Obama=Britney and Paris?

If they are going to try to tie Obama to a celebrity, perhaps Ludacris would have been an option.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:24 AM | Comments (45)
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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:59 AM | Comments (16)
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Not sure where one would get that idea.

The 200,000 souls who thronged to his speech in Berlin came not just for him, he told the enthralled audience of congressional representatives.

"I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions," he said.

VERO POSSUMUS!

Misquoted? - Not sure how this makes him look less full of himself. He's still claiming his candidacy means more than it actually does and that the key to "America being all it can be" is to elect him president. Speaking for the world, if anything, is even more presumptuous than the original quote. (H/t: Hot Air)

MORE [DrewM.] Slu and I were exchanging emails about a comment I left below and thought it was a point worth considering...

Is it just me or is Obama everything the left thought Bush was and hated but now they love in their Messiah?

Remember how Bush didn't have enough 'gravitas' in 2000? Or how he spent too much time working out? How long did the press hound Bush trying to get him to admit he was wrong about Iraq and WMD and then try to get him to apologize. They hated Bush because he wasn't very curious about the world and would never change his mind, no matter what the 'facts' were.

You could substitute Obama in each of those cases...he's arrogant, lacks gravitas, works out a lot, never admits a mistake and boasts that his trip didn't teach him a thing he didn't already know. Yet the left loves him for it.

If it weren't so pathetic and dangerous, it would be funny.

Funny how times change.

Posted by: Slublog at 05:24 AM | Comments (122)
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Personally, I prefer original recipe over extra crispy but you mileage may vary. Either way, this is pretty cool news.

Only a short time ago the city of Fallujah served as stronghold for insurgents. Daily skirmishes, improvised explosive device detonations and public unease made operating a business in the city very difficult.

Today, with improved security throughout the region, the low price of 4,000 dinar, or $3.50, will purchase a full meal at the recently established Kentucky Fried Chicken in the Hey Al Dubat area of the city.

The KFC is the first to open for business in the city. Before improved conditions in the city, insurgents threatened business owners, demanding money to support acts of terrorism.

The Marines even occasionally grab some to go.

I love the smell of 11 herbs and spices, it's the smell of victory. more...

Posted by: DrewM at 06:54 PM | Comments (56)
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Disturbed anti-war protester can't find soldier, kills civilian with axe instead

A U.S. citizen has confessed to using an axe to kill a Dutch student after failing to find a soldier to attack, his lawyer said Tuesday.

The suspect, Carlos Hartmann, 41, of Tecumseh, Mich., has confessed to the Sept. 8 killing on a train platform in the southern city of Roosendaal, defence lawyer Peter Gremmen said.

Gremmen said Hartmann wanted to punish the Netherlands for its support of the war in Iraq.

Hartmann appeared before a judge Tuesday and was ordered held for another two weeks for investigation.

"He hates soldiers, and says that the army kills people, so it would be legitimate if he were also to kill someone . . . from the American military - or from its NATO allies," Gremmen said in a telephone interview.

When he failed to find a soldier at the Roosendaal train station, "he got such a crazy, disturbed idea that he killed a civilian," Gremmen said.

It's worrisome that Gremmen parses and distinguishes between levels of crazy -- it's crazy and disturbed that this guy might kill a civilian having been unable to locate a soldier. Apparently it's less crazy, or not crazy at all, that he headed to a train station with an axe to butcher a soldier in the first place.

Obviously this guy is on the left. The insane left, but the left nonetheless.

Am I saying "both sides have homicidal crazies"? Of course I am, because of course we both do.

All of this should be condemned, and that's not merely a moral precept -- it's a utilitarian one. Some maniacs need no prompting to kill, but other maniacs can be encouraged to kill, or discouraged to kill, according to the messaging of the group whose opinions they respect. Some of these guys think they will be greeted as heroes for murdering innocents.

How about we all strive mightily to let such on-the-fence psychopaths know they won't be viewed as heroes for killing?

Clarification: "Ace's Liver" asks "Isn't this like four or five years old?"

Drat, I never remember to check dates.

It's not that old, but it is (apparently) from September 11, 2007. So, old.

Still, it happened. And it happens. And the fact that this was "new to me" sorta indicates that it wasn't very well reported -- and I look for this kind of thing, as do all of my tipsters. And yet -- first I've heard of it.

Which is part of the problem. The leftist media wishes to cover up for leftist murderers, in order to insulate the left from the inevitable "Look what you monsters have created" charges. But the side-effect, whether intended or unintended, is that such heinous crimes are never exposed to the broader public, nor properly condemned...

By the left. Because they're never confronted with this stuff, they never have to condemn it. Which is not some sort of political point: Again, my point is about preventing such murders, or at least trying to.

Obviously a left-leaning psychopath will not listen to me. He may or may not listen to a writer at the Huffington Post. But I have to imagine that at least some psychopaths are provisional, conditional sorts of murderers, and can either be encouraged to murder by what they perceive as positive support for such actions, or discouraged from it by castigation and ridicule.

