DoakesDroppings@Twitter: Muslims blame film “Now look what you made us do;” wife-beaters object “That’s our line.”

US Ambassador to Libya killed by “Islamic Protestors”.  Embassies getting stormed, burned.

Imagine how miuch worse it’d been if we hadn’t had The Light Worker making the US image abroad so very very squeaky clean.

First, a little background:

Now, let’s decide which matters more to a nation that’s been squeezed to death by four years of spendthrift incompetence:

• That Candidate Romney inadvertently insulted the locals in the UK (in exactly the same way they’re currently insulting themselves) or…
• that whole “turning deficit into surplus” and “making things work” bit?

That is all.

Democrats, with the aid of Fleet Street, ginned up a phony controversy last week, after Mitt Romney speculated out loud that maybe the Brits weren’t ready for the Olympics.

Impolitic?  Perhaps (although not on the order of stashing the Churchill bust under a bag of oily rags in a White House storage locker).

But wrong?

Exhibit 1:  Noted Conservative Tool Piers Morgan points out that everyone in the UK was saying the same thing before the Olympics:

Exhibits 2 through (TBD): The Brits prove Romney, and Morgan, correct over and over and over again.

In related news:  A poll of 10,000 random Americans shows that Romney’s off-handed remarks about the London Olympics are more important to them than unemployment, the gathering double-dip recession, and the avalanche of debt about to inundate this country.

(more…)

The British media – who generally make “TMZ” and “Entertainment Tonight” look pretty sober and respectable in comparison – are selling a lot of papers by bagging on Mitt Romney’s “gaffe” over London’s preparations for the Olympics…

…that wasn’t a gaffe at all.  They’re the most over-budget games in modern Olympic history.  The police are overmatched by the security (to say nothing of traffic) nightmare, and are bringing in the British Army to help – not just in specialist roles (as in Romney’s Salt Lake City Winter games), but for the daily blocking and tackling.

Romney’s right.

But the real question in all of this is:  are you, the American taxpayer, worker and voter, better off now than you were in 2008?

That was the Beijing Olympics, if I recall correctly?

A couple of stipulations up front before we cut to the chase:

1. I’m not going to say Michele Bachmann hasn’t occasionally observed a “Ready! Fire! Aim!” approach to some of the things she’s commented on over the years.  She’s tightened up her messaging a lot, of course, since deciding to run for President – but whenever I see a chorus of leftybloggers bleating “did you see what teh crazee Mishele Bachmannn said?”, I still occasionally take a deep breath and brace myself.  Of course, it’s more and more an automatic rather than a reasoned thing.  But we’ll come back to that.
2. I do think many American conservatives are way too exercised about the Muslim Brotherhood.  They are a big, loosely-knit movement with a lot of different histories in a lot of different nations. Some parts were radicalized by being pushed underground – think the IRA.  Other parts, in other nations, less so, or at least in different ways.  It remains to be seen what their majority in Egypt will turn out like – and they are far from the only force in Egypt that could drag that mess into the toilet – but they’ve been a broadly good influence in Libya, and neutral at worst in Tunisia.
3. Some decry the fact that some Muslim Brotherhood national parties would re-institute Sharia law if they get their way in their various nations.  So don’t move there!   They’re sovereign countries and making – for the moment – democratic decisions.  They get to do that.  At best, the Brotherhood will bring Islam, and Sharia, out into the open, where it can bump up against the 21st century and, with a little luck, the motives and desires and political demands of people with more exposure to the modern world than, say, Afghans.  Am I being a pollyanna?  Perhaps.  Or maybe just tired of fighting unneeded battles.

With that out of the way, it’s hard to miss the cascade of caterwauling that’s greeted Michele Bachmann’s statements (along with those of four other House Republicans – Louie Gohmert (TX), Trent Franks (AZ), Tom Rooney (FL), and Lynn Westmorland (GA).  “Why, even John McCain is bagging on her!”, the liberals, and not a few Republicans, phumpher – as if that were news.  McCain even throws out the dreaded “M” word, “McCarthy”, which Democrats have turned into a rhetorical nuclear option over the decades (ignorant of the irony; McCarthy was right, there were communist infiltrators, although as his hunt went on it became both too broad and way too easily caricatured.

