No customers.

I have no problem with this. I wouldn't criticize devout Christians for setting up a chaste version of Second Life, so I won't knock on Muslims.

I do wonder what the point is, though. Actually I wonder what the point is of the real Second Life, which gives you, as I understand it, the opportunity to clean the house and pay bills and work at a job and such. You know, all those fantasy elements we can't get in real life.

At least with the possibility of sex all that busywork is marginally valuable.

There's no sex, no drugs, no wine, no women — well, there may be women, but they're probably wearing headscarves.

The first virtual world catering to practicing Muslims has made a trial launch in cyberspace, thanks to Muxlim, a English-language, Finland-based Web site devoted to Muslims living in the West.

"We are not a religious site — we are a site that is focused on the lifestyle," site founder Mohamed El-Fatatry tells the BBC. "This is for anyone who is remotely interested in the Muslim culture and the Muslim lifestyle."

Ahem. I assume that terrorism -- part of the real Second Life world -- will also not be included here. No Jews, no Hindus, no Christians... no targets.

Posted by: Ace at 10:27 AM | Comments (39)
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Almost willful?

John Fund:

What remains to be seen is whether this episode will put an end to what Chicago Tribune political columnist John Kass calls the national media's "almost willful" fantasy that Mr. Obama and Chicago's political culture have little to do with each other. Mr. Kass notes that the media devoted a lot more time and energy to investigating the inner workings of Sarah Palin's Wasilla, Alaska, than it has looking at Mr. Obama's Chicago connections.

To date, Mr. Obama's approach to Illinois corruption has been to congratulate himself for dodging association with it. "I think I have done a good job in rising politically in this environment without being entangled in some of the traditional problems of Chicago politics," he told the Chicago Tribune last spring. At the time, Mr. Obama was being grilled over news that he bought his house through a land deal involving Tony Rezko, a political fixer who was later convicted on 16 corruption counts. Rezko is mentioned dozens of times in the 76-page criminal complaint against Mr. Blagojevich.

Mr. Obama has an ambiguous reputation among those trying to clean up Illinois politics. "We have a sick political culture, and that's the environment Barack Obama came from," Jay Stewart, executive director of the Chicago Better Government Association, told ABC News months ago. Though Mr. Obama did support ethics reforms as a state senator, Mr. Stewart noted that he's "been noticeably silent on the issue of corruption here in his home state including, at this point, mostly Democratic politicians."

...

In 2002, Mr. Obama turned up to help Mr. Blagojevich, a staunch ally of Mr. Jones, win the governor's mansion. Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama's incoming White House chief of staff, told The New Yorker earlier this year that six years ago he and Mr. Obama "participated in a small group that met weekly when Rod was running for governor. We basically laid out the general election, Barack and I and these two [other participants]."

Mr. Blagojevich won, but before long, problems surfaced. In 2004, Zalwaynaka Scott, the governor's inspector general, said his administration's efforts to evade merit-selection laws exposed "not merely an ignorance of the law, but complete and utter contempt for the law." Nonetheless, Mr. Obama endorsed Mr. Blagojevich's re-election in 2006.

This spring, many Democrats were so disgusted with Mr. Blagojevich that state House Speaker Michael Madigan drafted a memo on why Democrats should impeach Mr. Blagojevich. Mr. Madigan's "talking points" compared the corruption going on in the state to a tumor that must be removed.

...

Many people were curious who Mr. Obama would side with in the dispute. Would it be with those Democrats who wanted to move aggressively against an apparently corrupt governor or with his old Chicago ally, Mr. Jones, who preferred to wait? Mr. Obama did neither. He kept silent. (I emailed the Obama campaign about Mr. Blagojevich's problems in June, but my question was ignored.)

As Fund notes, Obama did rouse himself to speak out forcefully against government corruption... in Kenya.

Bear in mind, of course, Sarah Palin was a moron for taking on the less-spectacularly corrupt Alaskan political machine. See, if she had been as brilliant as Obama, she wouldn't have needed to respond with crude measures like fighting corruption and defeating corrupt politicians; she could have employed nuance and smarts to finesse around it, and even profit from it.

Whew. We really dodged a bullet there.

Rezko Singing About Blago; Feds Looking Into Rezko-Obama Land Deal: More good stuff.

In case you don't know the details by now: Obama wanted to buy a property a fair bit out of his league. The owner insisted that that property and the adjoining lot be sold on the same day. Obama could barely afford the one, let alone the lot.

So Rezko came in to buy the empty lot, which he sweetly never did anything with, giving Obama effectively the entire two-lot parcel for his own use. But even better -- Rezko "grossly overpaid" for his empty lot, leading to suspicions the owner charged Obama less for his property only because Rezko was willing to overpay for his by about $300,000. Allowing Obama to underpay by about the same $300,000.

