NRA Convention Opens in Houston

And Emily Miller is on hand, "Rick Perry says Obama wants to ‘disarm the America public’":

Guns galore twitter.com/EmilyMiller/st…
— Emily Miller (@EmilyMiller) May 3, 2013

Gov. Rick Perry sat back in shock when I told him President Obama told Mexicans that an upside of his efforts to infringe the Second Amendment would be to make them safer. The Texas Republican, a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association (NRA), pushed back his chair and thought before speaking.

“The idea that a United States president would go to Mexico and make that statement is incredulous,” the 2012 president candidate told me in an interview after his rousing speech at the NRA annual meeting in Houston Friday. “His goal — well before he became president of the United States — was to try to disarm the American public. He just disregards the Constitution.”

Continue reading.

Also at Dallas Morning News, "At NRA convention in Houston, official says 'culture war' more than gun rights."

The Left Opens Fire on Kelly Ayotte

From Jonathan Tobin, at Commentary, "Stalking Kelly Ayotte and Common Sense":

The video of a relative of a victim of the Newtown massacre confronting Senator Kelly Ayotte at a New Hampshire town hall meeting has been all over the cable news channels, as the effort to shame those who opposed efforts to expand background checks for gun purchases escalated this week. Other objects of the increasingly aggressive gun-control lobby like Arizona Senator Jeff Flake have also been subjected to attempts by gun violence victims’ relatives to embarrass him for voting against the Manchin-Toomey amendment. But if these supporters of gun-control bills are really interested in getting something passed, they should listen to one of the measure’s co-sponsors.

Continue reading.

And check the Google News search for the senator.

Here's PuffHo, for example, the hacks: "The Political Suicide of Kelly Ayotte."

But see the New Hampshire Journal, "Ayotte told she ‘looks presidential,’ town hall crowd erupts in cheers – UPDATED with video."

Amnesty Proposal Triples Number of Illegal Aliens Crossing Border

From Daniel Greenfield, at FrontPage Magazine:

It’s like legalization is a magnet or something. But we know that can’t be true because we were repeatedly told by amnesty advocates that illegal aliens would not show up just because we promised to legalize them.

But someone neglected to tell them that.

Arrests of illegal immigrants crossing into the United States have nearly tripled in recent months — in anticipation of Congressional efforts to enact comprehensive immigration legislation, border patrol agents told CBS News Wednesday.

“Once the first group gets across, they call their family, they call their friends and let them know, ‘Hey the time is right, come on over,’” Border Patrol agent and union representative Chris Cabrera told CBS News.

In March, 7,500 illegals were arrested in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas — which includes McAllen — Cabrera told CBS News. That’s up from 2,800 in January.

In February, nearly 4,800 illegals were arrested in the Rio Grande, the local news website The Monitor.com reports.

In fact, agents in McAllen used their station’s carport to process nearly 900 illegals caught over three days in March, according to the Monitor.com.

Image Credit: The People's Cube.

The View From Above

Lots of lovelies at Subject to Change.

And below is Jade Hayden:

Bonus: At Pirate's Cove, "If All You See……is snow created by too much fossil fueled heat, you might just be a New Climate Denier." And at Randy's Roundtable, "Thursday Nite Tart: Elyse Taylor."

Updates on Camarillo Springs Fire

There's local news video from last night here, and from this morning's ABC's Good Morning America here.

And check the Ventura County Star, "Day 2: Air attacks continue."

Check back for further updates...

Added: At the Los Angeles Times, "California wildfire: Firefighters defend naval base at Point Mugu."

Also, "Southern California fire season off to a sinister start":

#SpringsFire:#PointMagu State #Park on #PCH. twitter.com/RobertNBCLA/st…

— Robert Kovacik (@RobertNBCLA) May 3, 2013

The Southern California wildfire season got off to an ominous start Thursday with a massive brush fire in Ventura County that officials fear is just a preview of dangerous months ahead.

The fire showed in dramatic fashion how the region's record dry conditions and lack of rainfall can quickly combine with fierce Santa Ana winds to produce widespread havoc.

Firefighters said the dry winter and spring left the brush much more combustible than they've ever seen it at this time of year. Weather forecasters said the Santa Ana wind conditions Thursday produced gusts topping 60 mph. Those are speeds significantly above normal for May and more common for the fall, when the Santa Anas are at their strongest.

Thousands fled from several communities Thursday morning as flames consumed bone-dry terrain, devouring more than 6,500 acres in just a few hours. Humidity levels dropped to as low as 4%. Walls of flames — some topping 20 feet — bore down on homes and licked up against the side of the 101 Freeway. Temperatures topped 90 degrees.