Speaking of McCarthy, the National Review’s Andrew McCarthy – presumably no relation – unloads on McCain, and Bachmann’s critics, with an excellent, moderately lengthy piece that documents both Huma Abedin’s real, honest-to-pete links to the Muslim Brotherhood (read the article), and shreds the notion that Bachmann et al were “witchhunting”, but rather…:

The five House conservatives, instead, are asking questions that adults responsible for national security should feel obliged to ask: In light of Ms. Abedin’s family history, is she someone who ought to have a security clearance, particularly one that would give her access to top-secret information about the Brotherhood? Is she, furthermore, someone who may be sympathetic to aspects of the Brotherhood’s agenda, such that Americans ought to be concerned that she is helping shape American foreign policy?

Now, Senator McCain is no stranger to smear. No need to confirm that with Mr. ElBaradei; we’ve watched for years as he has slandered, for example, critics of his advocacy for illegal aliens as “nativists” seeking to reprise Jim Crow laws. Nevertheless, since McCain purports to be a tireless guardian of our security, one would think he’d appreciate the distinction between a smear, on the one hand, and a routine application of security-clearance standards, on the other

…as well as illuminates some of McCain’s own flip-floppery on the issue:

So, the reporter asked him, does Obama’s tolerance of the Muslim Brotherhood “concern you”?

 

Senator Maverick shot back without hesitation: “It concerns me so much that I am unalterably opposed to it. I think it would be a mistake of historic proportions.”

 

Senator McCain elaborated that he was “deeply, deeply concerned that this whole movement [toward democracy] could be hijacked by radical Islamic extremists.” And what, he was specifically asked, “is your assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood”? McCain pulled no punches:

 

“I think they are a radical group that, first of all, supports sharia law; that in itself is anti-democratic — at least as far as women are concerned. They have been involved with other terrorist organizations and I believe that they should be specifically excluded from any transition government”

 

In fact, so apprehensive was he over the Brotherhood and its sharia agenda that McCain was quick to brand Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel laureate, as a Brotherhood tool.

By the way, Rep. Bachmann has claimed – with some considerable justification – that her words have been distorted and wrenched out of context, and she’s released all her communications on the subject to prove it.  You be the judge.

So the flap isn’t about “witchhunting” Muslims in government.  It’s about transparency and honesty about influence at the highest levels (as Rep. Bachmann’s letter to Rep. Ellison, whose has denied any knowledge of the Muslim Brotherhood, although his 2008 trip to Mecca was largely bankrolled by a group that, court documents indicate, is affiliated with the Brotherhood) makes clear.  It’s about transparency.

Lessons from this incident?  Simple:  When the media sounds off on conservatives, distrust, verify, and almost always distrust some more.

Personally?  I’m not sure that the Brotherhood is the suffocating danger that some conservatives claim, and even if it were, those are sovereign nations.  And I suspect Huma Abedin’s connections to the Georgetown Political Science Elite and Keith Ellison’s membership in the DFL are of more immediate danger to this nation and state, to be honest.

But since the subject is honesty – the flap about Bachmann seems to be little more than Dems trying to draw attention away from the real issue; Hillary Clinton and Keith Ellison’s disingenuity.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I can understand why you’d DO it – we have troops stationed in South Korea so we need to know what the North Koreans are up to – but why would you TELL anybody that you do it?

Signaling something to the Norks like LBJ taking ground then and giving it back in Vietnam? Taunting the North in hopes of provoking an attack so we can invade – Pearl Harbor style – just in time to distract the public from the economy and focus on Obama the War Hero for reelection?

Or is it aimed at China – you might be our largest creditor but you don’t own our country and we’ll spy on your buddies if we want to?

Too much wine for dinner?

Thought it was off the record?

Looking for the Polish Death Camps?

The whole point of black ops is they’re unseen, hidden, never talked about. “If I tell you, I have to kill you” type of stuff. Why take the wrapper off now?

Is that a rhetorical question, Joe?

When Sandy Fluke’s birth control and Barack Obama’s birth certificate isn’t distracting ’em enough from that 58 and change percent employment rate, they gotta get creative.

Also this: Glowing tribute to the war leader in the NYT. Election year propaganda piece, agonizing decisions by war hero. LBJ stuff again.

Assassination has never been official US government policy. At least, not trumpeted in the media. Why the shift in policy, and was Congress consulted and if not, why aren’t they moving to impeach him?

