Violence and Islam. What are the odds?

Flames lit up downtown Cairo, where massive clashes raged Sunday, drawing Christians angry over a recent church attack, hard-line Muslims and Egyptian security forces. At least 24 people were killed and more than 200 injured in the worst sectarian violence since the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak in February. The rioting lasted late into the night, bringing out a deployment of more than 1,000 security forces and armored vehicles to defend the state television building along the Nile, where the trouble began. The military clamped a curfew on the area until 7 a.m.

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At one point, an armored security van sped into the crowd, striking a half-dozen protesters and throwing some into the air. Protesters retaliated by setting fire to military vehicles, a bus and private cars, sending flames rising into the night sky.

What precipitated the violence? Christians had the audacity to be Christians in a Muslim nation.

In the past few weeks, riots have broken out at two churches in southern Egypt, prompted by Muslim crowds angry about church construction.

One clash took place near the city of Aswan, after church officials agreed to a demand by local ultra-conservative Muslims, known as Salafis, that a cross and bells be removed from the church building.

Aswan's governor, Mustafa Kamel al-Sayyed, is also reported to have suggested that the church does not have legal authorization. Protesters said Sunday they are demanding the governor's ouster after the church was partially demolished last week.

Muslims demand respect for their faith, even when it conflicts with western values. Yet time and time again, they show that in nations around the world where they are the majority they are unwilling or incapable of provide to others what they demand for themselves.

Posted by: DrewM at 04:10 PM | Comments (242)
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Always, always tied to worldwide demand for oil.

The price of a gallon of gasoline is driven 55% by the price of a barrel of oil. That's the deal.

A barrel of oil that isn't produced from the Gulf, but is being explored off of Brazil, thank you President Wonderful. It cant be produced off of ANWR because of meeces.

Cap and Trade Coal Preznit wants your electricity bill to skyrocket.

Remember this in November, no matter who the opposing candidate is.

I will.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 02:37 PM | Comments (147)
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Just a brief update. Darrell Issa appeared on Fox News Sunday to discuss both Fast & Furious and Solyndra with Chris Wallace. Fox News is also reporting that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is planning to subpoena Eric Holder this week to determine what he knew and when he knew it. If Holder is looking to improve on his last performance, a good place to start would be to avoid committing perjury.

Thanks to everyone for the hospitality this week and thanks to Ace for inviting me to participate.

Posted by: Guest Blogger at 01:39 PM | Comments (98)
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...to play in the Ace of Spades HQ sandbox. Hope you enjoyed having me here as much as I enjoyed being here.

Lemme leave as I came in: to wit, blatantly reposting my content from my other sites.

Posted by: Guest Blogger at 11:07 AM | Comments (93)
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A Smart Military Blog™ special feature on defense procurement.

Defense acquisition programs are FUBARÂ’d. I donÂ’t think thatÂ’s a big surprise to anyone here. Heck, when your programs are so bad they get the Star Wars treatment, youÂ’re in the hurt locker: more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 11:00 AM | Comments (37)
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I can't possibly do any worse than the last 4 weeks, can I?

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Oh shut up.

Football Sunday morons. Have at it.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 08:38 AM | Comments (341)
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Guess which group had to pull permits, pay for electricity, etc. to hold a rally in Boston - "Occupy Boston" or the Greater Boston Tea Party. It's a tough one, I know. Take your time.

Organizers of the Occupy Boston tent city in Dewey Square have never sought nor received any permits from the state, the city or the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, which controls the property.

I'm sure the Democrats that control the state and city just waive these requirements all the time. You know, I bet they even do it for groups that don't agree with their worldview.

Christen Varley, spokeswoman for the Greater Boston Tea Party, said she’s “miffed” by the laissez-faire attitude of city and state officials. The Greenway has provided electricity to the protesters, while other groups, such as the Tea Party, have to pay for power at events, she said.

Yeah. Not so much.

Just another example of how Democrats own this movement lock, stock and barrel.

Update: See here for the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy's procedures for holding an event on the Greenway. You can jump through all those hoops or, you know, just show up. more...

Posted by: andy at 08:10 AM | Comments (98)
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Attorney General Eric Holder fired off a 5-page letter to congressional leaders yesterday. It was the healthy mix of whining, blame shifting, deliberate misrepresentations and bumbling incompetence we've come to expect from our fine Attorney General.

Senator Grassley has suggested that I was aware of Operation Fast and Furious from letters he provided to me on or about January 31, 2011 that were addressed to the former Acting Director of the ATF. However, those letters referred only to an ATF umbrella initiative on the Southwest Border that started under the prior Administration -- Project Gunrunner -- and not to Operation Fast and Furious.

So, Bush's fault?

Much has been made in the past few days about my congressional testimony earlier this year regarding Fast and Furious. My testimony was truthful and accurate and I have been consistent on this point throughout. I have no recollection of knowing about Fast and Furious or of hearing its name prior to the public controversy about it.

Eric, do you know who Sharyl Attkisson is? If not, you will.

I simply cannot sit idly by as a Majority Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform suggests, as happened this week, that law enforcement and government employees who devote their lives to protecting our citizens be considered "accessories to murder." Such inflammatory rhetoric must be repudiated in the strongest possible terms.

Representative Paul Gosar shot back at Holder in an interview with the Daily Caller.