The heavy winds forced officials to ground air tankers battling the so-called Springs fire, putting more pressure on weary firefighters. Helicopters continued with water drops, and ground crews made several tense stands that prevented flames from getting into subdivisions in Camarillo and Newbury Park.

"It's very unpredictable. Winds are swirling and twisting, and we don't know what way it's going to turn," said Ventura County Fire Department spokesman Tom Kruschke.

With only about 5 inches of rain since last July, Los Angeles is headed toward its fourth-driest year since 1877.

Pamela Geller Under Attack

A report from Mike Lumish, at the Times of Israel.

Well, she's hitting all the progressive terror-enabling hot buttons.

More here: "AMERICAN FREEDOM DEFENSE INITIATIVE ANNOUNCES PLATFORM FOR DEFENDING FREEDOM IN WAKE OF BOSTON JIHAD."

Tsarnaev Widow Katherine Russell Stops Cooperating With Police

Speaking of mugshots.

At London's Daily Mail, "Katherine clams up: Boston bomber's widow stops cooperating with authorities... but the female DNA found on bomb is NOT hers."

America's Bad Girls — The Hotties Who Still Look Hot for Mug Shots

America's police precinct pinups.

London's Daily Mail is on the case, "Don't let them steal your heart: America's 'bad' girls who still look so good - even when they're posing for their police mugshots":

For most women a police mug shot is the most humiliating photograph that will ever be taken.

In recent months, photographs of celebrities such as Reese Witherspoon and Lindsay Lohan have been forced to pose for the mandatory 'booking in' picture at the police station. But these pictures of 10 women arrested in the U.S. have shown that some women have managed to maintain their looks in their mug shots.

More at the link.

Pictured below is Jennifer Jensen of Osceola, Florida.

Why Are Phony 'Hate Crimes' So Common, Especially on College Campuses?

Robert Stacy McCain blogged this story a couple of days ago, "The Dreaded Wyoming GOP Facebook ‘Hatef–k’ Rapist Has Been Apprehended."

And James Taranto has a report out today, "Hate Crime' Hoaxes" (via Memeorandum):

Why are phony "hate crimes" so common, especially on college campuses? We'd like to go through a few obvious answers, all of which have merit, and then delve a bit deeper into the psychology of such incidents.

One obvious answer is that people do this sort of thing to get attention. Multicultural identity politics, which is a dominant force on campus and a significant one off it, creates a perverse incentive structure by rewarding victims of purported hate and going easy on hoaxers. In March Michelle Malkin wrote of an incident in which her alma mater, Ohio's Oberlin College, experienced a rash of racist graffiti.

The college president and three deans "ostentatiously published an 'open letter' announcing the administration's decision to 'suspend formal classes and non-essential activities.' " The incident drew national media coverage--but the denouement didn't: "After arresting two students involved in the spate of hate messages left around campus, police say 'it is unclear if they were motivated by racial hatred or--as has been suggested--were attempting a commentary on free speech.' "

Lanker-Simons, unsurprisingly, turns out to be quite the left-wing activist herself. The Boomerang reports that in 2010 she successfully sued the university challenging its decision to bar domestic terrorist and presidential pal Bill Ayers from speaking on campus. But this time around, the university's position vis-à-vis Lanker-Simons isn't exactly an adversarial one...

Continue reading.

Fake outrage and false allegations: the sum of the left's civil rights agenda. Or, as Scared Monkeys writes, "Looks like we have a modern day liberal Tawana Brawley …"

Word.

L.A. Times Reporter Hector Becerra Lamely Poses as Stoop Laborer to Shill for Immigration Reform

You gotta love it.

Reporter Hector Becerra tried to get all authentic with the non-English speaking field workers in Santa Maria, "A day in the strawberry fields seems like forever":

I wore the uniform of the other men: jeans, a tad too baggy so that I kept having to pull them up; a sweat shirt with a hoodie and a jacket over it; a baseball cap; and dusty, steel-toed work boots that a daddy long-legs had called home.

But even if I was dressed like the other workers, the clothes felt like a disguise. As soon as I opened my mouth, my fluent but American-sounding Spanish, not to mention my baby-soft hands, gave me away.

I shared that my parents were immigrants too. It was a defense mechanism, I guess, as much as a way of connecting with them. It didn't matter — they probably would have been generous either way.

About an hour into the picking, my upper and lower back were beginning to tighten and my legs began to burn a little from the stooping.

Oh poor Hector, you pathetic left-wing shamnesty tool. More:

Mark Teixeira, the owner of Teixeira Farms, which owns much of this land, snapped a long stalk and said: "This is how you eat broccoli." With his front teeth, he skinned the stalk and ate it like a carrot.

He invited me to try it. It was sweet and better-tasting than the broccoli head.

