Gang-raped for two hours, while more than 20 people looked on and did nothing.

Well, some did something. There are unconfirmed rumors some videotaped the extended gang rape and sent the videos around.

RICHMOND, Calif. — The gang rape and beating of a 15-year-old girl on school grounds after her homecoming dance was horrific enough. But even more shocking, police say, was that up to two dozen people watched and did nothing to stop it.

The attack over the weekend rattled this crime-ridden city of 120,000 in the San Francisco Bay area, where one police official called it one of the most heinous crimes he has ever seen. Some students have already left the school in response to the attack.

"It's not safe there at all," said 16-year-old Jennie Steinberg, whose mother let her transfer out of the school Tuesday. "I'm not going back."

The victim, a sophomore, had left the dance and was drinking alcohol in a school courtyard with a group when she was attacked, police said.

Two suspects were in custody Monday, but police said as many as seven ranging in age from 15 to mid-20s attacked the girl for more than two hours at a dimly lit area near benches Saturday night. As many as two dozen people saw the rape without notifying police.

Officers found the girl semiconscious and naked from the waist down near a picnic table. She remains hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries.

"This was a barbaric act. I still cannot get my head around the fact that numerous people either watched, walked away or participated in her assault," Lt. Mark Gagan said Tuesday. "It's one of the most disturbing crimes in my 15 years as a police officer."

Gagan would not comment on rumors that observers took video of the attack on cell phones and may have posted it online.

Manuel Ortega, a 19-year-old former student, was arrested after trying to flee the scene. He is being held on $800,000 bail for investigation of rape and robbery. Attempts to reach Ortega at the jail Tuesday were unsuccessful.

A 15-year-old student also was booked late Monday on one count of sexual assault, Gagan said.

Late Tuesday, SWAT teams were preparing to make more arrests as police are also offering a $20,000 reward they hope will bring more people forward with any information.

Thanks to Old Guy.

Posted by: Ace at 08:54 PM | Comments (193)
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We're going to become a deterrent powerhouse baby.

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is quietly laying the groundwork for long-range strategy that could be used to contain a nuclear-equipped Iran and deter its leaders from using atomic weapons.

It's that long-range strategy that really makes me feel good about this. Their short-range strategy is crap. Keep your eye on the big prize, don't get distracted with the little details, like stopping it or something.

But if Iran stays on a nuclear arms path, the administration's only realistic choice is to deter it from using them, said Richard Kugler, a senior consultant to a policy research center at National Defense University.

Only realistic choice if you've made up your mind they're going to have them. That's what he likely meant. Yeah.

Everything really is awesome.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 07:45 PM | Comments (129)
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Yeah, I know, it's a story about him "apologizing" for calling Linda Robertson a whore. Big deal. Scroll down.

Roll Call: Freshman Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) lost $3 million in a stock swindle between 2000 and 2005, a Florida television station reported this week.

According to OrlandoÂ’s Local 6, Grayson was an investor in a Ponzi scheme run by the company Derivium Capital. The scheme allowed Grayson and other investors to turn over stock to Derivium in exchange for cash loans and redeem the value later if the stock prices increased.

Heh. She had the "audacity to attack a Congressman who used to be an economist."

via Gateway Pundit

Okay, Buzz tells me he is a fairly bright guy, so I'll just stick with calling him an asshole then.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:58 PM | Comments (65)
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Good evening all morons and moronettes and welcome to Tuesday, the boringest day of the week.

Ernest Shackleton's Whisky Stash Discovered in Antarctica
Apparently his 1907 expedition left behind two cases of Mackinlay whisky under the floorboards of an Antarctic hut. It's expected that the whisky will taste heavy and peaty which was the style back then.