“It [Holder’s letter] is rhetoric. I think it’s funny that that’s the heat we take now when we’re in the focus of hearings and the focus of calls for his resignation,” Gosar told The Daily Caller. “[He says] ‘oooh, we want to sing Kumbayah and bring everybody together so that we can diffuse that.’ It’s also interesting that he and leadership in the Justice Department didn’t really exercise that in Arizona by reaching out and really trying to work on issues – they just continue to dictate accordingly."

Darrell Issa had a good line on Hannity Friday night when he said he wanted "change we can believe in at the Justice Department."

I wrote yesterday about the "under the radar" comment made by Obama to Sarah Brady regarding gun control. Well, Holder's letter had a similar eyebrow-raising comment.

As I have said, the fact that even a single gun was not interdicted in this operation and found a way to Mexico is unacceptable. Equally unacceptable however, is the fact that too many in Congress are opposed to any discussion of fixing loopholes in the laws that facilitate the staggering flow of guns each year across our border to the South.

What's interesting, beyond the staggering level of hypocrisy, is that Holder knows there are people that already suspect this was more about the second amendment and gun control than it ever was about investigating illegal gun trafficking. For him to take this position publicly, in a letter to Congress leads me to believe this might end up being his primary defense of the program. The walls are starting to close in on him and maybe that's all he has left. If that's the case, expect a lot of mud-slinging. Eric Holder doesn't strike me as the type of person to willingly fall on the sword.

Unthinkable corruption executed with criminal incompetence.

Posted by: Guest Blogger at 07:28 AM | Comments (110)
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I recently picked up Stephen Hicks' Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault for my Kindle. It will now join the twenty other books on my "not started" pile, and I curse Amazon for making book-buying so easy. Amazon has made books into pure crackrock, and the Kindle is the glass pipe.

I always swear to myself: no more new books until I've finished reading the ones I've already bought. In the old days, I could look guiltily upon the stack of unread books I keep on my end-table, but the Kindle's list of not-yet-read books is far less intimidating. And with e-books, I can guard against buying the same book twice because I forgot I bought it the first time; I have three copies of Stephen Hunter's Point of Impact in various editions because I keep misplacing the book.

My Kindle has really transformed my reading habits. Prior to buying a Kindle, my reading was very regimented: an hour or two in the evening with soft music on the stereo. Now, my Kindle goes with me everywhere and I read in bits and pieces all day long, a page here and there: waiting in line, on breaks at work, sitting in airports, while eating dinner in restaurants, surreptitiously while sitting in long boring meetings. (You'd think with all that reading I'd make more progress on my backlog, but no....) And there is the Sybaritic pleasure in knowing that I can carry thousands of books with me where ever I go.

So having an e-reader has made two big differences to me as an avid reader: I buy more books on the spur of the moment because Amazon has made it so easy, and I read a lot more throughout the day. The only downside is that I can't show visitors my wall-o-books so they can see how smart I am! (I've known people who have bought classics like Moby Dick as "props" -- they've never read the book, but they want other people to think they've read the book. Or they'll buy one of those big coffee-table photo-books to impress visitors, but never actually read it.) The e-reader makes such displays obsolete: no one can see what books you have on your Kindle. So now the guys can read soupy romances on the subway without fear of anyone scoping the cover; attractive women can read X-Men comics without being mobbed by geeks. In a way, e-readers have made reading a more private and personal experience -- whether you view that as a good thing or not depends on the kind of reader you are, I suppose.

The most significant downside to e-books that I've seen so far is that it's accelerated a trend to "over publishing". Even before e-readers hit big there were too many books being published. Quality books are harder than ever to find amidst the rolling ocean of mediocrity. In the old days I used to use word-of-mouth, past experience, and (I admit) cool cover-art as my main criteria for buying books. Now it's far harder because there are so many new authors, especially in genre fiction -- there is the occasional pearl, but I'm not willing to dig through a mountain of crap to get to it any more. This is one of the reasons I started the Sunday Book Thread: word-of-mouth and recommendations by friends have formed the main part of my book purchases over the past few years.

Posted by: Monty at 06:54 AM | Comments (96)
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Let's see. They've got Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Mark Ruffalo and Keith Olbermann on their side. Now it really goes populist with Venezuela's Communist dictator Hugo Chavez.

I'm taking bets on what will die first, this bowel movement on Wall Street or Chavez himself.

The U.S. protests, which began last month in New York and have spread to Tampa, Florida, Seattle and other cities, have mostly been peaceful but sometimes resulted in confrontations. Dozens were arrested and police used pepper spray in New York earlier this week.

"This movement of popular outrage is expanding to 10 cities and the repression is horrible, I don't know how many are in prison now," Chavez said in comments at a political meeting in his Caracas presidential palace shown on state TV.

Chavez, who runs for re-election in a year's time and traditionally ramps up his anti-capitalist rhetoric to try and rally supporters before a vote, also let rip at Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who referred to the "malign socialism" of Cuba and Venezuela in a speech on Friday.

"He's been attacking Venezuela and Cuba, and talking about the malign government of Hugo Chavez. And he has the arrogance to say that God created the United States so the United States can rule the world," Chavez said.

"And that crazy man might be the president of the United States, in elections that are just after ours."

more...

Posted by: Guest Blogger at 06:21 AM | Comments (117)
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