Here’s the part I love;  a couple of years ago, the Twin Cities’ media “elite” sat in rapt attention as Seymour Hersh claimed that Joint Special Operations Command – the black bag people – were Bush and Cheney’s personal hit squad, assassinating people without recourse or even consulting with…the State Department.  It was going to be in his new book, maaan!

And now?

Even the crickets at the Strib don’t care.

Note that at least two of the victims are specifically identified as Americans. When a federal government official proposes to deprive an American citizen of liberty or property, the Constitution requires that the citizen be given due process including, at a minimum, notice and an opportunity to be heard by an impartial tribunal.

Citizen X is a terrorist? Says who, Axelrod? I’m not arguing there must be an arrest, extradition, legal aid lawyer and televised show trial; but has there at least been some independent review of the charges and the evidence, or is this a secret Star Chamber enemies list and where’s the Constitutional authority for the President to accuse, convict and execute Americans in secret?

I have no problems with a take-no-prisoners approach if we’re serious about it. Go full Roman on them, slay every male, drive the women out of the country weeping, leave no stone atop another, salt the earth. Can’t see Obama doing it. His alternative of picking off bad guys one-by-one really is like Whack-A-Mole in the narcotics or organized crime fighting business. In a world with a billion adherents to a violent religion, there will always be another guy to take the place of the one you just killed, which is why killing Bin Laden didn’t end the problem.

It’s bad enough, trying to pretend Barak Obama reading papers in his office is the equivalent of Teddy Roosevelt leading the charge up San Juan Hill. Having the media polishing the man’s war credentials for electoral benefit by blowing operational security is worse than asinine.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

We live in a city where the media just trampled over (or enabled the trampling over) the law to get a new football stadium.

Think the NYTimes wouldn’t light Barack’s Obama’s cigar with the Bill of Rights?

Remember when Barack Obama, the smooth-talking “smart’ Ivy Leaguer, was going to improve our standing overseas with his “smart diplomacy?”

Either do the people of Poland:

During an East Room ceremony honoring 13 Medal of Freedom recipients, Obama said that [Polish underground hero Jan] Karski “served as a courier for the Polish resistance during the darkest days of World War II. Before one trip across enemy lines, resistance fighters told him that Jews were being murdered on a massive scale and smuggled him into the Warsaw Ghetto and a Polish death camp to see for himself. Jan took that information to President Franklin Roosevelt, giving one of the first accounts of the Holocaust and imploring to the world to take action.”

The administration is claiming President Obama “mis-spoke” – and, truth be told, I get that.  The extermination camps were in Poland.

Which had, as it happens, been occupied with exceptional brutality by the Nazis, who considered the Poles very nearly as untermensch as the Jews.  Calling the death camps “Polish” is like calling Wounded Knee “Native American” or slavery “African”; technically accurate, morally tone-deaf.

Said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk:

“It’s a pity that such a dignified ceremony was overshadowed by ignorance and incompetence.”

I’m just going to go and bask in all that newfound respect we’ve gotten.

UPDATE:  By the way – I scanned in vain for a sign that any of the local TV stations covered this flap this morning.  They covered the fact that Bob Dylan also got a Presidential Medal of Freedom – but hey, he’s from Minnesota, right?

But they also noted Madeleine Albright, one of the worst Secretaries of State we’ve ever had, and certainly not a local angle.

I bring it up because it’s become a bit of a chanting point among the Twin Cities far left that Twin Cities TV stations are “conservative”.

Seems a bit of a reach, is all I’m saying.

Remember thirty years ago, when Ronald Reagan stood up for our British allies when their sovereign territory was seized (as part of the Argentinian military dictatorship’s diversion from the woeful economy) by force?  How Reagan backed the Brits and Prime Minister Thatcher’s stance that getting foreign policy wishes granted by force was wrong and must not be rewarded by acquiescence?

Barack Obama sure doesn’t:

Only a month after lavishly praising U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, President Barack Obama ditched him at a press conference in Colombia.

Obama’s turnabout came April 15 when he was asked about Argentina’s demand for control of the Falkland Islands, which are home to roughly 3,000 British citizens. The islands are located in the South Atlantic some 300 miles from Argentina.

“Our position on this is that we are going to remain neutral… this is not something that we typically intervene in,” Obama replied to the question.

It’s not an idle question.  The Argentines, addled with a left-leaning government that’s losing control of their economy, needs to whip up some nationalist fervor in lieu of bread and circuses.  The Falklands – Malvinas, to them – make a handy bit of jingo to toss about.

