French Police Arrest Suspect in Weekend Copycat Stabbing Attack
— Ace

Guess.

He's confessed to the stabbing. He's an Islamic convert, described as a traditionalist or a radical. He was seen praying just before the attack. This prayer -- which I believe was bowing towards Mecca -- was seen on videotape, as the attack occurred in a train station, well surveilled.

So of course the Interior Minister said:

“I cannot talk about radical Islam."

more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:14 AM | Comments (156)
Post contains 81 words, total size 1 kb.

Everyone Check Under Your Couch Cushions For Loose Change
— JohnE.

Because Newsweek is for sale again.

This is some pro-level BS peddling right here from Tina Brown:

"The simple reason is focus. Newsweek is a powerful brand, but its demands have taken attention and focus away from The Daily Beast," they wrote. "The story that hasn't been told about The Daily Beast is its strength. Deidre Depke and her team have earned the Webby for Best News site for two years running. Our traffic is up significantly yet again this year. And digital ad sales in a very tough environment are up 30% year to date."

Focus. It's all about focus.

It's nice she's being so honest about this decision. It's not like anyone at the company ever said buying Newseek was a gigantic mistake or anything.

"'I wish I hadn't bought Newsweek, it was a mistake," [IAC chief Barry Diller] told Bloomberg TV in late April, adding that he did not have "great expectations” for the digital version.

Oh. Well. Too bad about that. more...

Posted by: JohnE. at 07:36 AM | Comments (203)
Post contains 177 words, total size 1 kb.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer: The Only Thing I Care About Is Implementing ObamaCare
— DrewM

This story got a little lost over the holiday weekend but it's worth revisiting because it's still ongoing.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has decided her one and only priority is expanding here state's Medicaid program under ObamaCare and she'll veto all other legislation until lawmakers cave and pass it.

Gov. Jan Brewer sent five bills to the scrap heap Thursday in a pointed gesture intended to prod lawmakers into a deal on the budget and her plan to expand Medicaid.

The five vetoes, follow-through on BrewerÂ’s promise to block legislation until her top priorities move forward, capped a tense day that saw some lawmakers receive threats over their support for the plan to provide health care for more of the stateÂ’s poor.

In letters explaining her actions, Brewer revealed a growing impatience with the Legislature, which she noted has been in session for 130days and has only five weeks until the constitutional deadline for a fiscal 2014 budget.

“I warned that I would not sign additional measures into law until we see resolution of the two most pressing issues facing us: adoption of a fiscal 2014 state budget and plan for Medicaid,” Brewer wrote. “It is disappointing I must demonstrate the moratorium was not an idle threat.”

Not surprisingly, there are plenty of Repubicans in the state legislature who support Brewer and ObamaCare.

Cases like this and Marco Rubio's immigration lies during his campaign are why conservatives are wary of giving an inch of maneuvering room to Republican leaders in Congress.

There have simply been too many times when the GOP/conservatives have not only tactically retreated but outright gone over to the liberal side. There's little to no trust for most elected Republicans. And for good reason.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:28 AM | Comments (476)
Post contains 313 words, total size 2 kb.

Top Headline Comments 5-29-13
— Gabriel Malor

Happy Wednesday.

Forgive me if this has been linked before, I've been out of town. David Freddoso has an interesting column on Speaker Boehner's leadership style, as contrasted with the DeLay-Pelosi strong-arm speakerships.

Rep. Bachmann has an eight-minute video announcing that she won't run for reelection next year. It's somethin'.

WSJ is still asking about the IRS targeting of groups that support Israel, something that has seemed to get lost in the scandal.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:49 AM | Comments (384)
Post contains 81 words, total size 1 kb.

Overnight Open Thread (5-28-2013)
— Maetenloch

A Worthwhile Public Health Initiative

Some people will tell you that if there were but a single loaf of bread in all India it would be divided equally between the Plowdens, the Trevors, the Beadons, and the Rivett-Carnacs. That is only one way of saying that certain families serve India generation after generation, as dolphins follow in line across the open sea.

Let us take a small and obscure case. There has been at least one representative of the Devonshire Chinns in or near Central India since the days of Lieutenant-Fireworker Humphrey Chinn, of the Bombay European Regiment, who assisted at the capture of Seringapatam in 1799. Alfred Ellis Chinn, Humphrey's younger brother, commanded a regiment of Bombay grenadiers from 1804 to 1813, when he saw some mixed fighting; and in 1834 John Chinn of the same family - we will call him John Chinn the First - came to light as a level-headed administrator in time of trouble at a place called Mundesur. He died young, but left his mark on the new country, and the Honourable the Board of Directors of the Honourable the East India Company embodied his virtues in a stately resolution, and paid for the expenses of his tomb among the Satpura hills.

He was succeeded by his son, Lionel Chinn, who left the little old Devonshire home just in time to be severely wounded in the Mutiny. He spent his working life within a hundred and fifty miles of John Chinn's grave, and rose to the command of a regiment of small, wild hill-men, most of whom had known his father. His son John was born in the small thatched-roofed, mud-walled cantonment, which is even to-day eighty miles from the nearest railway, in the heart of a scrubby, tigerish country. Colonel Lionel Chinn served thirty years and retired. In the Canal his steamer passed the outward-bound troop-ship, carrying his son eastward to the family duty.