Teixeira, an affable guy with a sharp sense of humor, has argued publicly that Americans are unwilling to do the hard work that's necessary to gather crops. Like other growers, many of them conservative Republicans, he argues for immigration reform that provides for a steady stream of immigrants to do the work others won't.

"Americans don't want to do the fieldwork. They'll go over and make hamburgers for $8 an hour with no insurance, no nothing, when they can make more money here," Teixeira said. "I don't care if you pay $20 an hour, they'll come here one or two days, and they're gone. It's a mind-set: They think fieldwork is below them."

Yeah, yeah. Let's just open up the flood gates to the world's poor just yearning to breathe free --- and yearning to mooch off our over-generous welfare state. We have plenty of legal immigrants who will do this work. You don't have to pose like a freakin' idiot to make the case for the left's moral bankruptcy. Go find some news or something to report on, you hack. You think people in California don't know how hard it is to pick strawberries?

More at the link.

#Boston Jihad Bombers Planned July 4th Bombings

They were contemplating suicide bombings as well. I guess the 72 virgins weren't that appealing, considering all the worldly pleasures they enjoyed right here in the good ole U.S. of A. Besides, it's hard to break that welfare dependency. They just couldn't let go.

A great piece at the New York Times, "Boston Plotters Said to Initially Target July 4 for Attack."

They built the bombs faster than they expected so they moved up the date of the attack to Patriot's Day. And the probe continues of the elder brother's trip to Chechnya last year.

And more at the Wall Street Journal, "Boston Suspects Inspired by Cleric." They were inspired by watching Anwar al-Alawki's death to America videos? Nah. That's gotta be right-wing disinformation. It's just gotta be!

There's going to be lots more devastating revelations on this story. Was Tamerlan's widow Katherine Russell an accomplice? She's clammed up since first cooperating with authorities, and now you've got the indictments of the three pals of the younger brother. Who else is out there undiscovered in the wings?

Give me your tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free!

Michelle Malkin Schools Juan Williams on Violent Left-Wing Terrorists Ensconsed in America's Elite Universities

Good stuff:

Jason Collins: The Gay Black Sandra Fluke

From AoSQHQ's must-read essay on the dismissal of idiot Howard Kurtz from the Daily Beast, "Howard Kurtz Screws Up Yet Again, But This Time He's Fired, Because He Offended the Left's Gay Lobby":

There's no doubt, none at all, that Howie Kurtz is a bit of an idiot and says lots of foolish things.

But what makes this time any different? Ah, well it's because this time he offended the left's current top-banana on the Victimization/PC Protection pyramid.

What did he say? Oh, something stupid and dumb and about Jason Collins. Specifically-- he claimed that Jason Collins left something big out of his Sports Illustrated confessional about being gay.

Specifically, Kurtz alleged that Collins' Sports Illustrated confessional failed to disclose that...

"He was engaged. To be married. To a woman."
Now, I would never normally link the Huffington Post, but this is a real zinger so I will. Below, an excerpt from the SI piece -- early in it, I believe -- in which Collins completely omits mentioning his previous engagement to a woman, except for all the times he mentions it.

Clearly Kurtz erred, and rather dumbly. But he does this a lot, and no one's had a problem with it in the past.

Why now?

I think it's pretty obvious -- Jason Collins is now the Gay Black Sandra Fluke, and therefore now An Hero, and the Left protects its heroes.

More here.

Also at Atlhouse, "'Howard Kurtz leaves Daily Beast following Jason Collins column mistake'."

Camarillo Springs Fire Reaches Pacific Coast Highway in Ventura County

This has been the big story on local news today. It's hot weather with Santa Ana conditions.

At the Los Angeles Times, "California wildfires: Springs fire reaches PCH in Ventura County."

More at KABC-TV Los Angeles, "Camarillo fire at 8K acres, new evacs ordered."

Reports on the Death of Blogs Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

I've been having a lengthy email exchange with David Swindle and Michael van der Galiën regarding my post the other day, "The Death of Collaboration in the Independent Blogosphere." David's the associate editor at PJ Media and Michael's a new media professional with longtime experience in the conservative blogosphere.

My essay argued that "We've still got lots of independent bloggers out there doing what the mainstream press refuses to do." I recognized the increasing professionalization of the conservatives 'sphere but indicated that blogs will continue to play the key role in alternative media and government accountability going forward. Here's how David responded:

I think there's a big intellectual divide between "bloggers" and "new media professionals." Bloggers are just hung up on the medium of blogging (a medium that is now more than 15 years old and pretty ancient.) New media professionals are people who make their living by exploring and developing new forms of media. I am a partisan of the latter temperament. Blogging is just a means to an end. It shouldn't be an end in and of itself which it is for the kinds of "independent" bloggers who are complaining now about how nobody wants to work with them and link to them anymore. (Not talking about you with that comment, Donald.) New Media professionals should be more interested in finding and developing the next media formats (right now I'm interested in e-books and apps). Preserving the blogosphere as it was in 2002 in like wanting to preserve the newspaper as a format. Time to move on to the next medium and stop fetishizing blogs and "the blogosphere."