Oh, yeah – remember back in 2000-2008, when Presidents bobbling geography was a threat to democracy?

Obama also mislabeled the islands as “The Maldives,” partly because Argentina’s government says the Falkland Islands should be called the “Malvinas” islands.

In fact, the Maldive Islands are in the Indian ocean, not in the South Atlantic. They are some 8,200 miles from the Falklands.

He’s a former law professor, doncha know.

Obama’s neutral stance contrasts with his fulsome praise for Cameron and the U.K. during Cameron’s state visit March 14.

“For decades, our troops have stood together on the battlefield… So, David, thank you, as always, for being such an outstanding ally, partner and friend,” Obama declared.

“As I said this morning, because of our efforts, our alliance is as strong as it has ever been,” he added.

The islands have been populated by British citizens since 1833. In April 1982, an Argentinian invasion force occupied the islands, but was ejected by a British fleet that sailed 7,800 miles from the U.K.

The Falklands are now increasingly valuable because the surrounding seabed is expected to contain oil and natural-gas reserves.

In March, Argentinian foreign minister Hector Timerman slammed the U.K.’s plans for oil exploration. Without approval from Argentina, any drilling would be illegal and would prompt civil and criminal charges, he declared.

“The South Atlantic’s oil and gas are property of the Argentine people,” he claimed.

However, Obama’s familiarity with the three-decade-old dispute is unclear.

Neither Cameron nor Obama acknowledged discussing the Argentinian claim during the March state visit.

Also, Obama said the United States “typically” does not intervene in the territorial dispute.

However, the U.S. provided critical aid to the 1982 British naval campaign that defeated the Argentinian invasion force. The aid, approved by President Ronald Reagan, included spy-satellite data and advanced heat-seeking missiles that were used to shoot down Argentina’s anti-ship bombers.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/16/obama-throws-u-k-s-cameron-under-the-bus-over-falklands/#ixzz1sEGp5VtH

After a thirty-year-break, Egypt is back in the “Trying To Wipe Israel Off The Map” business:

A Grad rocket has landed in the southern Israeli city of Eilat, but has caused no damage or injuries, Israeli security officials said.

District police chief Ron Gertner told Israeli radio the rocket had been fired from Egypt’s Sinai peninsula.

He said it struck a construction site close to a residential area shortly after midnight (21:00 GMT).

To be fair, we don’t know that the new Egyptian “government” (blessed by Tea-Party-haters and Occupiers throughout the US!) is behind this.

To be honest, we don’t entirely know that some faction of the newly-factionalized government isn’t, either.

Thanks for all that standing around the world, Mr. President!

…desire to create an Orwellian hell…

…take a moment to remember that the real thing exists on this earth today.

To: President Obama
From: Mitch Berg, Mere Citizen
Re: Our Stature In The World

Dear Mr. President,

Maybe if you bowed deeper and more vigorously, you could fix this little mess.

That is all.

PS:  Please ask Rep. Ellison if he’ll call for not destroying all Jews now?  Just an idea.

Submitted without comment:

Former President Jimmy Carter has sent North Korea a message of condolence over the death of Kim Jong-il and wished “every success” to the man expected to take over as dictator, according to the communist country’s state-run news agency

To be fair to the former President, all those concentration camp inmates will make a heck of a market for Habitat for Humanity when they get released.

But Carter was never good at getting people released.  To be fair, Carter probabably think

Oh, wait – I submitted this without comment, didn’t I?

Sorry.  My bad.

I’m waiting for the first lefty/media (ptir) pundit to claim the “incongruity” between this story – violent crime is plummeting…:

Murders, rapes and other violent crimes dropped sharply in the United States in the first six months of 2011, continuing a downward trend that has lasted 4 1/2 years, the FBI reported on Monday.

The federal law enforcement agency said preliminary January-through-June figures showed the number of violent crimes declined 6.4 percent from the previous year, led by a 5.7 percent drop in murders and a 5.1 percent decrease in rapes.

In other violent crime categories, robberies declined 7.7 percent while aggravated assaults fell 5.9 percent.

The FBI’s regular statistical report did not give any reasons for the lower crimes nationwide. But the latest numbers provided further evidence of no crime spike coinciding with the tough economic conditions and high unemployment.

…and this bit here; gun sales are shattering all records this holiday season:

It’s the rise in female buyers that is perhaps most surprising – with more women buying guns than ever before, reported CBS Sacramento.

