it's a Constitution level principle that Democrats must win elections, but surely you couldn't have possibly said that.

Posted by: Ace at 08:32 AM | Comments (99)
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Oh, and by the way... more...

Posted by: CAC at 08:30 AM | Comments (39)
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