I was surfing the Power Line blog this morning, and they had a link to an AP article regarding the response of the Mumbai police to the terrorist attack. This sentence caught my eye:

Bapu Thombre, assistant commissioner with the Mumbai railway police, said the police were armed mainly with batons or World War I-era rifles and spread out across the station.

Yes, I do realize that the thrust of the article is that the police were ill-prepared to deal with this sort of attack due to a lack of training, but being a bit of a ballistics nutjob, I'm going to take offense with the assertion that police officers with "World War I-era Rifles" are nothing more than sitting ducks.

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Posted by: Russ from Winterset at 12:19 PM | Comments (91)
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First, Plaxico is in serious trouble. New York has a mandatory 3 1/2 year sentence for illegally carrying a gun, and Mayor Bloomberg is issuing statements that it's especially important to prosecute high-visibility figures for such crimes, as they're role models.

He has Sean "P Diddy" Combs' lawyer, who I think got "Diddy" off a similar charge a few years ago. Even if the state is impressed by his representation and fears juries would let a celebrity off the hook, the plea bargain will likely include jail time. Six months I'm guessing (based on nothing at all). They may be inclined to let him serve his time in the off-season, for whatever that's worth.

And it's not worth all that much. The NFL Commissioner will likely suspend him for a full year, conviction or not.

The Giants will almost certainly cut him. He can't play this year, most likely, due to the hamstring pull (I can't imagine a gunshot wound to the same thigh wil help his healing), and he'll be suspended next year (if he's not in jail). And that's going to be costly for Burress, as something like $21 million of his $25 million three year contract is not guaranteed -- it's all ballooning future salary and performance bonuses and so forth. The Giants can cut him and pay him very little more.

On December 10th Burress is due for a $1 million payment, if he's still on the team. The Giants will likely save that one million, and thus $20 million more.

It doesn't help Burress that not having him on the field doesn't hurt the Giants. He's a good receiver -- but not a franchise receiver. And he causes more problems than he solves.

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Posted by: Ace at 12:10 PM | Comments (66)
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Groovy.

Posted by: Ace at 11:55 AM | Comments (21)
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Pakistan attack? So it is claimed (Times of London header):

THE Indian authorities yesterday claimed to have proof that the Mumbai terrorists were receiving instructions from Pakistan and discussing tactics with their handlers during the three days of attacks in which they killed at least 195 people.

The claims threaten further to embitter relations between the two nuclear powers. Tensions have been high since confirmation that the only captured gunman was a 21-year-old Pakistani.

It has also emerged that India had been warned that terrorists were planning an attack in Mumbai.

As war becomes more likely, the ISI, which likely trained these terrorists, actually becomes more powerful, not less. Because in a war, Pakistan would no doubt want to coordinate even more terrorist attacks in India, and the ISI has all of them on speed-dial. The Pakistan government could not afford to dismantle the ISI as war looms, even if they were inclined to. (And they seem not so inclined.)

Thus the ISI profits from its terror-sponsoring and murder.

The ISI can only be stopped by some kind of serious threat of war with the ultimatum that the dismemberment of the ISI is the price of peace, or a truly painful, humiliating, and disastrous war for Pakistan. And there is a limit to how much a country can defeat a nuclear-armed country -- Pakistan would presumably not use nukes if their were some small scale retaliation. But a determined war effort that defeated their army and invited invasion presumably would put the nuke option on the table.

I don't believe the current Indian government has the mettle for either. The train bombing from a year ago killed 200 and there was no war.

But the less-pacifistic Hindu National Party is already running ads castigating the ruling Congress Party for their fecklessness.

Posted by: Ace at 11:06 AM | Comments (69)
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Apparently once we're in a recession, they check for the last peak of employment to date its beginning. Seems a bit silly to me -- recessions therefore begin immediately after the last economic high, even though for months afterwards the economic numbers can still be quite good -- but that's how they do it.

So, we've now been in a recession for 11 months. The media is officially repudiated, which has reported us being in a recession for, oh, about eight years exactly.

Question: Runninrebel asks, "So basically we're always in a recession unless we're at a peak? But we don't know it for months after the fact?"

No. First we have to hit the recession threshold (famously defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth, although that's not a hard and fast rule; one quarter of .1% growth, followed by a quarter of deeper contraction, would presumably suffice.

Once a recession is "declared," then they search back for the last peak before it to date it.

Without the declaration of the recession, there is no searching back for its beginning.

Posted by: Ace at 10:56 AM | Comments (27)
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Mooo.

