Thank You, Hollywood

The Islamist who killed two US airmen in Germany was inspired by Hollywood propaganda…

(Telegraph) — A Kosovo Albanian Islamic extremist has confessed to murdering two American airmen and has blamed a faked jihad video showing US soldiers raping a Muslim girl for inspiring his crime. In an emotional confession to a Frankfurt court as his murder trial began on Wednesday, Arid Uka said he had become radicalised by online extremist propaganda before carrying out a lone gun attack US Air Force bus in March. … Uka blamed a video purporting to show American servicemen raping a young Muslim girl for prompting him to try and stop other US soldiers from getting to Afghanistan. … But the rape footage, billed as an authentic video entitled “what was done to our sisters,” turned out to be … from the 2007 anti-Iraq war film “Redacted,” directed by Hollywood’s Brian de Palma. (H/T: WeaselZippers)

I’ll bet they’re proud on the Left Coast today!

Actions, Meet Consequences

SAN DIEGO (CBS) — Police on Tuesday said a Southland boy is recovering after he was shot with a crossbow bolt after throwing rocks at a passing car outside his home. Officer Dino Delimitros told the Associated Press the boy and a friend were throwing the rocks outside his home in the Linda Vista neighborhood Monday afternoon when a passenger in a black Toyota RAV4 pulled out a crossbow and fired. The boy, whose name and age have not been released, was shot in the abdomen and taken to a local hospital, where he is expected to recover from his injuries. Police are still looking for the shooters and no arrests have been made. (H/T: iOwnTheWorld)

Dude. (emphasis added)

Addendum: I wasn’t sure how to classify this one, since I have a tag for gun stories but not for crossbows or other medieval weaponry. I might need to change that eventually, because it’s inevitable that some enterprising criminals will someday try to counter the Castle Doctrine by building siege engines.

They’re Lumberjacks and They’re OK

HOQUIAM, WA — A community festival in Hoquiam is attracting attention with a T-shirt mocking Osama bin Laden. Logging remains an important part of Grays Harbor County, and the loggers’ Playday festival celebrates that heritage every September. And every year, a special shirt is made. Known for being edgy, previous designs have mocked environmentalists and hippies. “The shirt in no way, shape or form was intended to be racist, or bigotry and anything along those lines,” said Don Bell, the festival T-Shirt creator. But this year, a brouhaha erupted when Osama bin Laden made the cut on the front of the 2011 T-shirt, strapped to a log, with the caption – “Osama bin Loggin.” …

I have heard, enough times that it makes me vomit, that Osama bin Laden was not a true member of the “Religion of Peace”, but that he hijacked it for his own purposes. In any event, the only muslims (or other liberals) who should be offended by this shirt are (a) those who support Osama bin Laden, agreeing with his goals and methods; and (b) those who think poor sheikh Osama was framed by the CIA and the Mossad for an inside job. And you know what? I honestly don’t give a fuck if any of those groups are offended. In fact, I hope they are.

I Couldn’t Resist

I see people are still talking about Bill Clinton’s alleged vegan conversion, but I have yet to see anyone point out that he’s always had someone to eat his meat for him.

Ass-ploding Hypocricy

Why do conservatives always have to brand people traitors? Why can’t they just say “You’re mistaken”? –Maureen Dowd

Please, tell us again that we’re all terrorists and hostage takers. I miss the civility.

Posted Without Comment

(H/T: VodkaPundit)

Isn’t Everything “Commerce”?

Obama thinks that forcing people to buy health insurance – specifically, his health insurance at his prices that covers only what he thinks should be covered and refuses the care that he thinks should be refused – “should not be controversial”… (H/T: WZ)

If the government has a right to control its citizens’ actions in the name of “commerce,” just think about all of the other “non-controversial” things the government can do with the exact same justification… (H/T IMAO)

“If Congress has the power to make you buy health insurance, where does it stop? Then they’d have the power to make you get tattoos, and they’ve got the power to make you wear little yellow stars on your coat sleeves.” –Doug Urbanski

“…If the government can compel people to engage in private economic transactions like… the individual mandate… because it might affect interstate commerce, then imagine if the government had the power to force people to pick cotton in return for room and board…” –ibid

Do you see any controversy? No? Me neither.

The Obama Downgrade, Alphabetically

This one is by Bret Stephens at the WSJ (H/T: HillBuzz) and contains an entry for every letter of the alphabet. I’m just going to quote a few of my favorites, but you should read the whole thing.