Posted by: Open Blog at 08:59 PM | Comments (662)
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It's the only AoS approved plan you can actually opt out of.

buzzion 67
moflicky 64
Dave R 64
Monkey Sleeping 63
People's Republic of Baltimore 63
Carthago Delenda Est 62
Jay in Ames 62
Svenster61 62 (make up your mind Sven)
Red State NY 61
Francisthegeek 61
paranoidpolly 61
Dave G 61
The Tard's Ninja 61
Wunder Kraut 61
Doctor Swoop 61
NJ Conservative 61
I'm not racist I'm just joshin... 61
sammy316 61
Aewl 61
Truman the Greek 61
Jeans Jokes 61

Ben provided results again, God bless im. Stand up there Ben, I mean stand up everybody. He's not on the leaderboard so you know he ain't cheatin. Yet.

In other unrelated news, teh Fred isn't terribly impressed with Newt Gingrich's admonitions on "purges".

Hey Newt. America called. They want their contract back.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:12 PM | Comments (29)
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I'm calling shenanigans on this until I -- or, preferably, someone else -- confirms it.

But... as people are emailing the story around.

Seems very, very unlikely to me. I see no link to the letter in the state's official archives or anything.

Link? Kaiser Wilhelm sends this official looking link.

Adobe's not working for me so I can't open the damn pdf.

Background: The assemblyman making this request heckled Schwarzenegger at a speech in San Fran, shouting, "Kiss my gay ass!"

So, despite the left's hyperventilating over this: Seems kind of appropriate.

Posted by: Ace at 03:57 PM | Comments (89)
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51-42.

Five major polls put Obama in the range of 49-51% support. Two outliers exist -- CNN at 55%, and, ludicrously, the ABCNews poll putting him at 57%. The same one that put Republican identification at 20%, which was heralded as a major finding, rather than a red flag.

The last NBC/WSJ poll put Obama's support at 51-41, and was, if I accurately remember, pretty much barely mentioned by the leftwing media. One of those polls they decided must be wrong. A Hopes Raised for Racial Reconciliation type dealio.

Well, two in a row, now.

Thanks to AHFF Geoff.

Posted by: Ace at 03:32 PM | Comments (105)
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** BUMPED and updated *** [ Drew thought this was so important a topic that it needed to be bumped so the morning crowd would see it. I agree. Afghanistan doesn't need to be a loss. We (i.e. the West) need to frame our expectations of what a "win" looks like in Afghan terms. Elections are nice and all that, but to the vast majority of Afghans, they are essentially a meaningless construct. We don't see it that way, but that is OUR error in trying to impress western tradition on a completely different culture that tends to resist change. We will not change Afghanistan, we need to allow Afghanistan to change us. Only then can we see what a "win" looks like, and the path to take that gets us there. The Major has charted such a path, and what a "win" looks like. The good news is his plan has a very small footprint, but not of the type currently being bandied about in the media. What he lays out is a SF-centric, small team, long term cultural immersion plan where we essentially become defacto members of the various tribes. This is not all theoretical musings either -- he implemented it in a tribal area some years ago earlier in the fight and the results were a stunning success.]

If you want to understand Afghanistan, take a couple of hours and soak this paper up (if you're in a hurry it can be skimmed in 15 minutes or so, but you'll be missing a lot). Think on it, think hard. But, toss your western perspective out the window before doing so or you won't appreciate its brilliance or time investment and personal commitment the men who would implement it have to make.

The Major has no formula for a "quick" win. I do however believe he has a formula for a damn near slam dunk long term win that leverages Afghan tribal society and traditions far more effectively than any talking head in Washington or resident of the White house could ever imagine possible. more...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 01:30 AM | Comments (170)
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As Count Floyd would say: "Oooh, scary, scary!"

"Three years ago he was a strong proponent for universal health care and I accused him of, after 20 years, dithering on that topic," Lamont told POLITICO. "As far as I can tell, a filibuster is one more dither, to quote the former vice president [Dick Cheney]."

Asked if he would consider another bid against Lieberman when the senator comes up for reelection in 2012, Lamont said he was "getting a lot of messages" today, but was not prepared to consider a campaign "right now."