I agreed with David for the most post, although I suggested that for all the talk of these "new media professionals" it continues to be bloggers who're among the most well-known alternative media personalities shaping the direction of traditional news reporting. Folks like Michelle Malkin, Ace of Spades HQ, and the Power Line crew are prominent examples. David and I went around a bit more then Michael chimed in:

Listen folks, there are hobbyists - people who run blogs - and there are professionals - people who work for new media organisations. The difference between all too often isn't passion, but strategy, approach, and the time they're taking for it.

As for 'blogging' as in blogging, that's - professionally - more or less dead. It's about generating news yourself, offering different kinds of 'news' (sport, culture, political, etc.), in different ways (Internet TV, written, short written, long written, apps, mobile, normal on the Net, podcasts).

If you're making a living off of this - as I do, and David does - it isn't 'blogging' anymore, it's being a member of the new media.

We all went around for a number of iterations after that. David and Michael pressed further on the "new media professionals" while I continued to hammer the vitality of blogs as watchdogs on the mainstream press.

I don't make a lot of money so I resist the "new media professional title." still, I've been blogging at a number of top conservative blogs for awhile and continue to publish occasionally at PJ Media. When Rick Moran first recruited me to PJ Media in 2008 he mentioned that I was, like him, one of the last "long form bloggers," so even at that time, 5 years ago, the nature of the form was changing.

Change is the theme Andrew "RAWMUSCLEGLUTES" Sullivan stressed in a blog post on the topic earlier this week, "The Death of Blogs? or of Magazines?":

Of course, blogs have evolved – and this one clearly has from its early days. What began as one person being mean to Maureen Dowd around 12.30 am every night is now an organism in which my colleagues and I try to construct both a personal and yet also diverse conversation in real time. But that doesn’t mean the individual blogger – small or large – is disappearing. Our entire model requires, as it did from the get-go, links to other sites and blogs – and we have not detected a shortage.

One reason we have had to grow and evolve – and this started as far back as 2003 – is that the web conversation has grown exponentially since this blog started (when Bill Clinton was president). Yes, many bloggers now get employed by more general sites, or move on to more complex forms (think of Nate Silver, a lone blogger when the Dish first championed his work and now part of an informational eco-system). But every page on the web is equally accessible as every other page. Blogs will never die – but they might form a smaller part of a much larger online eco-system of discourse.

My own view is that one particular form of journalism is actually dying because of this technological shift – and it’s magazines, not blogs. When every page in a magazine can be detached from the others, when readers rarely absorb a coherent assemblage of writers in a bound paper publication, but pick and choose whom to read online where individual stories and posts overwhelm any single collective form of content, the magazine as we have long known it is effectively over.

There's more at the link.

Sullivan is of course one of the premiere (ancient) bloggers who started fifteen years ago. He concludes by arguing that blogs have now evolved into one patch of a larger patchwork of digital forms that constitute a larger presence of web content.

For me, It's been seven years with blogs and I'll keep plugging away like a dinosaur, as long as folks are interested enough to read and link what I have to say.

And returning back to the original theme of collaborative blogging, here's TrogloPundit, "In the spirit of keeping all this blog collaboration going, I shall now coin a new word..."

I'll have more later...

Hat tip to Mark Twain on the title, "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

Occupy Wall Street May Day 2013

From Charles C. Cooke, at National Review, "Occupy Wall Street: 2013 Edition."

Cooke says "I found a very different group than I saw in 2011. My report is here."

Well, the Occupy goons were pretty much always warmed over communists, but hey, I need to get back out on the streets!

Anyway FWIW, at the New York Times, "Occupy Movement's Changing Focus Causes Rift."

RELATED: At the Seattle Times, "May Day of peaceful protests grows rowdier at night." Isn't it always Seattle? And on Twitter, "#WaMayDay."

'We've forgotten what abortion really is...'

From Ed Morrissey, at Hot Air, "Video: “We’ve forgotten what abortion really is”":

Lila Rose gets straight to the heart of why the media didn’t want to cover the Gosnell trial — and why they won’t want to cover what happens in other late-term abortion clinics, either. They don’t want to see the brutality or the inhumanity, and the culture sanitizes the horror of abortion in order to keep public opinion from turning against it. These films, and the Gosnell trial, strip the façade away...

Angry White Dude Gets Angry at Geico's Eddie Money Commercial

I'm re-posting the old Midnight Special segment of "Two Tickets to Paradise."

I'm sure AWD would rather remember old Eddie this way

See: "GEICO EDDIE MONEY COMMERCIAL – WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!"

