The Talented Mr. Van der Sloot: Prime Suspect in Natalee Holloway Disappearance Now Sought In Connection of Murder of Lima Woman
— Ace

Before anyone thinks I really mean he's talented -- it's a take off on The Talented Mr. Ripley, which is about a travelling serial killer who gets away with it because he's got social connections.

I say the Holloway case is very close to a final solution.

A young Dutchman previously arrested in the 2005 disappearance of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway is the prime suspect in a weekend murder of a Peruvian woman, police said Wednesday.

Joran van der Sloot is being sought in the Sunday killing of 21-year-old Stephany Flores in a Lima hotel, Criminal police chief Gen. Cesar Guardia told a news conference. He said the suspect fled the country the next day by land to Chile.

The Dutch government said Interpol has issued an international arrest warrant for Van der Sloot.

Guardia said the 22-year-old Dutchman, who was in the country for a poker tournament, appears with the young woman in a video taken at a Lima casino early Sunday.

Isn't it usually the case that once you know someone is a serial killer, when you see their picture, suddenly it becomes so damnably obvious he's a serial killer?

I think I could convince a judge hold him for 48 hours based on his brutish, mental-defective eyebrow ridge alone.

Fallout? LincolnTF writes:

If true (and obviously all I have are a few web references, so who knows?) he'll go down in history as one of the most notorious murderers ever. And the investigation (Holloway) will go down as one of the worst/most corrupted ever.

I didn't follow this case at all, but I'm sure interested now, especially if corruption -- "Such a nice boy from a nice family!" -- had any hand in getting him off.

Dan Riehl is the rightie blogger who specialized in this case; I wrote him about it, seeking reaction.

On Greta Tonight: Commenters are saying that Greta covered this a lot, of course, but more specifically, she has been all over this guy Van der Sloot like a bad haircut. So imagine tonight she'll be doing a full hour.

Posted by: Ace at 02:44 PM | Comments (215)
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Heh: NYT Writer Smoothly Slides Dagger Between Ribs of Wannabe Terrorist Poseur Jagoff Pop Tart
— Ace

Here are the best parts, which skewer musician singer composer recorder M.I.A. for posturing as a hard-ass super-fashionable terrorist, down with the people's rebellions while snacking on truffle-oil french fries.

Or about yammering about how she's going to give a natural birth in a body of water in solidarity with her Third World sisters. Actual birthplace of child: Cedar Sinai Hospital, Beverly Hills, CA.

Here's the full article.

Now, who is this person, you wonder? Well, you probably know a song of hers -- "Paper Planes," used in the promotional campaign of the movie Pineapple Express (its use there made it a hit), and then also to promote Slumdog Millionaire, and then, naturally, to promote Michael Moore's latest elephant turd Capitalism: A Love Story.

It is catchy. But, as in one of the few episodes of Frasier I've seen--

FRASIER: Well, if I remember right, that symphony I composed in middle school was a genuine hit. The audience left the theater humming it.

NILES: That's because they entered the theater humming it. It was a note-for-note plagiarism of Beethoven's Ninth.

The two really notable bits in that song are the echoing guitar hook, stolen from The Clash's Straight to Hell, and the chorus, which is stolen, oddly enough, from Wrex N Effect's Rump Shaker ("All I wanna do is zoom-zoom-zoom in the boom-boom!").

At any rate, between doing pastiches of other people's music and telling people how awesome and unconventional she is, she also tells everyone how awesome the terrorist group the Tamil Tigers are, and jokes about how her stupid critics say she's a "terrorist" (just because she's constantly calling herself a terrorist, as if it's an honor).

Basically, M.I.A.'s rule seems to be that if you're talking about her being a terrorist as if it's a chic, fashionable, daring, awesome thing -- i.e., as a good thing -- then she is a terrorist, precisely as she herself often claims.

But if you're saying it's a bad thing to be a wannabe terrorist jocksniffer, then she's not, and you are just being an unfashionable dolt who doesn't understand her sly humor.

Another rapper -- also a Sri Lankan -- takes a decidedly less "Gee aren't they cool and awesome" view of the Tamil Tigers, or terrorists generally, and released this mocking video of MIA. Content Warning for language and disturbing pictures of what terrorism really is. Hint, M.I.A. -- it's not primarily about fashion.

I like his version better.

I Really Dig... this guy "DeLon." At the end of his attack video, he replays her final sing-song chorus, "Some some some I murder, some I let go...", and over her chorus, he says:

"Is that what is is?