"It's like the public option," Lamont quipped. "I want the chance to opt in. I want the chance to opt out. Give me the choice."

He "quipped." Is that a quip? Really?

It amuses me that millionaire Ned Lamont wants "the option" of opting in to discount welfare reduced-benefits Sub-Medicare. I'm sure he'll be the first on the sign-up sheet.

In related news, Ned Lamont also wants to opt-in to government housing. Some of those joints have sweeet concrete balconies. And the stairwells will give him plenty of room for his illegal pit-bull-breeding business.

Ned Lamont fever: Catch it!
more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:22 PM | Comments (87)
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Nah.

How about 100 cents on the dollar? That seems fair, eh?

It's just taxpayer money. Taxpayers are just lousy with taxpayer money.

GeithnerÂ’s team circulated a draft term sheet outlining how the New York Fed wanted to deal with the swaps -- insurance-like contracts that backed soured collateralized-debt obligations.

CDOs are bundles of debt including subprime mortgages and corporate loans sold to investors by banks.

Part of a sentence in the document was crossed out. It contained a blank space that was intended to show the amount of the haircut the banks would take, according to people who saw the term sheet. After less than a week of private negotiations with the banks, the New York Fed instructed AIG to pay them par, or 100 cents on the dollar. The content of its deliberations has never been made public.

The New York FedÂ’s decision to pay the banks in full cost AIG -- and thus American taxpayers -- at least $13 billion. ThatÂ’s 40 percent of the $32.5 billion AIG paid to retire the swaps. Under the agreement, the government and its taxpayers became owners of the dubious CDOs, whose face value was $62 billion and for which AIG paid the market price of $29.6 billion. The CDOs were shunted into a Fed-run entity called Maiden Lane III.

It should be noted that Geithner, um, "negotiated" these very tough terms on behalf of the American taxpayer while head of the New York Fed, not as Treasury Secretary.

So this counts as a Blame Bush.

No wonder Wall Street had such a schoolgirl crush on him. If he gave you $13 billion, you'd be pretty sweet on him too.

The Wall Street Journal meanwhile retracts any further (and past) support of TARP:

We supported TARP to deal with toxic bank assets and resolve failing banks as a resolution agency of the kind that worked with savings and loans in the 1980s. Some taxpayer money was needed beyond what the FDIC's shrinking insurance fund had available. But TARP quickly became a Treasury tool to save failing institutions without imposing discipline (Citigroup) and even to force public capital onto banks that didn't need it. This stigmatized all banks as taxpayer supplicants and is now evolving into an excuse for the Federal Reserve to micromanage compensation.

TARP was then redirected well beyond the financial system into $80 billion in "investments" for auto companies. These may never be repaid but served as a lever to abuse creditors and favor auto unions. TARP also bought preferred stock in struggling insurers Lincoln and Hartford, though insurance companies are not subject to bank runs and pose no "systemic risk." They erode slowly as customers stop renewing policies.

TARP also became another fund for Congress to pay off the already heavily subsidized housing industry by financing home mortgage modifications. Not one cent of the $50 billion in TARP funds earmarked to modify home mortgages will be returned to the Treasury, says the Congressional Budget Office.

As of the end of September, Mr. Geithner was sitting on $317 billion of uncommitted TARP funds, thanks in part to bank repayments. But this sum isn't the limit of his check-writing ability. Treasury considers TARP a "revolving fund." If taxpayers are ever paid back by AIG, GM, Chrysler, Citigroup and the rest, Treasury believes it has the authority to spend that returned money on new adventures in housing or other parts of the economy.

A TARP renewal by Mr. Geithner could thus put at risk the entire $700 billion. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R., Texas) and former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins sit on TARP's Congressional Oversight Panel. They warn that the entire taxpayer pot could be converted into subsidies. They are especially concerned about expanding the foreclosure prevention programs that have been failing by every measure.

Posted by: Ace at 01:35 PM | Comments (98)
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