‘People are just coming in to protect themselves,’ an employee at TDS Guns in Rocklin told CBS Sacramento.

‘I think there’s just a lot of things going on in the world that are getting people thinking,’ the employee added.

The Firearms Dealers Association says the recent boom in gun purchases makes this the best holiday sales season in three years.

It’s not incongruous.  In this case, correlation equals causation.  Violent crime is dropping precisely because more law-abiding Real Americans are armed.  Criminals are stupid and often addled, but they’re not usually overtly suicidal; as the wave of shall-issue laws spreads across the nation and as sales of guns to the law-abiding citizens obliterate all previous records, more and more of them are figuring out that their chances of ending up like this are growing faster than their odds of going to jail.

More and more it’s apparent; it should be considered the duty of every law-abiding American to own and be proficient with a firearm.

:

Kim Jong-Il, one of the few foreign leaders to whom Barack Obama hasn’t managed to show obsequious deference, is dead at 69.

Kim – who has presided over the most perfect realization of socialism in history, and has the concentration camps to prove it – died of an apparent heart attack.

Perhaps his most appropriate memorial:

Without baked goods – Rosettes, krumkake, lefse, and all the other varieties of baked sweets that make Norwegian cuisine such a joy during the holidays – having a Grinch steal Christmas is really more or less irrelevant.

And “lack of butter” is the grinch this year:

An acute butter shortage in Norway, one of the world’s richest countries, has left people worrying how to bake their Christmas goodies with store shelves emptied and prices through the roof.

The shortfall, expected to last into January, amounts to between 500 and 1,000 tonnes, said Tine, Norway’s main dairy company, while online sellers have offered 500-gramme [That’s about 14.4 ounces – Ed] packs for up to 350 euros ($465).

More reasons to give thanks you’re an American…

I used to be a big-L Libertarian.

I left in 1998 – partly because I wanted to join a party that could both be pushed toward libertarian (with a small-l) principles and still actually exert some effect on society (by, like, winning elections and stuff)…

…and partly because the Big-L Libertarians had their feet firmly in the clouds when it came to foreign policy.  Even Thomas Jefferson, the Libertarians’ secular saint, realized toward the end of his presidency that he needed to build a Navy and Marine Corps to project power against the “Barbary Pirates”; merely defending the nation’s borders, even at a time when “missiles” flew a mile from brass cannon and threats moved around the world at the stately five-knot pace of a sailing ship, was not a tenable way to remain free.

Liberty, in short, needed defending.  And while military solutions weren’t the answer for every problem, there is a place and time for it.

I watched Ron Paul yesterday on the Sunday Morning shows in response to this news – that Iran may, again, be close to getting nukes:.

According to recent leaks, Iran has carried out experiments in the final, critical stage for developing nuclear weapons – weaponization. This includes explosions and computer simulations of explosions. The Associated Press and other media outlets have reported that satellite photos of the site reveal a bus-sized container for conducting experiments.

Parchin serves as a base for research and development of missile weaponry and explosive material. It also has hundreds of structures and a number of fortified tunnels and bunkers for carrying out explosive experiments.

Now, we’ve heard this before…:

As far back as eight years ago, U.S. intelligence sources received information indicating that the bunkers would also be suitable to develop nuclear weapons. According to that information, Iran conducted experiments there to examine its capacity to simulate a nuclear explosion.

…and while I hate to sound like one of those Bush-era yapping ninnies who claimed that President Bush was “wagging the dog”, it’s a fact that responses to foreign policy threats have been the Obama Administraiton’s only real success.

Still, whatever the current status of the Iranian nuke program is, it is a fact that they will have The Bomb eventually.

And Ron Paul’s solution – “let’s make them not think we’re jerks”, essentially – is no less dumb that that of the “nuclear freeze” ninnies in the eighties.

…that if we voted for John McCain, our status around the world would suffer.

And they were right!.

For the Kyrgyz, the Russians are the devil they know, the Chinese are the devils flush with yuan, and the Americans, two decades after the collapse of the USSR, are the tight-fisted guys all too willing to cut a deal corrupting the previous presidential administrations of Akaev and Bakiev while delivering lectures about democracy. To quote some of the acerbic critics of former U.S. President George W. Bush, “all hat, no cattle.”

