There was a memorial for Andrew last night.

As of now, there's no pay-pal or digital method of donation, but checks can be sent to:

Breitbart ChildrenÂ’s Trust

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Posted by: Ace at 03:20 PM | Comments (191)
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And I just read an article strongly suggesting (as a guess) the shooter was a right-wing (Christian) nationalist type. Update: PJMedia notes the "far-right wing" meme.

Close.

Hundreds of police officers laid siege to an apartment in the south of France where a serial killing suspect was holed up Wednesday, but the man described by authorities as an al Qaeda-trained jihadist refused to surrender as the standoff dragged on.

The suspect, named by authorities as Mohammed Merah, 23, opened fire on police as they tried to ram down his apartment door about 3:30 a.m., wounding two officers, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said.

Negotiators are continuing to talk to him and are discussing options, Molins said.
Street lights were switched off Wednesday evening in the district where the siege is going on, leading to speculation that more police action could be imminent.

Merah is wanted in connection with the killings of seven people in the past 10 days: three soldiers of North African descent and a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school, all in or near the city of Toulouse.

Merah said he planned to attack more soldiers and police Wednesday, Molins said.

Oh: The reason the media was speculating cheerleading the idea he was a far-right ultranationalist was because his first three victims were French paratroopers -- Muslims.

Thus, they decided "He hates Muslims, he must be a right-winger."

Well, another group hates Muslims, too, and that group has killed far more Muslims than any other -- Islamist Muslims. The paratroopers were probably killed for being "apostates" working for a "Crusader nation."

Guess that didn't occur to anyone in the media.

Posted by: Ace at 01:21 PM | Comments (435)
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Geraghty notes what I've said a lot: People don't like changing their mind or admitting they were wrong.

Those looking for Obama voters to prostrate themselves and beg forgiveness are not going to get that. Maybe they deserve scorn, but they're not going to scourge themselves.

It is probably helpful (I honestly have said this twenty times) to offer them some kind of face-saving, ego-sparing way out. A way they can now vote against Obama, but without having to confess they're idiots and simpletons. (Which they won't do anyway.)

Is "naivete" the way out for them?

Monday I spoke to a smart political mind who had been watching focus groups of wavering Obama voters in swing states, and he said that one word that those voters kept coming back to, again and again, was “naïve.” (The term was to describe the president, not themselves.) Those who voted for Obama won’t call him stupid, and certainly don’t accept that he’s evil. But they have seen grandiose promises on the stimulus fail to materialize, Obamacare touted as the answer to all their health care needs and turn out to be nothing of the sort, pledges of amazing imminent advances in alternative energy, and so on. He seemed to think that reaching out to the Iranians would lead to a change in the regime’s behavior and attitudes. He was surprised to learn that shovel-ready projects were not, in fact, shovel-ready. He was surprised to learn that large-scale investment in infrastructure and clean-energy projects wouldn’t great enormous numbers of new jobs. He’s surprised that his past housing policies haven’t helped struggling homeowners like he promised. He’s surprised that his signature health-care policy has become as controversial as it has. The “recession turned out to be a lot deeper than any of us realized.” When a woman says her semiconductor engineer husband can’t find a job, Obama says he’s surprised to hear it, because “he often hears business leaders in that field talk of a scarcity of skilled workers.”

The poor guy. HeÂ’s always getting blindsided.

Geraghty notes that 69 million voted for Obama in 2008, and around 59 million for McCain. Using that as a baseline, we need something close to half of that ten million excess to switch.

Taranto wonders if Romney's "nice guy" strategy isn't aimed at that 10 million of possible switchers.

Monday night Romney was crisscrossing Ohio, when he spoke about the President and opened up a can of . . . friendliness: "This is a failed presidency," Romney was quoted as saying. "He's a nice guy, but he's in over his head." Though we'll never know if Romney actually believes any part of that unsult, we do know that "Nice guy" has become the candidate's favorite setup when taking a dig at his rivals.

"He's a nice guy, but . . ." is exquisitely condescending. It's probably not true: Obama strikes us as a petulant narcissist. But calling someone a "nice guy" is rarely a genuine compliment, and it never is when conjoined by "but." As any man who has ever been rejected by a woman knows, describing someone as "a nice guy, but . . ." is another way of saying he's ineffectual. That is exactly the point Romney is making about Obama.

I'd like it a little sharper than that, but I see the strategy, at least.

You know, there is another out, for the Obama-voters:

It's not that you were foolish. It's that he and the media lied to you.

Posted by: Ace at 01:05 PM | Comments (201)
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Ladies and gentlemen, your doddering old Vice President.

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Posted by: Ace at 12:41 PM | Comments (134)
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As Pethokoukis says, it's an anecdote that defines the presidency.

Energy was a particular obsession of the president-elect’s, and therefore a particular source of frustration. Week after week, [White House economic adviser Christina] Romer would march in with an estimate of the jobs all the investments in clean energy would produce; week after week, Obama would send her back to check the numbers. “I don’t get it,” he’d say. “We make these large-scale investments in infrastructure. What do you mean, there are no jobs?” But the numbers rarely budged.

There are four possible main types of educated people:

Good student, good thinker

Good student, bad thinker

Bad student, good thinker

Bad student, bad thinker

I don't actually think Obama was a good student -- I mean, where are the grades, yo? -- but I would call him a "good student" in the sense that he believed whatever his professors told him.

A pliable mind, let's call it.

Some people are bad as students because they reject the crap their professors tell them. Some of these people are just idiots; some are pretty smart, and go on to do big things.

On the other hand, some "good students" are complete idiots themselves, and what makes them good students -- pliability, willingness to believe -- is exactly what makes them bad thinkers.

Obama's that type, obviously.