Smokin' Mila Kunis Named FHM's 'Sexiest Woman in the World'

Well, she's definitely a looker.

At London's Daily Mail, "'She's the perfect girlfriend': Mila Kunis voted no. 1 on FHM's 100 Sexiest Women In The World list."

And at the source, "FHM 100 Sexiest Women In The World 2013: The full list."

Kelly Brooks checks in at #5. Yes!

Helen Flanagan takes the #3 spot and is Britain's top ranked sexy woman. More at Daily Mail, "So that's why! Helen Flanagan shows off her best assets in lingerie shoot to become Britain's sexiest woman."

Reports of al-Qaeda's Imminent Defeat Are Greatly Exaggerated

A great editorial, at the Wall Street Journal, "The al Qaeda Franchise Threat":

President Obama has preferred disengagement from the Middle East and South Asia to focus on "nation-building at home." One result is Middle East instability and the al Qaeda resurgence. To address these emerging problems, the Administration first needs to acknowledge them. The tide of war, to correct President Obama's other favorite line, isn't receding. It's rising.

RTWT.

Rick Perlstein, Call Your Publisher

Perlstein is the go-to author for idiot progressives attacking the GOP's alleged "racism" in the post-1968 era. It's a bunch of hokum, of course. The Democrats by that time had a 100 years of the most vile eliminationist white supremacy under their hats, and the left is nearly as racist today as it was back in its Jim Crow heyday.  But it's especially good to see political science research showing empirically that progressives like Perlstein are charlatans and liars. See Steven Hayward, at Power Line, "THE SOUTHERN STRATEGY” DEBUNKED AGAIN":

Liberals will never tire of calling conservatives racist, because it’s always a show-stopper, a way of cutting off further debate on any issue where a liberal is likely to lose. So don’t expect it to go away any time soon. (Though why Republicans aren’t better at “punching back twice as hard,” e.g., by pointing out the permanent racist legacy of the Democratic Party, noting the vote tally for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, etc., is beyond me. Another example of Republican rhetorical incompetence.)

Gerard Alexander began a thorough debunking of this theme in the Claremont Review of Books several years ago (“The Myth of the Racist Republicans“), and Sean Trende continues the job with a fine column today on RealClearPolitics, “Southern Whites’ Shift to GOP Predates the ’60s.” It’s worth reading the whole thing...

More at the link.

Hat Tip: Instapundit.

And remember, progressives are the biggest racists.

Perlstein's book is here, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America.

Three More Suspects in Custody in Boston Bombing

Interesting.

At Legal Insurrection, "Boston Police: 3 more suspects taken into custody in Boston Marathon Bombing."

Updates on developments later today...

'Obama Channels Clinton’s Worst Day in Office...'

'...Raises Doubts About Relevancy,' from Ron Fournier, at National Journal, on Monday:

A president is in trouble when he’s forced to defend his relevancy, as Bill Clinton did 18 years ago, or to quote Mark Twain, as Barack Obama did Tuesday. “Rumors of my demise,” he said at a news conference, “may be a little exaggerated at this point.”

Not wrong--just “exaggerated.” Not forever--just “at this point.”

Parsing aside, Obama channeled Clinton’s April 18, 1995, news conference by projecting a sense of helplessness--or even haplessness--against forces seemingly out of a president’s control.

For Clinton, it was ascendant House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the GOP's takeover of Congress five months prior, a vote of no-confidence for the first-term Democratic president. “The president is relevant here,” Clinton insisted in the East Room.

For Obama, his nemesis is a far-less charismatic and influential House Speaker John Boehner, as well as the intense weight of structural problems that favor Washington gridlock. These include the Senate filibuster, hyper-partisan House districts, polarized media outlets, and a fast-changing electorate that is sorting itself in political tribes.

“So my question to you,” ABC reporter Jonathan Karl asked Obama, “is do you still have the juice to get the rest of your agenda through Congress?”

Ouch. “Well, if you put it that way, Jonathan,” Obama quipped, “maybe I should just pack up and go home. Golly.” Then he quoted the humorist Twain, who famously denied his death.

More at that top link.

The Jonathan Karl query is here.

At the clip at top, Dear Leader heads back to the podium to take a question on Jason Collins, the "heroic" NBA star who came out this week. Twitchy just rips President Barebacker on that: "President calls Jason Collins, praises his courage; Slain heroes overlooked," and "Greatest orator ever? Obama says gay NBA player Jason Collins ‘can bang with Shaq’ [video]."

Freedom, Privacy, and Boston

We've lost a lot of our privacy with instant dissemination of the terror.