The Pentagon has lost yet another opportunity to expand its global footprint, but to use an American baseball metaphor, “three strikes and you’re out.” It’s not as if anyone except the most tone-deaf in Washington couldn’t see it coming.

Nothing’s better for a power vacuum  than letting the Chinese and Russians fill it without a serious fight.

I’m always amused by media types who smugly proclaim that they – the media – are what stands between the hoi-polloi and tyranny.

Part of it is the whole matter of “”The pen is mightier than the sword” can only have been written by someone who never had to bet his life on it” bit.  And part of it is that the media, like any institution, is no less liable to being co-opted and turned than any other.  Remember – Germany had a “Free Press” from 1918 through 1933.  Fat lotta good it did them.

Ditto the alternative media – and maybe worse.  The alt-media has wrapped itself in the cloak of righteousness…

…but as events in Syria show, it can be co-opted for tyranny just as easily as for freedom. Because while Syria’s government propaganda is the kind of thing that Baghdad Bob could have done, its population of pro-government nerds is drawing blood.

Literally:

They call themselves the Syrian Electronic Army, conducting the most intense cyberwarfare in the Arab world, says Jillian York, with the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“I’ve really never seen anything like this before, like the Syrian Electronic Army, which just seems to have so many members,” she says. “I think it’s really just their level of persistence and their level of activity that sets them apart.”

Are they a part of the regime? That is uncertain, says York, although Syrian President Bashar Assad saluted the youth of the Electronic Army in a June speech when they first emerged.

“So it may be that they are supported by the government; it may be that they are independent pro-government forces,” York says.

They’ve co-opted the “social media networks” that were so ballyhooed in the uprisings in Egypt and Bahrain,and hacked into pro-dissident sites in the West, and begun, perhaps, to turn the advantage of the social network into a liability.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes re Keith Ellison’s letter to Hamas:

What, already? It’s only been 5 years. What’s the rush, Congressman?

And why such forceful action? Co-signing a letter to Hamas Leader-For-Now Khaled Mashaal, coming without warning, without any preliminary negotiation or preconditions, joined only by 11 other headline-seekers . . . that seems preemptory and a unilateral. Where is the international support?

But perhaps this letter is a signal of some strongly held belief? An act of fierce moral urgency? What, exactly, do you mean when you say:

“”It just seemed like a humane, decent thing to do,” Ellison said of sending the letter. “I don’t think [Shalit’s captivity is] helping the Palestinian people get a state, which I earnestly pray that they get. I think it hardens Israeli hearts and makes it more difficult to move the ball.”

Frankly, Congressman Ellison, it doesn’t sound as if you condemn the tactic of attacking Jews or taking hostages in principal, only that you think the tactic didn’t work out as planned in this particular instance, so you urge a different strategy.

You’ve gotta wonder.

I’ve told this story before; a few years ago, I appeared as a panelist on an internet talk show; Ellison was a guest.

I asked him if he repudiated the bits and pieces of the Hamas charter that called for the extinction of Israel and the extermination of the Jews – and by asked, I mean “with almost obsequious politeness”.

His response?  “How many Palestinians do you know?”

I donate that insult to my intelligence to all of CD5’s voters with consciences.

Doakes:

I’m certain that’s a comfort to the people living in Israel to know that a junior Congressman from Minnesota signed a letter to the leader of an organization explicitly committed to the destruction of Israel, advising them to shift tactics to complete the Holocaust. Jews everywhere should sleep soundly tonight. The rest of us – especially those living in Minnesota’s Fourth Congressional District – should hang our heads in shame.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Oh, I feel the shame.

But I’m not hanging my head.  I’m raising my (rhetorical) fist.

Ellison is an embarassment.

Well, he does for one Democrat, anyway.  Democrat Kate Marshall is a Democrat running in a special election in Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District.

And she released a lit piece pointing out her really double-dog sincere support of Israel:

“I am proud to consider Israel a friend and I reiterate my unwavering support for its fundamental right to exist and the absolute necessity for Israel to secure its people from outside threats. I stand ready and willing to assist Israel in defending itself against all acts of terrorism,” the statement reads.

Unfortunately, nobody copy-edited the piece – so it went out with one of Marshall’s strategists’ internal comments still in the text:

“Background: Israel has been in the news lately, and will be even more in the news with [Glenn] Beck’s ‘Rally to Restore Courage’ in Jerusalem. In an R district, it will be useful to express support for Israel and demonstrate some foreign policy prowess while it is a timely topic — especially for people who are likely paying attention to Beck’s event.”