Some you murder?

I got it now.

Let me hear that again.

I guess it's not as subliminal as I thought it was. Pretty fuckin' obvious. Shit."

Via PetiteDov.

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WaPo: White House Admits "Dangling" Job Offer To Romanoff To Keep Him Out Of Primary
— Ace

It's just about sex an outdated Civil War-era law against political-patronage corruption in government jobs.

Administration officials dangled the possibility of a job for former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff last year in hopes he would forego a challenge to Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, administration officials said Wednesday, just days after the White House admitted orchestrating a similar job offer in the Pennsylvania Senate race.

These officials declined to specify the job that was floated or the name of the administration official who approached Romanoff, and said no formal offer was ever made. They spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were not cleared to discuss private conversations.

Sound Effect: rdbrewer has an idea that I should start embedding sound effects into posts -- like a Morning Zoo show -- which is a kinda funny idea but I don't know how to really implement that.

But here's your Losing Horns for President Present. See, he didn't bid high enough, right?

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Sheriff Joe: The Whole Flotilla Thing Isn't A Big F'ing Deal
— DrewM

You can quibble with his take on how much aid Israel lets in but for the most part, Joey B seems to get this one right.

"I think Israel has an absolute right to deal with its security interest. I put all this back on two things: one, Hamas, and, two, Israel's need to be more generous relative to the Palestinian people who are in trouble in Gaza," Biden said, according to a transcript of the interview, in which he went on to discuss Hamas's control of Gaza:

"[The Israelis have] said, 'Here you go. You're in the Mediterranean. This ship -- if you divert slightly north you can unload it and we'll get the stuff into Gaza.' So what's the big deal here? What's the big deal of insisting it go straight to Gaza? Well, it's legitimate for Israel to say, 'I don't know what's on that ship. These guys are dropping eight -- 3,000 rockets on my people,'" Biden said.

How bad is the Obama administration? Joe Biden seems to be the smart one.

Now this statement might be a big deal if it reflects a change in the administration's position. Yesterday Hillary Clinton and the US Ambassador at the UN struck a much more neutral line. At the White House, Gibbs said the UN statement reflected the President's take on the situation.

Of course, this could be Crazy Uncle Joe going off on his own. We'll see.

Posted by: DrewM at 01:08 PM | Comments (44)
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Three Effects, One Cause
— Ace

Item: Harrowing audio (and barely visible video) of Israel's paintball gun assault (what?) on the "Hamasish" flotilla.

Item: Israel's strategy is backfiring, because no matter what the rightness of its cause -- or, frankly, let's not talk about rightness per se, because this is a matter of simple primal survival; when you're talking about pure survival, "rightness" and other moral concerns hardly enter into it -- Israel becomes more isolated every day by a Europe which wants to forget why, precisely, it should be the case tha so many formerly European Jews are now in the State of Israel (hint: 1938-1945), and looks every day for new ways to condemn Israel and thwart its mission of mere survival. And the American President, which mistakes "European" for "sophistication of thought," of course echoes his cousins across the Atlantic.

Item: Italy now pursuing social con reproductive policy through libertarian-friendly means, offering women 4500 Euros to not abort their babies but proceed, as is becoming increasingly rare in Europe, to a live birth. Russia has been attempting the much the same thing for some time now. Video report on Russia's experiment in reversing its trend towards depopulation here.

All these are linked by the same fact: Most nations of the West will be extinct within 50-75 years, for all intents and purposes, as the nations we now know die off due to lack of procreation and Muslims from the Middle East and Asia make up the difference, and then some.

Europe -- and Israel, to some extent, too -- is pursing an accommodationist strategy with what will be, to a mathematical certainty, the ruling population of Europe in 50 years time; what we call "Europeans" today will rely upon the Europeans of tomorrow to treat them fairly and civilly, and not, say, modify the criminal code in practice to permit the raping of Old European girls by New European gangs.

Or to, say, continue paying pensions, health benefits, and other "to grave" sorts of benefits to its graying, dying, and now alien, indigenous population.

Europe, like Israel, is pursing a strategy of simple survival, hoping that some accommodation shown now to its future masters will buy some reciprocal kindness, or at least civility, for its future slaves.

And, as in Israel's case, "rightness" is hardly a factor at all when you're talking about survival.