From Nicole Gelinas, at City Journal:

Much has been made, since the Boston Marathon bombings, of how social media have transformed policing and counterterror techniques. A less-remarked aspect of social networks is the way they have changed how individuals respond to disasters, whether man-made or natural. In particular, some who think nothing of snapping and instantly posting photos of themselves around the clock also have no compunction about snapping and instantly posting photos of the view outside their office windows or across the street during an attack or disaster. What they’re viewing and enabling others to view may be not only gruesome but also intensely personal—images of people gravely wounded or dying. Do people have the right to endure their suffering in private?

A decade ago, this problem didn’t exist. On September 11, digital cameras were still new, and uploading photos was cumbersome. Today, of course, everybody has a digital camera embedded in his phone, and it takes just seconds to send pictures around the world. Minutes after the Boston bombing, before cable news and newspapers had begun reporting it and before emergency responders had “cleared the scene,” as the euphemism goes, social-media users were already redistributing graphic photos of blood-soaked sidewalks still populated by victims with horrific injuries...

Continue reading.

Are there more abortion doctors like Kermit Gosnell?

And do we want to know?

From Melinda Henneberger, at the Washington Post.

BONUS: From Kirsten Powers, at USA Today, "Gosnell's abortion atrocities no 'aberration'."

Saudi Arabia Warned About Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2012

At London's Daily Mail, "Saudi official: Kingdom 'warned the United States IN WRITING about Boston Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2012 and rejected his application for an entry visa to visit Mecca in 2011'."

Boeing's Queen of the Skies Nears End of the Road

It was the glamorous jumbo jet of my childhood, now fading away.

At the Wall Street Journal, "How the Boeing 747 Got Left Behind: Boeing to Launch New Model as Drop in Air-Cargo Business Squeezes Its 747 Jet":

A drop in the global air-cargo business is hastening the decline of the 747 jumbo jet just as Boeing Co. is preparing to launch a new plane that could ultimately replace it.

With its distinctive hump and four big engines, the 747, nicknamed "the queen of the skies," has been a symbol of jet travel for much of the past four decades. But in recent years, as airlines have chosen to fly passengers in more fuel-efficient, two-engine planes, the 747 has increasingly become an aviation packhorse. Most new 747 orders have involved freight carriers, which have been weighed down by two consecutive years of recession in global air cargo.

Earlier this month, Boeing said it would cut production of the 747-8, its newest model, to 1.75 airplanes a month in 2014 from two a month now because of weaker demand for large passenger and freighter airplanes.

Since it launched the 747-8 passenger model in 2006 with a longer body and new engines in hopes of rekindling sales, Boeing has sold just 31 of them to airlines, plus another nine to VIP users. "It's a market that hasn't delivered like we'd anticipated," Randy Tinseth, Boeing's vice president of marketing, says. Meanwhile, the company has sold 70 freighter versions.

Boeing would like to keep producing 747s even as it lays plans for a new model of its twin-engine 777, which could eventually supplant the older plane. As early as this month, the Chicago company is expected to seek permission from its board to formally start selling new stretched models of the 777, dubbed the 777X, with additional lucrative under-cabin cargo space and the 747's 16-hour range.

The new 777X, often dubbed a "mini-jumbo," arriving in 2019 or 2020, will seat around 35 more passengers and fly thousands of miles farther than the first "jumbo" 747 flown by Pan American Airways in 1970.

Boeing Chief Executive Jim McNerney says he doesn't "see the 777X introduction cannibalizing" the 747-8 significantly because the jets are different sizes. But analysts believe the 777X will be attractive to buyers who want many of the same capabilities with more fuel efficiency.

Launched on commercial service in 1970, the 747 was widely credited with making global travel more accessible. At the time Boeing estimated that the 747 halved the cost to airlines of flying a single passenger, compared with its smaller 707. Sales boomed, with Boeing receiving more than 1,400 orders between the 747's launch in 1966 and 2005.

But economic volatility and swinging oil prices made big bets on big aircraft with four engines seem increasingly risky. Sales surged for big twin-engine jets that could fly just as far. Boeing introduced the twin-engine 777 in 1995 and added subsequent models that stretched the jet's capacity and range, cutting into 747 demand.

More at that top link.

PREVIOUSLY: "Dude Recreates '70's Pan-Am 747 in City of Industry Warehouse."

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Kristen Nicole Playmate Miss May 2013

She's lovely:

Photos here, and SFW, "Kristen Nicole - Miss May 2013."

'It takes a big man to admit when he was wrong, and Alex Seitz-Wald is a very, very small man...'

OMG, this is hilarious!

At Pamela's, "SALON TOOL ALEX SEITZ-WALD: GELLER STILL WRONG EVEN THOUGH BOSTON BOMBING WAS JIHAD."

Read it all at the link.

It's like I was saying earlier, the progressive trolls are relentless: "Salon's Geller-Obsessives Shill for Islamic Supremacy."