The real estate specialist, Kenneth J. Conner, said bank officials replaced an appraisal review he prepared on the property and FBI agents were investigating in late 2007 whether the Rezko-Obama deal was proper.

“Agents and I talked about payoff, bribe, kickback for a long time, though it took them only a short number of minutes of talking with me while looking at the appraisal to acknowledge what they already seemed to know: The Rezko lot was grossly overvalued,” Mr. Conner told The Washington Times Monday.

“Rezko paid the asking price on the same day Obama paid $300,000 less than the asking price to the same seller for his adjacent mansion,” he said. “This begs the question of payoff, bribe, kickback.”

The bank officer, I believe, was fired.

And as if it couldn't get any worse, Obama got a sweetheart mortgage deal. He won't say from whom, but it's widely believed he got the mortgage from the mob-connected Broadway Bank, controlled by political patrons of both Rezko and Obama.

Blagojevich's Corruption, as Told in Negative Ads: He's been busy.

I enjoyed this one most of all. I think you'll like it, too.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:52 AM | Comments (63)
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Old news by now, I guess. But I thought this reader comment from Instapundit nailed it:

Notice the problem with ObamaÂ’s websites?

Neither he nor his staff is censoring the commentsÂ…. but theyÂ’ve set the site up to allow others to do so.

Neither he nor his staff asked for any illegal foreign contributions, or for contributions from obviously false donorsÂ….. they just disabled the standard controls and credit card checks to allow it to happen.

They didn’t have any ties to whacky characters with extreme ideas…. but the campaign website allowed anyone to set up a “blog” and put out the propaganda.

In each case, Obama and his staff were careful to leave no directly illegal / unethical fingerprints of their own….. but they sure made it easy for “supporters unknown” to do so through their IT systems.

Deniability — it’s built right in.

Posted by: Ace at 09:43 AM | Comments (17)
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Seems like the endgame.

The skeletal remains of a small child were found Thursday near the home of missing Orlando toddler Caylee Anthony's family.

There was no immediate word on whether the bones, reportedly discovered wrapped in a plastic bag and bound with duct tape, were those of a boy or a girl.

"All we know is that remains of a child have been found," a police spokeswoman told FOXNews.com. Orange County sheriffs and forensics teams went to the scene at the intersection of South Chickasaw Trail and Suburban Drive in Orlando.

Sheriff's Office spokesman Jim Solomons told The Associated Press that a utility worker found the body at 9:32 a.m. EST Thursday.

Police said the Anthony family has been notified of the discovery.

Anthony faces life in prison if convicted. Prosecutors said last week they won't seek the death penalty in the case.

Orange County Capt. Angelo Nieves wouldn't say whether the body seemed to be that of the missing toddler.

"At this point, it would be reckless to conclude that," Nieves told FOX News. "We do have skeletal remains consistent with a small child. We will work with the medical examiner to make a proper identification."

On FoxNews they're speculating that Casey might have drugged the kid with chloroform so she could go out partying without paying for a babysitter, but accidentally overdosed the kid and killed her. I'm not sure if that is pure speculation or if they've found some chloroform. If I got the chatter right, they checked for chemicals related to putrefaction and unexpectedly discovered some chloroform.

She could get a second-degree murder rap for an illegal drugging resulting in death. Prosecutors could seek the death penalty again, if they find the facts justify it.

Correction: Tee886 sets me right:

They found chloroform in her car when they searched it and found search's of its uses on her computer

Ah. I haven't followed the case. I guess what I heard was the guy saying that trace evidence of chloroform can be found, and he was relating the example of fire marshals looking for evidence of putrefaction and coming up with chloroform, not that they'd found chloroform here. Just that they would be looking for it, and it's possible to find it, even so long after a death.

Posted by: Ace at 09:16 AM | Comments (42)
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Is Obama as stupid as he seems? If this report is true, apparently he is.

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's administration will offer Israel a "nuclear umbrella" against the threat of a nuclear attack by Iran, a well-placed American source said earlier this week. The source, who is close to the new administration, said the U.S. will declare that an attack on Israel by Tehran would result in a devastating U.S. nuclear response against Iran.

But America's nuclear guarantee to Israel could also be interpreted as a sign the U.S. believes Iran will eventually acquire nuclear arms.

Secretary of state-designate Hillary Clinton had raised the idea of a nuclear guarantee to Israel during her campaign for the Democratic Party's nomination for the presidency. During a debate with Obama in April, Clinton said that Israel and Arab countries must be given "deterrent backing." She added, "Iran must know that an attack on Israel will draw a massive response." Clinton also proposed that the American nuclear umbrella be extended to other countries in the region, like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, if they agree to relinquish their own nuclear ambitions.

Let's count just some of the ways this is moronic.

The most obvious thing about this is its irrelevance. They don't admit it but nobody doubts that Israel has a nuclear arsenal of its own that can retaliate against Iran (it really doesn't take too many to ruin your day). So Obama's promise is we'll bomb the cities Israel has already bombed? Talk about sloppy seconds.