A	is for the Arab world, and our standing in it: This year, Zogby International found that 5% of Egyptians had a favorable view of the U.S. In 2008, when George W. Bush was president, it was 9%. Wasn’t Obama supposed to make the Arab world love us?
D	is for—what else—the federal debt, which grew to $14.3 trillion this month from $10.7 trillion at the end of 2008. D is also for the dollar, which has lost almost half its value against gold since Aug. 2008.
E	is for energy. The average retail price of a gallon of gas hovered near the $1.80 mark when Mr. Obama was inaugurated. It has since more than doubled. E is also for ethanol, the non-wonder fuel the U.S. continues to subsidize to the tune of $5 billion a year.
G	is for Guantanamo, which remains open, and for Gadhafi, who remains in power, and for Greece, which offers a vision of America’s future if we don’t reform our entitlement state.
I	is for Israel, a Middle Eastern country the president claims to support even as he routinely disses its prime minister, seeks to shrink its borders and—why not?—divide its capital. I is also for insane, for all the Jews who vote for Obama’s reelection next year.
J	is for jobs. In November 2008, president-elect Obama promised he would create 2.5 million jobs by 2011. By October 2010 the economy had shed 3.3 million jobs. For the seventh time, he’s now claiming to have shifted his attention to creating jobs.
M	is for Mexico, a country that manages 5.4% unemployment and 4.2% annual growth even as it fights a war against the drug cartels. Obama, meanwhile, is arming those cartels.
Q	is for QE2, the most disastrous experiment in monetary policy since Fed Chairman William Miller’s low-interest rate policy crashed the dollar in 1978. There is talk of QE3 coming soon.
T	is for taxes, which Mr. Obama would like to see raised for “millionaires and billionaires”—curiously defined as people making $200K and up.
X	is for Liu Xiaobo, an example of what a deserving winner of the Nobel Peace Prize looks like. X is also for Xanax, likely to be remembered as the drug of choice of the Obama years.
Z	is for zero, which is the likelihood that one of the current GOP hopefuls will defeat Mr. Obama in 2012. I hope this is wrong, but I fear it isn’t.

(Comments in red by yours truly.)

Just Because Low Taxes Cause Terror in THEM…

(From Hope n’ Change Cartoons. RTWT.)

I for one am sick and tired of being called a terrorist (which is the massively-coordinated MSM/Democrat talking point du jour) from people who are afraid to call actual terrorists “terrorists” … Not to mention by people who actually associate with actual terrorists (Barack Obama and Bill Ayers, just for starters). Sarah Palin points out that “if we were real domestic terrorists, shoot, President Obama would be wanting to pal around with us, wouldn’t he?” It’s disgusting to claim that people who simply want the government to act with responsibility and restraint in regards to the budget and our civil liberties are “terrorists” and “holding the nation hostage” (especially from the so-called self-described “party of civility”), and only serves to prove that Gerald Seymour had it backwards when he said that “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”

After listening to Democrat politicians and the Democrat propaganda wing of the mainstream media continue to paint any opposition to higher taxes, higher spending, higher debt, and their Glorious Chairman Obama as “violent,” “extremist,” “racist” and “terrorist;” I think we can be forgiven to be a little leery about Obama’s latest strategy to combat violent extremism. (H/T: WZ)

Local communities, not Washington, are best suited to counter violent extremism, according to a new national strategy the Obama administration took more than a year to produce. The strategy pointedly does not focus on threats from Muslim extremism.

Of course not. And I doubt very much if it focuses on SEIU thugs or Ayers types either.

Old News, Unless You Only Watch the MSM

Pajamas Media — Sophisticated stem cell medicine — in which a patient’s own fatty tissue is harvested and processed for the patient’s own adult (autologous) stem cells, then reinjected for regenerative healing — is available in the United States and Canada, but only for animals. Elsewhere in the world — the Regenerative Medicine Institute at Tijuana’s impressive Hospital Angeles, for example, just 20 minutes outside San Diego — adult stem cells have been shown to have remarkable efficacy in treating a variety of diseases. … the MSM carefully avoids the subject of stem cells — unless, that is, you’re talking embryonic stem cells. These are the controversial cells, harvested from dead human fetuses, that most people presume to be the foundation of all cell medicine. For the MSM, embryonic stem cells are not voodoo nonsense; they are cool, cutting-edge, sexy. They are headline-grabbers. They have the highly mediagenic property of “pluripotency” — the ability to morph into any type of cell in the body. But adult stem cells are proven more effective and less risky than embryonic cells. Yet only embryonic stem cells and their supporters merit coverage in the MSM, despite the fact that fetal cells do not perform successfully in clinical trials.

I’ve seen this reported a number of times over a number of years: The only stem cells that regularly show any promise are adult stem cells (which can be harvested from fat), but the only stem cells that the media (and the government pork-barrel spenders) show any interest in are embryonic stem cells harvested from aborted fetuses. That above the referenced article doesn’t really speculate deeply on the cause of this dishonest discrepancy, but it’s fairly obvious that the obsession with embryonic stem cells is based at least in part of justifying the continued availability of abortion on demand in America, with government funding. And if they can convince the public that they stand to reap personally benefit from the endless health benefits from endless abortions, then with any luck the voters will be swayed away from pro-life policies and politicians. When the subject of stem cell research comes it, it’s surprising (OK, not really) how many people are unaware that there even exist other types of stem cell research about from the embryonic type, much less the fact that the other types of research are the ones actually showing promise. But then again, it should be fairly obvious to anyone who spared the time to rub two brain cells together that, if embryonic stem cell research were the gold mine that everyone claimed it was, then it wouldn’t need massive government subsidies. People would be lining up to invest in it.

But, maybe someday after adult stem cell research reaches its potential, it may actually gain some acknowledgement for its successes (while the government-funded embryonic boondoggles continue to waste money with little result), we can all go down to the nearest Red Cross center to donate a pint of fat in order to provide the stem cells to cure our fellow citizens. Given how much liposuction is done on the stars in Hollywood, they might actually (for the first time in decades) actually be doing something to contribute to society in a positive way.