ZoNation: Left-Wing Ghouls and the Kermit #Gosnell Trial

"The MSM is still keeping quiet on the Kermit Gosnell abortion trial. So why is the left keeping mum on a story tailor made for prime time coverage?"

Via Theo Spark:

The left's contortion's on #Gosnell are freakin' abominable. Ed Kilgore almost knocked my socks off the other day, at the Washington Monthly, "More Phony Outrage." The ghoul argues that pro-life conservatives "don’t really care about late-term abortions other than as a lever to move public opinion away from legalized abortion generally." Someone should vacuum out that dude's brain. Gawd, what a sick f-ker.

Virgin Galactic Successful Test Flight

At Telegraph UK, "Sir Richard Branson watches Virgin Galactic spaceship's first rocket test."

Two-Year-Old Girl Gets Life-Saving Trachea Transplant Made From Her Own Stem Cells

An amazing story at today's New York Times, "Groundbreaking Surgery for Girl Born Without Windpipe":

PEORIA, Ill. — Using plastic fibers and human cells, doctors have built and implanted a windpipe in a 2 ½-year-old girl — the youngest person ever to receive a bioengineered organ.

The surgery, which took place on April 9 here at Children’s Hospital of Illinois and will be formally announced Tuesday, is only the sixth of its kind and the first to be performed in the United States. It was approved by the Food and Drug Administration under rules that allow experimental procedures when otherwise the patient has little hope of survival.

Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, a specialist in the field of regenerative medicine who developed the windpipe and led the complex nine-hour operation, said the treatment of the Korean-Canadian toddler, Hannah Warren, made him realize that this approach to building organs may work best with children, by harnessing their natural ability to grow and heal.

“Hannah’s transplant has completely changed my thinking about regenerative medicine,” said Dr. Macchiarini, a surgeon at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. He said he would like to proceed with a clinical trial in the United States, something that critics of his approach have called for.

Hannah was born without a windpipe, or trachea — an extremely rare condition that is eventually fatal in 99 percent of cases — and had lived since birth in a newborn intensive care unit in a Korean hospital, breathing through a tube inserted in her mouth. Because of other developmental problems, she cannot eat normally and cannot speak.

Nearly three weeks after the surgery, the girl is acting playfully with her doctors and nurses, at one point smiling and waving goodbye to a group of visitors. Dr. Mark Holterman, a pediatric surgeon at the hospital, said that Hannah was breathing largely on her own, although through a hole in her neck, not through her mouth yet. “She’s doing well,” he said. “She had some complications from the surgery, but the trachea itself is doing great.”

Dr. Macchiarini described a look of befuddlement on the child’s face when she realized that the mouth tube was gone and she could put her lips together for the first time. “It was beautiful,” he said.

The goal of regenerative medicine, or tissue engineering, is to create or regrow tissues and organs to ease transplant shortages or treat conditions that do not have an effective cure. After years of scant progress, tissue engineers have begun to make advances as they have gained a better understanding of the role that stem cells — basic cells that can become tissue-specific ones — play in signaling the body to grow and repair itself...

To make Hannah’s windpipe, Dr. Macchiarini’s team made a half-inch diameter tube out of plastic fibers, bathed it in a solution containing stem cells taken from the child’s bone marrow and incubated it in a shoebox-size device called a bioreactor.

Doctors are not sure exactly what happens after implantation, but think that the stem cells signal the body to send other cells to the windpipe, which then sort out so the appropriate tissues grow on the inside and outside of the tube. Because the windpipe uses only the child’s own cells, there is no need for drugs to suppress the patient’s immune system to avoid rejection of the implant.

Continue reading.

Kelly Andrews at Egotastic!

A lovely British glamour model out of Liverpool.

See: "Kelly Andrews White Lace Body Suit Striptease."

Seven Dead in Horrific Cargo Plane Crash in Afghanistan

At London's Daily Mail, "The horrific moment cargo plane dropped out of the sky before crashing in fireball - killing seven Americans in Afghanistan."

Fox News Runs Branco Cartoon From Legal Insurrection

Kudos to William Jacobson and A.F. Branco, "Branco’s Chris Matthews cartoon on Fox News":

And that Fox News segment is right here: "Boston Bombings Coverage - Media Credibility Hurt By Errors? - Wake Up America!"

The Death of Collaboration in the Independent Blogosphere

Robert Stacy McCain published an interesting post the other day, "Where Were You in 2002?"