To be fair, the Dems have had their agenda driven by much worse…

…when Barack Obama was going to “restore” America’s “reputation” around the world?

Don’t worry – neither does anyone else:

The United States has apologised for controversial remarks made by a US diplomat who spoke of “dark and dirty” Indians, calling the comments “inappropriate”.

US Vice-Consul Maureen Chao told Indian students on Friday that her “skin became dirty and dark like the Tamilians” after a long train journey, according to Indian media — referring to people from the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

During her speech in the Tamil Nadu capital, Chennai, Chao was quoted as saying: “I was on a 24-hour train trip from Delhi to (the eastern Indian state of) Orissa.

To be fair, I’m not sure that Obama is counting on the Tamil vote…

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

The BBC asks: Are brooms the sign of resistance to looters?

No, that’s a sign of capitulation to looters. That’s resignation that looting is inevitable and unstoppable so all we can do is clean up afterwards.

I’ll allow a few points for the British tradition of taciturnity and stoicism that got them through The Blitz – while averring that a foreign (would-be) invader is beyond the citizen’s control; civic violence is something that springs from one’s neighbors.

Doakes:

The sign of resistance to looters is this:

Korean shopkeepers, during the 1992 LA riots. From the blog "Ask A Korean"

The picture above is hotlinked from (and links to) “Ask A Korean” – a Korean immigrant who, to be fair, is pro-gun-control, and finds the image “dispiriting”.

I strongly disagree, of course. The picture – Americans (of whatever ancestry) pushing back mob rule and anarchy using their God-given right to keep and bear arms is inspiring – indeed, a thing of profound, if pointed and loaded (as it were), beauty.

Fearless Prediction: the chorus of lefties who are now chanting that Anders Behring Breivik is “conservative” – to try to equate the accused mass-murderer with Eric Cantor and Michele Bachmann, naturally – will be chastened to learn that he was more “anti-Muslim” than actually political – and that “right-wing” means something very different in the context of European racial and religious politics than it does here…

…oh, who am I kidding?  Left wingers are never chastened for making overwrought, bigoted statements about American conservatives.

(See: Jared Loughner, Bill Sparkman, Larry Piderman, John Patrick Bedell, Maurice Schwenkler, the Tea Party “racist chants”…)

It’s only a prediction.

Merely wanting peace doesn’t give you peace.

At least 80 people died when a gunman opened fire at an island youth camp in Norway, hours after a bomb attack on the capital, Oslo, police say.

Oslo police are questioning a 32-year-old Norwegian man in connection with both attacks.

The man was arrested on tiny Utoeya island outside Oslo, where police say he opened fire on teenagers.

Earlier, the number of dead from the Utoeya shooting spree, which is among the world’s most deadly, was put at 10.

The earlier bomb attack killed at least seven people. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, whose Oslo offices were among those badly hit by the blast, described the attacks as “bloody and cowardly”.

The shooter apparently impersonated a cop:

Hours after bomb blasts shattered the holiday calm of downtown Oslo, a man arrived at Utoya island, 50 kilometres from the Norwegian capital, by ferry.

He was wearing a police uniform and packing several weapons, including at least one submachine gun and possibly a rifle.

The stranger beckoned to some of the 550 young people attending a summer camp organized by the youth wing of the ruling Labour Party.

“Come here,” he said, claiming he was performing a routine security check after a bomb blast hours earlier in downtown Oslo killed at least seven people and injured many others.

Once a sizeable group had gathered, the man — who looked like a typical Norwegian, with blond hair and spoke with an eastern Norwegian accent — said this was just the beginning and opened fire.

The campers, aged 15 to 25, scattered in panic, many throwing themselves in the water in an attempt to escape the island, which had no bridge to the mainland. Others cowered in nearby buildings.

A 16-year-old named Emma said she thought at first it was just somebody fooling around, but after she saw two people shot dead she realized it was serious.

“Me and my boyfriend Erik, we ran to the sea and we hid ourselves in [a cave]. After a while … we heard the gunshots right from above us and we could actually smell the — what’s it called? — the gunpowder and we were so scared so we just waited till he went away,” she told the BBC.

Early indications – and they are very early indeed – are that the killer was a lone madman, not connected with any international terror organizations.  The politics, if any, are unknown.