Whether Europe's gamble will work, I don't know; it's possible that the egregious barbarity of expansionist Islam will ameliorate in the next several decades; the beastly behavior of much of that population may be caused, in part, by a sense of being victims and thus (as the West reinforces their beliefs on this score) that all sorts of hellish behavior are justified when one speaks of "victims;" but, perhaps, in the future, with the confidence that they now will, as Mohammad promised, inherit the whole earth (or at least the majority of the earth, bracketed on one end by India and on the other by California), those tendencies will be eclipsed by a more charitable and ethical code.

Civilization is usually only had by those who can afford civilization, those who have had enough material success to be able to afford charity, those whose confidence in their own future safety and survival is high enough to afford mercy and empathy. A distressingly large fraction of the Muslim world seems to lack this now; but it just might be the case that when Islam is obviously triumphant, civilization will grow as it usually does among those who can afford it.

(George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had something like this in mind for Iraq-- forcing a better path for the Islamic world, one that might be imposed initially by force of arms but would later be emulated by free will because it simply works like hell; whether this expensive experiment in reforming Islam through a "Plymouth: Iraq" strategy will bear fruit, or enough fruit, or will bear fruit soon enough, is anyone's guess.)

On the other hand, human beings are not known for the kindnesses they demonstrate towards "The Other." And it is plain that Islam considers Europe to be very much "The Other." And I don't have great hopes that something so central to Islam's conception of itself will give way to a more civilized ethic.

I never write about this, because accusations of "racism" inevitably follow any discussion of demographic destiny; but mostly because it's so horribly depressing. If you believe Mark Steyn, and I tend to do so, barring some truly massive change in demographic destiny then the world as we know is doomed, to a mathematical certitude, and what battles we fight now are will almost certainly be regarded later as trivial episodes in the much larger and longer view of Islam's demographic energy, and the West's demographic exhaustion.

Anytime I think like this I can only think of Vonnegut's repetitive sigh in Slaugher-House Five: "And so it goes. And so it goes. And so it goes."

Posted by: Ace at 11:56 AM | Comments (289)
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Defense Notes....Of Nukes, Future Fighters And Budgets
— DrewM

One of the things that bothers me about the whole DADT debate is that it takes up what little attention most people pay to real defense related issues.

The public's imagination may never be captured by discussions about nuclear warhead procurement but perhaps it should. You see, while Obama is running around cutting our nuclear inventory, it turns out a lot of the weapons we already have are getting old and are in need of replacement. Unfortunately, there is no appetite for that from this President or Congress.

Still, John Noonan writing at the Weekly Standard makes the case for "New Nukes".

The need for modernization is pressing. Though most of the details about AmericaÂ’s warhead stockpiles are highly classified, there are a few key points well known to close observers. Most of our nuclear warheads are 20-30 years old. The last weapon was constructed in 1991 and the last test detonation of a bomb occurred in 1992. The average age of an operational bomb is slightly over 30 years old, meaning many of our deployed warheads were built before President Reagan took office. Scientists who specialize in warhead construction and sustainment are aging and retiring at an alarming rate. By 2008, over half the nuclear specialists at our national laboratories were over the age of 50, and very few of those under 50 have the technical know-how to produce and sustain functional weapons. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates estimated that within a few years, roughly three-fourths of our nuclear technicians will be at retirement age. The National Nuclear Security Administration, a Department of Energy subagency responsible for the security and health of our stockpile, has lost over a quarter of its workforce since the end of the Cold War. Components in our warheads are aging just as fast. We no longer possess the capacity or ability to construct certain parts required in our bomb designs.

Nuclear weapons are different from conventional munitions, which can sometimes detonate decades after they roll off the assembly lines. Nukes have a limited shelf life, and are constructed using parts that decay and corrode. Warheads must be constantly maintained and serviced to be considered credible. But along with the exodus of critical lab technicians, so went the industry that supported our national laboratories with key bomb-making components. Older weapons are now cannibalized to service the active force.

As you cut down the numbers of nuclear weapons (as this administration is dedicated to), their reliability, more importantly how reliable your potential adversaries think they are, takes on a greater importance.

As we lose critical nuclear weapon infrastructure, including people, things actually can become more dangerous not less.

Too many liberals engage in wishful thinking, that if only these horrible weapons (and they are that) would go away everything would be better. Well, the world isn't that simple. Never has been, never will be.

Any serious debate about our strategic security simply has to include an upgrade of our nuclear stockpile.

A second story not getting much attention is the over budget and behind schedule F-35 JSF program.

This plane is supposed to be work horse of the future (at least until UCAVs are ready). The Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps are each getting their own version and many of our allies have signed up for it as well.