The Chinns are luckier than most folk, because they know exactly what they must do. A clever Chinn passes for the Bombay Civil Service, and gets away to Central India, where everybody is glad to see him. A dull Chinn enters the Police Department or the Woods and Forest, and sooner or later he, too, appears in Central India, and that is what gave rise to the saying, "Central India is inhabited by Bhils, Mairs, and Chinns, all very much alike." The breed is small-boned, dark, and silent, and the stupidest of them are good shots. John Chinn the Second was rather clever, but as the eldest son he entered the army, according to Chinn tradition. His duty was to abide in his father's regiment for the term of his natural life, though the corps was one which most men would have paid heavily to avoid. They were irregulars, small, dark, and blackish, clothed in rifle-green with black-leather trimmings; and friends called them the "Wuddars," which means a race of low-caste people who dig up rats to eat. But the Wuddars did not resent it. They were the only Wuddars, and their points of pride were these:

Firstly, they had fewer English officers than any native regiment. Secondly, their subalterns were not mounted on parade, as is the general rule, but walked at the head of their men. A man who can hold his own with the Wuddars at their quickstep must be sound in wind and limb. Thirdly, they were the most pukka shikarries (out-and-out hunters) in all India. Fourthly-up to one-hundredthly - they were the Wuddars - Chinn's Irregular Bhil Levies of the old days, but now, henceforward and for ever, the Wuddars.

No Englishman entered their mess except for love or through family usage. The officers talked to their soldiers in a tongue not two hundred white folk in India understood; and the men were their children, all drawn from the Bhils, who are, perhaps, the strangest of the many strange races in India. They were, and at heart are, wild men, furtive, shy, full of untold superstitions. The races whom we call natives of the country found the Bhil in possession of the land when they first broke into that part of the world thousands of years ago. The books call them Pre-Aryan, Aboriginal, Dravidian, and so forth; and, in other words, that is what the Bhils call themselves. When a Rajput chief whose bards can sing his pedigree backwards for twelve hundred years is set on the throne, his investiture is not complete till he has been marked on the forehead with blood from the veins of a Bhil. The Rajputs say the ceremony has no meaning, but the Bhil knows that it is the last, last shadow of his old rights as the long-ago owner of the soil.

Read the rest here.

more...

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:20 PM | Comments (547)
Post contains 1382 words, total size 16 kb.

Jonathan Alter: Then and Now
— JohnE.

Jonathan Alter in 2011:

"@bloombergview: This is @jonathanalter on @barackobama is scandal-less | bloom.bg/srS9fa" Rightwingers going crazy over this one!

— Jonathan Alter (@jonathanalter) October 28, 2011

That was, of course, in reference to his half willful blindness and half liberal hack column declaring Obama "miraculously scandal-free", way back before the media firewall broke on stories that were quite well-known outside this chucklehead's echo bubble.

Jonathan Alter today:

Just to be clear: any comparison between Obama Admn and Nixon is ridiculous.

— Jonathan Alter (@jonathanalter) May 28, 2013

Notice he offers absolutely no evidence to support this claim. He just declares it as fact and disappears to the shattered dreams of his own invented reality about this Chicago crime syndicate that is currently running our country off the rails.

How are they dissimilar? Because I said so, winger.

Stellar job, Jonathan. Maybe you'll be invited to the the next meeting of the Progressive Super Friends in the West Wing. The only costume requirement is kneepads.

Posted by: JohnE. at 05:29 PM | Comments (204)
Post contains 175 words, total size 2 kb.

Evening Open Thread
— Ace

Mark Steyn writes a great column about the recent Islamic terrorism.

Of course, when I say this, I mean "Mark Steyn writes essentially the same great column about recent Islamic terrorism that he's been writing for twelve years, because not a thing has changed, except the West's capacity for self-delusion has, if anything, grown."

Posted by: Ace at 04:50 PM | Comments (153)
Post contains 60 words, total size 1 kb.

Washington Post's Expose on Kathryn Ruemmler's Shoes: Sexist, or an Attempt to Humanize Her and Thus Aid Her?
— Ace

"Sexist," some claim.

This is dumb. The fact is, Women Really Like Shoes.

All women? No. But a lot.

And among the number of women who Really Like Shoes is one Kathryn Ruemmler. It is no slur to say Ruemmler likes shoes, because she buys a lot of high-end shoes.

People who buy high-end, fashion-forward shoes want you to notice their shoes.

Duh.

Do you think "Diamond" David Lee Roth was upset by people noticing his Spandex and Boas?

No, he was not. He was sort of hoping you'd notice.

Would it be wrong to talk up Paul Ryan's interest in bow-hunting? No. Because that's genuinely one of his interests.

So sorry if it's too much of a shock for people to discover that men and women have different sorts of personal interests.

No, the problem here is, as usual, liberal bias. This is another liberal attempt at painting someone as Just Like You and thereby garner sympathy for her.

The question isn't "Did the Washington Post run other shoe-stories about other White House counsels?" That's a stupid question -- as far as we know, no other White House Counsels had multithousand dollar shoe collections.

The question is, "Did the Washington Post celebrate any Republican figures at the center of scandals for their humanizing hobbies and interests?"

During Watergate, did the Washington Post ever run a story headline:

John Mitchell's Passion: Model Rocketry

?

No they didn't. Because they weren't interested in showing The Other Side of John Mitchell. They only focused on one side, The Villain.

Posted by: Ace at 03:51 PM | Comments (204)
Post contains 293 words, total size 2 kb.

Obama, Nixon Comparisons Not So Off-Base As Obama's Dwindling Praetorian Guard Would Have You Believe
— Ace

Via Nice Deb, by Revealing Politics, a comparison of Nixon's and Obama's various deflections of their scandals.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:21 PM | Comments (178)
Post contains 46 words, total size 1 kb.

"It's Not About the Nail"
— Ace

Stop trying to fix things.

Posted by: Ace at 02:05 PM | Comments (82)
Post contains 15 words, total size 1 kb.