He has no rebelliousness of mind. No defiance of thought.

He believes everything his leftist professors and leftist heroes and leftist patrons (like Bill Ayers) told him.

He's got a soft mind. A soft man, who's lived a soft life, with soft hands, and a soft mind.

Meanwhile, this parvenu (where are the grades, yo?) sends out his flack to call Paul Ryan "aggressively and deliberately ignorant" on this very issue.

"You have to be aggressively and deliberately ignorant of the world economy not to know and understand that clean energy technologies are going to play a huge role in the 21st century," Carney said after decrying the clean energy spending cuts in Ryan's plan. "You have to have severely diminished capacity to understand what drives economic growth in industrialized countries in this century if you do not understand that education is the key that unlocks the door to prosperity," he added.

You know what I understand, morons? I understand the world moved swiftly from a wood & coal based energy base to oil in like 30 years without government doing anything to foster that.

One technology was superior. It quickly dominated and displaced previous inferior technologies.

A lot of technology is going to play a big role in the 21st century.

Funny thing about superior technologies though-- they tend to be self-sufficient and self-evangelizing.

Posted by: Ace at 12:17 PM | Comments (224)
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The reporter of this remark does not put "destiny" in quotes himself, so I am quoting Goldberg, but Goldberg is maybe not accurately quoting Sullivan. Perhaps it's a paraphrase; perhaps it's humorous overstatement.

But the basics are there.

If it is condescending to think that Andrew Sullivan -- formerly an embarrassingly rabid Zionist, who lately has become an embarrassingly rabid anti-Zionist -- doesn't know much about the Middle East, and fears its complexity, well, I guess I'm guilty. The main problem with Andrew's view of the world, and with Peter Beinart's book, is the systematic downplaying of Palestinian mistakes in order to blame the impasse in the peace process on Israel. (I remember when Andrew, of course, characterized Palestinians as devils and thought Israelis wore halos, but this was before, as he told me over lunch one day a couple of years ago, he realized that Netanyahu, in his opinion, was standing in the way of President Obama's destiny. Once Netanyahu got in the way, Andrew said, he was finished defending Israel).

Oh, I'd be remiss if I didn't also note that Andrew Sullivan is, of course, turning as usual to his favorite topic, Andrew Sullivan. His blog is consumed with the question Why don't women like me or read me? He even has a video response to this important question.

Since reading this Important Question, my eyebrows have been arching so much I sprained my forehead.

Posted by: Ace at 11:39 AM | Comments (191)
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I think Laura Ingraham remarked this was his best speech yet.

For some time I've intended to note that Romney has to speak thematically more. He has to connect policy ideas to grander, deeper themes.

He does a bit of that here.

My other suggestion (which he doesn't do) is that he he has to improve tonally. Look, conservatives are angry. They want to see a candidate show some of that anger. Not just to validate their own emotional state, but also to convince them that the candidate "gets it" where it counts, in the gut.

I know Romney does not want to appear angry and believes, with a fair amount of history to back him, that Angry Candidates do not win, and Happy Warriors do.

That's true, but there is a usefulness to anger.

I have suggested, and I will re-suggest, that Romney give a speech in which he treats the nation, and Obama, as if it is a failing company (and its parvenu CEO) he's been hired to right as a consultant.

Examine each and every failure and channel some emotion over the waste of capital and the waste of precious human resources. And keep saying, "This is unacceptable!," or a similar word. Something with some bite.

I know Romney does not believe in displays of emotion but let me suggest to him his business career should have taught him: The customers are always right. And, in this case, I think they're on to something.

You cannot ask a country to boot out the current occupant of the Oval Office if his performance is merely worth some tut-tutting and laugh lines. To justify such a large change, the CEO of America, Inc. has to be guilty of real incompetence and malfeasance.

And incompetence and malfeasance are worth getting hot about.

It really would help, not hurt, Romney if he backed his intellectual level claims with emotional level conviction. If Obama really has failed so badly the country needs a course correction -- how come we don't hear that in your voice?

His actual speech is decent. Needs work. He needs to improve if he's going to really win the primary, as opposed to gimping over the finish line, spent. And he'll need to improve to defeat a sitting president.
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Posted by: Ace at 10:40 AM | Comments (383)
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So she's a balloon-head, right?

“There should be a litmus test that they be pro-women so our votes have to include that requirement at least,” Fluke said. “And it should be a litmus test that applies to male candidates as well.”

She also spoke about the possibility of running for office in the future:

“Numerous American women have actually written to me in the last few weeks saying that I should run for office, and maybe someday I will.”

Posted by: Ace at 09:53 AM | Comments (269)
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Sean Payton is suspended for the season by the NFL over "Bountygate" and Tim Tebow is now a NY Jet.

Related: The Mayans emailed to say, "We told you so".

Oh and a top Romney adviser said something really, really dumb today. And that's all I'll say about that.

[Update - Andy]

Posted by: DrewM at 09:17 AM | Comments (259)
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I don't know how many times we have to explain basic things to people.

1) Contraception...is a luxury item, like deodorant or marijuana. You do not actually need it to live.

It does not facilitate your fundamental survival, except perhaps in very very rare cases. There are other people who lack actual necessities in this world, and the importance of their needs transcends your childish want for "free" coochiepills rather profoundly.

2) Contraception...is f*cking cheap. The Hell is wrong with you? Are you telling us that women are goddamn helpless infants, and should be proud of it?

3) Contraception...is not free just because someone else- someone better at taking care of themselves and others than you are, you selfish twit- paid for it.

It's not free.
It's not free.
It's NOT free.

Helpful idiots of the Left, they will lead us all into slavery.

Posted by: LauraW at 05:49 AM | Comments (670)
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