Turns out things aren't going so well.

more...

Posted by: DrewM at 10:42 AM | Comments (125)
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Will Folks: I Shan't Ever Speak Of This Unfortunate Circumstance Again, But, FYI, I'd Like a Book Deal
— Ace

Good God All Mighty.

When I started this blog I had it in mind that a schtick I could do would be a little shameless self-promotion, a winking kind, a knowing kind, like "I'm not so stupid as to fail to realize that this is shameless; I hope you will take it as comical."

I did not realize what "shameless" actually was.

A Book Deal?

By fitsnews • on June 2, 2010Comment Email Print ShareThis

By FITSNews || Even before last week’s startling admission of an “inappropriate physical relationship” with S.C. Rep. Nikki Haley, our founding editor’s nine years in the Palmetto political scene has been nothing if not uneventful.

A former rock-n-roll bass player, Will Folks was hired in 2001 by then-former Congressman Mark Sanford to handle his messaging during the 2002 gubernatorial campaign. After helping guide Sanford to an unlikely victory, Folks spent a tumultuous two-and-a-half years in the Governor’s Office as Sanford’s “pit bull,” an antagonistic spokesman whose antics routinely enraged lawmakers while providing fodder for the State House press corps.

Anyway, after leaving Sanford’s office under a cloud of controversy in 2005, Folks has built FITSNews into a new media institution – a news and opinion website that was receiving nearly 50,000 hits a day at the time he dropped his Haley bombshell.

Needless to say, Folks has always had a “hyper-inflated” sense of his own self worth, as well as a remarkable ability to survive scandals and ignore what he calls “the haters.”

Now, with the Haley saga adding another chapter to what was already a juicy personal and political narrative, there has been conisderable speculation as to whether Folks will publish a book – something he wanted to do in 2006 prior to launching FITS.

Even one of Haley’s top donors has recommended that Folks reserve some of the more salacious details of his tryst with the front-running gubernatorial candidate for future publication, suggesting the move would be a “golden, golden, golden opportunity.”

Hmmmm Â…

The penultimate paragraph there suggests that he's only floating this possibility because, supposedly, a Haley supporter told him to not reveal everything so he could cash in later, but earlier paragraphs indicate he was thinking about this already. (And I doubt his claim about the "supporter" to boot.)

He's really annoying me with this third-person crap -- "our founding editor" -- and partly because I used to do that schtick.

I originally had a different schtick for the blog. I never said "I think" in the beginning; it was "We think." Because I was claiming that this wasn't a one-man operation, but rather a lavishly funded 644-man operation consisting chiefly of Gulf War special forces veterans and ex-CIA operatives, being run out of the luxurious Ace of Spades HQ corporate offices on the secret 103rd floor of the Empire State Building, all under the control of a secretive and mysterious rightwing benefactor we only knew as "Mr. Tranh."

I dropped that sometime after I moved to Mu.Nu. Trouble is, I only occasionally did anything with the schtick, and it turns out that 80% of readers didn't even know it was the schtick. They just hadn't heard of it, and they just thought I was being a pompous dick for always saying "We."

And, by the way, I credited the guy I stole the basic premise from.

If you read the inside-joke explanation thread, you might have seen the mention that the old schtick used to be that this site was a lavishly-funded group effort, with a huge staff and gorgeous corporate offices on the secret 103rd floor of the Empire State Building. That's why there's the reference to the "staff" and stuff.

(And that, by the way, is a direct swipe from Mark Leyner's Et Tu, Babe, which I've always acknowleged. His basic premise. But no one seems to have read that book, so it didn't seem right to let a good premise die a lonely death just because his publisher didn't market his book very well. So I "reintroduced" the schtick for what seems to be, sadly, a larger audience.)

Anyway, maybe Sic Willy thought of the schtick on his own. I sort of doubt it, though. He seems stupid. Plus, he doesn't really get silly with it, making it obviously a spoof; he seems kind of determined to push this idea of having a "staff" and merely being "our founding editor" as real.

Over at Hot Air, a claim -- premature, I think -- of of Haley vindicated due to the shoe that didn't drop.

As Mr. Wolf would say, if he were appearing in a cameo on Sesame Street, "Gentlemen, let's not start soaping each other's backs just yet." Folks is waging a campaign, true or false, to hit Haley with the maximum possible damage; I'd say that point occurs either before the primary or before the general election.

Via Jim Geraghty.