I try to keep this site clean of comments encouraging violence. Since everyone knows my rule, very few people ever suggest such a thing. (Plus, most people are pretty level-headed and hardly needed my input here in the first place.) The occasional statement encouraging violence tends to get roundly ridiculed by commenters (and sometimes deleted -- but sometimes not. Sometimes having someone exposed and castigated as an asshole is a better medicine than the delete key.

I realize that the Huffington Post can't patrol every comment for this sort of thing. But then again, neither can I, and yet this site generally manages to remain pretty clean on that regard. It's the culture the site encourages, and the Huffington Post does in fact encourage this sort of thing -- if not actively, then passively, by failing to call people out for this shit and embarrass them.

Posted by: Ace at 01:19 PM | Comments (62)
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Look in case you haven't been following NFL lately its the blue state teams that are winning.

That's from John Ryan, who, when he isn't tallying up the records of NFL teams to make some... incomprehensible political point (or is nyah nyah neener neener now considered a political point?), works hard at his day job, splitting atoms... with his mind.

John, do you realize how fucking stupid you are? Does it ever embarrass you to devolve into this kind of childish and irrelevant taunting?

You do realize, of course, that almost all sports franchises are centered around a city, don't you, and that cities are almost all blue territory, and hence "Blue Territory" sports franchises always win (and also always lose, too)? The Blue State Giants beat the Blue State Patriots last Super Bowl, you know. Is this a victory for liberalism?

And you do realize the point you're making -- even if it weren't so absurdly flawed -- is, as the delightful French phrase has it, so fucking stupid it sounds like you skull-fucked yourself with the Retard-Stick?

What the fuck is wrong with some of you people? I can't comprehend a supposedly human mind that cast about for responses and decided that this needed to be committed to writing.

Posted by: Ace at 12:07 PM | Comments (98)
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He gets a special discount on coffin vermin.

Updating, or perhaps repeating, Dave in Texas' post from a couple of days ago. I saw on Hot Air the military first thought they had got this guy, then retracted that and said they hadn't; seems like they've now confirmed it.

One of al Qaeda's top chemical and biological weapons experts was killed in an air strike by a CIA pilotless drone in a remote Pakistani border region, senior Pakistani intelligence officials told CBS News Tuesday morning.

Intelligence officials investigating the early Monday missile attack confirmed that Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri was one of six men killed and his remains had been positively identified.

"We now have a positive ID on the body. I can confirm to you that Al-Masri has been killed," a Pakistani intelligence official told CBS News on the condition of anonymity. Earlier reports claimed that the six men killed included three Arabs, while the other three were believed to be Afghans or Pakistanis.

However, the intelligence official who spoke to CBS Tuesday said all six men were Arabs. Those killed also included Sheikh Ibrahim, a mid ranking al Qaeda operative believed to be either Egyptian or Jordanian. The other four victims were described as ordinary foot soldiers. The intelligence official did not provide the full names nor the citizenship of the four lower ranking militants.

Al-Masri, an Egyptian national, became notorious for developing chemical and biological weapons for al Qaeda. He was known to have used a variety of animals, including dogs, cats and frogs in brutal experiments which often left the animals dead.

I always find the inclusion of that last detail strange. I love dogs and like (some) cats, but it's always weird to me the media (correctly!) estimates that the public will be more outraged he killed dogs than people.

How fucked up is that? Love animals? Fine. Ambivalent on people? Not fine.

Thanks to EricJ.

Posted by: Ace at 11:56 AM | Comments (36)
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Evil. But I resent the predictable attempt to blame the political right for this.

Police found right-wing political books, brass knuckles, empty shotgun shell boxes and a handgun in the Powell home of a man who said he attacked a church in order to kill liberals "who are ruining the country," court records show.

Knoxville police Sunday evening searched the Levy Drive home of Jim David Adkisson after he allegedly entered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and killed two people and wounded six others during the presentation of a children's musical.

Knoxville Police Department Officer Steve Still requested the search warrant after interviewing Adkisson. who was subdued by several church members after firing three rounds from a 12-gauge shotgun into the congregation.

Adkisson targeted the church, Still wrote in the document obtained by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, "because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets."

Adkisson told Still that "he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office."

The left is reacting to this horror with their typical nuance:

Who really killed those Unitarians? Was it the preachers who spread hatred and intolerance? The politicians who court and flatter them instead of condemning their hate speech? The media machine that attacks liberals, calls them "traitors" and suggests you speak to them "with a baseball bat"? The economic system that batters people like Jim Adkisson until they snap, then tells them their real enemies are gays and liberals and secular humanists?

If you ask me, it was all of the above.

You killed them, Pat Robertson. You killed them, Pastor Hagee. You killed them, Ann Coulter. You killed them, Dick Morris and Sean Hannity and the rest of you at Fox News.