If Iran gets the bomb their use of it is simply the biggest problem but not the only one. Why is it so tough for India to deal with Pakistan? Because they know where that road ends...a nuclear exchange. The world's track record isn't so impressive in dealing with Iranian aggression and sponsorship of terror over the last 30 years, how much weaker will it be once Iran's actions are backed up with nuclear weapons? Put simply, they won't need to use the bomb to benefit from it. Obama's umbrella does nothing to address that.

How much would this guarantee be worth anyway, especially during Obama's presidency? This is a guy who seemingly backs away from everything he says at some point (for example, his pledge that Jerusalem should be Israel's undivided capital. That lasted a whole 2 days before he backtracked from it).

This reported plan makes it seem like Obama is already conceding that Iran will get the bomb. Apparently he's no longer so sure that his awesome diplomatic skills are going to get the job done. That's very different than what we heard during the primaries, isn't it?

And lastly, I thought the idea that Iran was developing nukes was a neo-con scheme to get us to attack Iran for their oil or something. You mean it might be true that Iran wants nuclear weapons? My how times have changed.

So basically Obama's plan (again, if this report is true) comes down to Israel getting a worthless promise and Iran getting nuclear weapons. That's a hell of a plan Sparky! I'd rather send some UAW guys over to deal with Iran than Obama. At least they drive a hard bargain.

One of the problems in trying to deconstruct something so gobsmackingly stupid as this umbrella idea is, is it usually leaves something out. In this case I left something really obvious and important out....this is predicated on Iran being afraid of a counter attack. Who besides liberals believes this? Iran has been attacking the west for 30 years and has never faced major retaliation. Why would they think our retaliation would suddenly go from zero to ELEVN!!!! for someone else? And in the meantime, there'd be a lot of dead Jews which is kind of the point of the whole nuclear weapons exercise to begin with. No one who has been paying attention to Iran would but it's trust in the reasonableness of its leadership (and I'm talking about the Mullahocracy, not their current nut job President).

Thanks to Anonymous Coward in the comments for the prompt.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:52 AM | Comments (162)
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Good morning, Dave.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:22 AM | Comments (33)
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Obama this Tuesday:

"I had no contact with the governor or his office and so we were not, I was not aware of what was happening."

Obama and Blagojevich at the National Governors Association meeting last Tuesday:

Obama at grand jury proceedings next Tuesday: "Define 'contact'?"

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:42 PM | Comments (167)
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This is really nice, particularly around Christmas. Xerox has set up a site where you can pick a post card, personalize a message, then have it sent to a member of the armed forces currently serving overseas. At XeroxÂ’s expense.

”This web site gives you an opportunity to send a free printed postcard to U.S. military personnel stationed overseas showing your support and appreciation for their service to our country.”

Caveats: The cards you get to choose from were all drawn by kids, but some of them are pretty nicely done. Also, you donÂ’t choose which service member the card goes toÂ…itÂ’s done at random. My only wish is that theyÂ’d also include vets currently recovering at VA hospitals as well (and maybe they do, but itÂ’s not mentioned in the FAQ), but otherwise, a very nice gesture by Xerox to do this.

(Many thanks to Krakatoa, who wouldÂ’ve posted this except that heÂ’s passed out in a beach chair on his own private island in the Caymans, where heÂ’s spending time with his ultra-hot g/f. Also, it didnÂ’t involve zombies, so no interest to him.)

Posted by: Open Blog at 07:10 PM | Comments (24)
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Just happened. The vote was 237-170; roll call is here.

Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., smiles as he leaves the House of Representatives where majority Democrats, in the face of strong GOP opposition, passed a $14 billion emergency loan for struggling U.S. automakers, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2008. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

On to the Senate.

Update: Thanks to commenter JohnJ who points out that Duncan Hunter, former Republican candidate for president, voted "yes" to give the failed businesses your money. Hey, Duncan, you know where the door is.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:51 PM | Comments (83)
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This list comes second-hand and through the AP, so it may not be accurate. Still, some of these definitely constitute torture. Allegedly, interrogators would blast these songs at detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay:

• "Enter Sandman," Metallica. [Awesome, 'specially the S&M version; also this will probably piss of Ulrich.]

• "Bodies," Drowning Pool. [Also cool.]

• "Shoot to Thrill," AC/DC. [Meh.]

• "Hell's Bells," AC/DC.

• "I Love You," from the "Barney and Friends" children's TV show. [Time for an escape attempt.]

• "Born in the USA," Bruce Springsteen.

• "Babylon," David Gray. [Okay, okay, I'll confess.]

• "White America," Eminem.

• "Sesame Street," theme song from the children's TV show. [Just kill me already.]

So which song would cause you to file your toothbrush down into a shiv so you can stab yourself in the neck?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:45 PM | Comments (259)
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