Posted by: Ace at 10:12 AM | Comments (153)
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BREAKING: Former Florida GOP Chairman Arrested On Corruption Charges
— DrewM

Slu touched on this below but the authorities are holding a presser now.

They are charging that Jim Greer siphoned money from the party for his personal use through a sham corporation that took commissions from party expenditures and funneled them to him.

Greer was handpicked for the job of chairman by....Charlie Crist.

I'm betting Charlie is so shameless he will say this type of corruption is why he left the party.

6 felony counts and the state GOP is cooperating.

Local Orlando newspaper blog has more information.

According to FNC, Crist was asked if he felt any responsibility for this and he said, no. Ah. feel the leadership.

Marco Rubio will have to deal with this as well but assuming his ties to Greer aren't as strong as Crist's are it should be a big help. Crist as a career first hack was always an unlikely poster boy for 'independence' and 'change' but having picked someone now charged with felony corruption to run the state party is going to dog him all summer.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:50 AM | Comments (146)
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Gibbs On Sestak: I Know Our CYA Report Doesn't Actually Answer Your Questions But That's All You're Gonna Get
— DrewM

Looks like the most transparent administration is doing some remodeling at the White House by building a stone wall around the Sestak job offer.

“The Intelligence Advisory Board, which most reports said this offer was for, that would be a position a member of the House could not serve on,” a reporter said.

“That’s how I understand the way the PIAB is written,” Gibbs said.

“But the memo, it said that this would be a position to serve in the House and serve on a presidential advisory board.”

“Correct,” Gibbs said.

“Well, how could he sit on the board?”

“He couldn’t,” Gibbs said.

“So that wasn’t the offer, then?”

“I’d refer you to — ”

“What position, what board, was it then? Do you know?”

“I’d refer you to the memo.”

“But the memo didn’t specify.”

“Right,” Gibbs said. “Thank you.”

Ah, well thanks for clearing that up Gibbsy.

It's absolutely amazing how so much of the press will carry water for an administration that has such contempt for them. Yes, there have been some minor signs of hurt feelings and disappointment lately (Dana Milbank for example) but it's clearly nothing like the frenzy we'd see if a Republican treated the press this way.

BTW- Pat Toomey says no one in the Bush White House tried to get him out of the race 6 years ago when he challenged then Republican Arlen Specter for the party's Senate nomination.

Most ethical administration ever!

In fairness to Gibbs, he's at a loss as to what to say since not even he thinks "We inherited this job offer from the previous administration" line on this one.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:57 AM | Comments (147)
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Poor, poor Charlie Crist
— Slublog

After leaving the GOP and giggling at the idea of returning money from donors, Charlie Crist is so lonely.

Since he quit his party, Crist says he has discovered that people he thought were friends turned out to be only Republican friends who dropped Crist after he left the GOP.

Crist has lost so many campaign staffers that his sister is now running his third-party effort.

“When you’re not affiliated with a party, it can be very lonely, particularly initially,” Crist told The Hill in an hourlong phone interview.

I love how it never occurs to this shameless careerist hack that those "Republican friends" might feel a bit betrayed after Crist promised multiple times that he would stay in the primary and support whoever won only weeks before he dropped out and refused to return their money.

But shameless hacks like Crist cannot admit that to themselves, so they have to find a villain. Enter...those eeevil righwingers.

“It just became increasingly apparent to me that a segment of the party was drifting so far to the right that it just wasn’t a place where I felt comfortable anymore,” Crist said.

“That level of acrimony and bitterness is what frustrates people today. There is this focus on being loyal to a party over the people, and it’s just wrong,” Crist said.

This, from a guy who couldn't go right fast enough when he was pandering to Republican voters. Funny how Charlie didn't discover his inner moderate until he decided to run as a candidate of the Me Party.

Also, Charlie didn't seem to mind acrimony and bitterness in politics when he was running negative ads against Marco Rubio in the primary.

At the end of the article, Charlie proves his audacity knows no bounds.

But Crist is unapologetic about his embrace of Obama, who carried Florida with 51 percent of the vote in 2008.

He said accepting stimulus money was “exactly the right thing to do” and that he has no regrets.

Really, Charlie? Marco Rubio's ad writers should send this guy a gift basket. All they have to do is transcribe.

Oh, and things are about to get a lot more lonely for poor Charlie - the guy he picked for Florida GOP chair just got himself arrested this morning.

Posted by: Slublog at 06:31 AM | Comments (22)
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