With respect: The right has been complaining about the frequent calls for violence and celebrations of the deaths of Americans on the left for some time now. It's been a particular bee in my bonnet for as long as I've had a blog. Insane people do not need additional encouragements towards psychopathic behavior.

None of the right-wing writers cited has ever suggested such a monstrous thing as this. And yet this particular psychopath took their books as somehow suggesting he ought to gun down a hippie church. If such tame fare as Bill O'Reilly's Culture Warrior can inspire such violence, what to say about the calls of blood from the left?

Not to mention their casual apologism for a much more frequent sort of terrorist murder -- radical Islam?

Is political violence -- and incitements thereto -- categorically evil, or does the question turn on context? It really would help if the left would accept the former, and forthrightly announce it, and embarrass, expose, and castigate those among them apologizing for or even celebrating terrorism and politically-motived murder.

I know, I know -- no one on the left has engaged in this sort of monstrous murder. I disagree, but even conceding the point, if red-hot rhetoric is the cause of such violence, as this writer contends, is this writer not in fact engaging in worse? This idiot just accused Hannity et al. of being accomplices in multiple murder.

What message is being sent here?

Does the left really believe that among them are no mentally unstable people with access to guns or explosives?

The Christian Science Monitor blames the recession that isn't quite:

Attacks on the innocent – especially those in churches – may seem irrational and horrific to all but the attacker. But beneath the details can be a deep sense of victimization and scapegoating that may be tied to something as specific as hate based on race or sexual orientation or as broad as economic hard times.

...

"There's a whole category of mass killers who are seeking vengeance against a group of people who they feel are taking away their birthright, their opportunities, and making it difficult to succeed," says Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox, author of "Extreme Killing." "They don't see themselves as criminals, but ... as striking a measure of justice, winning one for the little guy. This case may show that [Jim Adkisson] perceived that society has been bending backward to favor disenfranchised groups so they're trying to get some justice for their own victimization."

Police say Mr. Adkisson, an unemployed mechanical engineer, left a note listing his own inability to find a job as one reasons for his attack.

With all due respect, this guy seems to be a lunatic loser, and almost certainly in the category of long-time unemployed/marginally employed.

And the left is even suddenly able to use the word "terrorism" here, minus the sneer quotes:

The shooting at the Unitarian Church in Knoxville, TN on Sunday that left two adults dead and seven wounded was an unequivocal act of terrorism.

Though the international community at the UN General Assembly has been unable to come up with a common definition of terrorism as it applies to existing groups there are broad elements of a definition that are widely held.

An act of terrorism is violence by a civilian or civilians against unarmed civilians for a political motive. Al-Qaeda attacking US servicemen in the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, or in the USS Cole, or in Iraq or even in Fort Dix, New Jersey is not terrorism. It is a guerilla attack. Al-Qaeda attacking civilians in US embassies in Africa or at the World Trade Center is indeed terrorism.

So is suspect Jim D. Adkisson's attack on civilians in the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. Police found a letter in Adkisson's car expressing his " hatred of the liberal movement."

Even if this man hopefully acted alone it is chilling to all progressive people and groups, like the Unitarians. Are we free to express our views, indeed to allow our children to perform in a church play?

The left only seems to be able to call something "terrorism" when the terrorist in question can be used to further their own political ends -- and when other liberals are the victims. I agree this was terrorism, and obviously a heinous crime, and so forth; but can liberals get past the idea that it's only a crime when Blue State liberals are harmed? This jackass' concern for the lives and liberty of liberals only recalls Michael Moore's cri de coeur that Al Qaeda mistakenly attacked nice New Yorkers rather than the vicious Red Staters who deserved it.

A crime cannot be defined according to whether one has political antipathy towards the culprit and political sympathy towards the victim. The action itself, and not the persons involved, must be determinative. I would think this rather obvious.

Posted by: Ace at 11:36 AM | Comments (78)
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At least partly.

Oddly, though he's a long-time Steelers fan, and the Steelers are in fact up for sale, he's not trying to buy into them.

It might be due to his statement that this is billion-dollar business, not a fun sort of thing for a fan. Maybe he thinks he wouldn't be able to make sound decisions if he partly owned his favorite team. Dan Snyder and the Washington Redskins might be a warning on that score.

Oh -- and liberals are, predictably, going ballistic, vowing to never watch or attend a Rams game if Limbaugh is a co-owner. Of course, of course.

Posted by: Ace at 11:07 AM | Comments (53)
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They won't have any trouble identifying this guy's party.

Sen. Ted Stevens from Alaska, the longest serving U.S. Republican senator ever, was indicted on seven counts related to his holding of public office, a federal law enforcement official said on Tuesday.

The U.S. Justice Department has scheduled a news conference for 1:20 p.m. to make an announcement "regarding a significant criminal matter."

Awesome Teddy! Good job.

Are you ready for some extra special good news? He's running for reelection this year? Can you say veto proof Democratic majority? I knew you could!

Posted by: DrewM at 09:13 AM | Comments (94)
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