Cheesecake photo (light non-nude but high-sexy content warning) below the fold. You be the judge.

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Posted by: Ace at 10:32 AM | Comments (125)
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Not just drinking the Kool-Ade, but eating the concentrated powder, too.

ALEX WITT: You know, John, and it’s interesting because there are many who had such an optimstic and hopeful opinion of things, and you certainly can’t expect things to change [snaps fingers] on a dime overnight, but there are many who suggested that with the outgoing Bush administration and the incoming Obama administration there would be something of a lull in terrorism attacks. There had been such a global outpouring of affection, respect, hope, with the new administration coming in, that precisely these kinds of attacks, it was thought — at least hoped — would be dampered down. But in this case it looks like Barack Obama is getting a preview of things to come.

JOHN YANG: He’s — it’s a rude awakening, a very, sort of, sober reminder of what he’s going to be facing in just a few weeks. And there is some concern also, there had been some concern, that during this period, during this, the transition period, between Election Day and Inauguration Day, that the enemies of the United States, those who don’t care for the United States no matter who’s leading it, would try and test the United States, would try to take advantage of this period, and I think that may be one thing that we’re seeing right now.

They're trying to take advantage of the American presidential transition by attacking the Indian city of Mumbai? Really? They imagined the American transition would discombobulate the Indian security forces? How? Are Indian police currently disorganized as they await fresh orders from Washington?

In addition to being six shades of stupid, let me also note the, um, arrogant Americentrism on display by these idiots. Pakistan and India have fought three wars since Pakistan came into being; Pakistani terrorists frequently kill Indians in large scale terrorist attacks.

And guess what? This has nothing to do with American policy. It is not a protest against Guantanamo or Iraq. It has to do with -- if I may be allowed to speculate -- tensions between Pakistan and India. And of course Islamic terrorists' general desire to murder anyone nearby.

Of course these drooling imbeciles aren't really Americentric. Rather, they are Bushocentric. They are so deranged they reduce every act of terrorism to a commentary on the Bush Administration -- because those are the only terms they are capable of thinking in, they assume everyone else shares their single-minded lack of perspective and imagination.

Correction: MSNBC Anchor, not CNN.

As another reader said, tomato, tah-mah-toh.

Posted by: Ace at 09:57 AM | Comments (91)
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As MattM. says, they've simply lost their minds.

After pardoning a Thanksgiving turkey in a public display of mercy Wednesday, President Bush will be served turkey as part of his holiday meal. Critics call the practice a "charade."

Questioned about the apparent hypocrisy of the practice, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel was unruffled. "You should try your hand at open mic night at the Laugh Factory," said Stanzel. He promised he would attend the performance.

A spokesman for president-elect Barack Obama declined to comment on the matter.

The back-to-back Presidential turkey saving/turkey eating has been going on since at least 1947, when then-president Harry Truman held the first modern-day White House turkey pardoning.

In a morning ceremony at the White House Wednesday, Bush granted a "full and unconditional" pardon to Pumpkin the turkey, as well as to an alternate bird name Pecan. The White House declined to release the names and photographs of the turkeys that will be served at Thursday's feast. Neither did it share information on how they would be prepared.

In previous years, the president's chefs have roasted the birds, according to a review of White House records.

In his comments at the public pardoning, Bush said both Pumpkin and Pecan will receive first-class trips to California, where Pumpkin will serve as the grand marshal of the Thanksgiving Day parade at Disneyland. However, the White House web site indicates only Pumpkin would make the trip. It does not disclose the fate of the second bird. The White House declined to comment on the matter Wednesday.

Um, see, it is a "charade." Or, more accurately, a long-running traditional joke. Turkeys really can't be "pardoned," as they've committed no crime, except for being delicious.

See? We're pretending these turkeys are prisoners on death row and the president "pardons" one. It's not really "hypocritical" because no one is expected to be fooled by this "charade." Bush is not trying to dishonestly portray himself as the Liberator of Turkeys, idiots. He's not calling for the end of the Great Annual Turkey Genocide.

Posted by: Ace at 09:43 AM | Comments (58)
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Gee, it's funny. Now that the presidency is not in enemy hands (for liberals), the enemies of the president are starting to look less misunderstood and more evil.

I get increasingly uncomfortable with the convention of journalism that requires us to say that so far, we don't know the motives of the people who carried out this week's attacks in Mumbai.

A word like "motive" seems to imply there was reason or purpose. It suggests that, however profane their actions, the terrorists had the incentive of some goal in mind.

But after covering too many killings, as a reporter or host, in Bosnia, Kosovo, Oklahoma City or Somalia, I've come to the conclusion that the perpetrators of such crimes might just be ... evil.

Evil is a word that many people of my generation shrink from using. It seems so imprecise and uneducated — biblical, rather than cerebral and informed.

But there are times and crimes that remind me how often the Bible gets it right.

Curious that he failed to mention the 9/11 killers, or terrorists in Iraq.

Good Lord. This is becoming infuriating. This guy's present stance is obviously right. Fine. Why is it he just coincidentally happened to refrain from taking this position for eight years?

On the other hand, there's Deepak Chopra.

How the ebullient Dr. Chopra had come to be chosen as an authority on terror remains something of a mystery, though the answer may have something to do with his emergence in the recent presidential campaign as a thinker of advanced political views. Also commending him, perhaps, is his well known capacity to cut through all sorts of complexities to make matters simple. No one can fail to grasp the wisdom of a man who has informed us that "If you have happy thoughts, then you make happy molecules."

In his CNN interview, he was no less clear. What happened in Mumbai, he told the interviewer, was a product of the U.S. war on terrorism, that "our policies, our foreign policies" had alienated the Muslim population, that we had "gone after the wrong people" and inflamed moderates. And "that inflammation then gets organized and appears as this disaster in Bombay."

All this was a bit too much, evidently, for CNN interviewer Jonathan Mann, who interrupted to note that there were other things going on -- matters like the ongoing bitter Pakistan-India struggle over Kashmir -- which had caused so much terror and so much violence. "That's not Washington's fault," he pointed out.

Given an argument, the guest, ever a conciliator, agreed: The Mumbai catastrophe was not Washington's fault, it was everybody's fault. Which didn't prevent Dr. Chopra from returning soon to his central theme -- the grave offense posed to Muslims by the United States' war on terror, a point accompanied by consistent emphatic reminders that Muslims are the world's fastest growing population -- 25% of the globe's inhabitants -- and that the U.S. had better heed that fact. In Dr. Chopra's moral universe, numbers are apparently central. It's tempting to imagine his view of offenses against a much smaller sliver of the world's inhabitants -- not so offensive, perhaps?

Two subsequent interviews with Larry King brought much of the same -- a litany of suggestions about the role the U.S. had played in fueling assaults by Muslim terrorists, reminders of the numbers of Muslims in the world and their grievances. A faithful adherent of the root-causes theory of crime -- mass murder, in the case at hand -- Dr. Chopra pointed out, quite unnecessarily, that most of the terrorism in the world came from Muslims. It was mandatory, then, to address their grievances -- "humiliation," "poverty," "lack of education." The U.S., he recommended, should undertake a Marshall Plan for Muslims.

Nowhere in this citation of the root causes of Muslim terrorism was there any mention of Islamic fundamentalism -- the religious fanaticism that has sent fevered mobs rioting, burning and killing over alleged slights to the Quran or the prophet. Not to mention the countless others enlisted to blow themselves and others up in the name of God.

Nor did we hear, in these media meditations, any particular expression of sorrow from the New Delhi-born Dr. Chopra for the anguish of Mumbai's victims: a striking lack, no doubt unintentional, but not surprising, either. For advocates of the root-causes theory of crime, the central story is, ever, the sorrows and grievances of the perpetrators. For those prone to the belief that most eruptions of evil in the world can be traced to American influence and power there is only one subject of consequence.

Fat, ugly and stupid is no way to go through life, son.

Posted by: Ace at 09:32 AM | Comments (38)
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No surprises but makes official what has been leaking over the last week or so.

President-elect Obama officially announced his national security team today, naming Hillary Clinton, a top rival for the Democratic nomination who he sparred with on foreign policy, as his Secretary of State.

Obama also retained Defense Secretary Robert Gates at the Pentagon, named former Marine Commandant and NATO Supreme Allied Commander retired Gen. James L. Jones as his national security adviser, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano Secretary of Homeland Security and campaign foreign policy adviser and Africa expert Susan Rice as ambassador to the United Nations.

Additionally, Obama officially named Eric Holder attorney general.

Elections have consequences.

Slublog has a link in the headlines to a post at the Campaign Spot that recaps some of the greatest hits from UN Ambassador designee Susan Rice. I particularly like this one...

On March 6, Rice said of Obama and Hillary Clinton, "they're both not ready to have that 3 am phone call."

That's comforting. Here's hoping Robert Gates has all the calls forwarded to him.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:49 AM | Comments (86)
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