He's asking about where folks were 11 years ago when the independent blogosphere was the vital forum for news reporting and analysis independent of the mainstream media. 2002's a long time ago. I don't think I was reading blogs intentionally at that point. It was still early in my career at LBCC and I was focused mostly on teaching and  research in political science. It was Dan Drezner's 2004 blogging piece in Foreign Policy that turned me on to the blogosphere and there's been no turning back (see, "Web of Influence"). At that time I was reading Drezner and Virginia Postrel. A little later Althouse became my favorite blog, and by 2006 I decided to get my blogging feet wet. American Power went live in October 2007. I've had a good run so far and I expect to be plugging away until I get bored or the progressives are successful in getting me fired. (Hell, that wouldn't stop me anyway, so WTF).

I've never considered myself an influential blogger (although my inbox, filled with all kinds of free books and promotions from publishers and blog newbies, often tells me otherwise). It was during the 2007 GOP primaries when I got really serious about having an impact and in 2008, when John McCain won the Republican nomination, I felt some vindication for my efforts. One result was that I got picked up by RealClearPolitics later that year. But honestly, I've had more fun these last few years following The Other McCain's advice on "How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog in Less Than a Year." Sure, the babe blogging around here's become a major pastime, but actually, the idea of building community through "reciprocal linkage" has been one of the more important elements of my program. Folks need to exercise the "The Full Metal Jacket Reach-Around":

Reciprocal linkage is the essential lubricant that makes the blogosphere purr with contentment. If somebody's throwing you traffic, you should either (a) give them a link-back update, or at a minimum (b) keep them in mind for future linkage. Because you don't want to end up on the wrong end of a kharmic unbalance in the 'sphere, where you're always taking and never giving.

As blogging has become almost exclusively professionalized in the last few years, the notion of "The Full Metal Jacket Reach-Around" seems kind of quaint. But don't be fooled. We've still got lots of independent bloggers out there doing what the mainstream press refuses to do. For example, Robert mentions Professor William Jacobson's Legal Insurrection as a model of high-impact professional blogging to which we should all aspire. And of course Glenn Reynolds continues to plug away at Instapundit, resisting the lucrative lure of a huge corporate sponsor (even more lucrative, that is, as Glenn's already got great model of monetization). There are lots more examples --- and apologies to some of the great new blogs, like Rebel Pundit and SOOPER Mexican, for not highlighting their work more often --- although it's clear there are increasing sustainability issues for smaller "mom and pop" blogging outfits. Here's how Robert describes the problem at The Other McCain:

This network/community concept seems to have been lost by (or, more likely, was never known to) newer arrivals in the ‘sphere. The idea that each of us is contributing to a common project is not just some kind of “Stone Soup” idealism, but is in fact the only way to build any genuinely meaningful alternative to that pathetic exercise in groupthink we call the Mainstream Media. Bloggers who don’t help build the alternative can complain about the MSM “borg” all they want; they aren’t really making a difference. There are two ways in which bloggers actually help sabotage the blogosphere:

Turn your blog into a series of lectures...

Never link another blogger. It’s weird that some bloggers would rather link a story in the New York Times or the Washington Post than to link a fellow blogger. Why this is, I don’t know. Sometimes it seems like everybody has the same idea: Grab an MSM headline off Drudge, link it, include a brief blockquote and add some political snark. Not only does this effectively surrender content control to Drudge — so that bloggers are merely replicating the headline selection there — but nobody’s snark ever goes beyond their own readership, because no blogger ever quotes another blogger.

Be sure to read the rest for additional insight.

Those bloggers who "never link another blogger" are the kinds I generally avoid. Sure, few bloggers can worry about linking all their buddies all the time, but throwing some hits to your friends once in a while is the friendly thing to do, especially when you've been a mensch yourself, linking and forwarding your posts with breaking news and so forth. Which is why I was surprised yesterday at popular pro-life blogger Jill Stanek. I woke up about 4:00am and wrote a post on WND's piece on Planned Parenthood's grotesque sex education promotions ("Sex-ed cartoons 'too graphic' for N.Y. Times." I later tweeted it to Robert and cc'd Jill:

.@rsmccain Planned Parenthood Sex Education Graphics Too Grisly for the New York Times is.gd/HBetXJ @jillstanek @directorblue
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) April 29, 2013

Then checking back on Twitter about an hour later I see Jill in my timeline with a new blog post:

Ew, gross! @nytimes,@washingtonpost reject THIS @amerlifeleague ad of Planned Parenthood sex ed images jillstanek.com/?p=122100
— Jill Stanek (@JillStanek) April 29, 2013

Jill's post is time-stamped at 4:14pm in the afternoon, 1:14pm Pacific time, 50 minutes after I tweeted my link to her. Now, perhaps Jill had her entry all queued up or was already familiar with WND's reporting. I don't know. I can say that Jill isn't a big proponent of the Full Metal Reach Around community-building strategy. I've sent her lots of stuff in the past and have been linked perhaps a couple of times at her blog. I don't know. Perhaps she wanted to have this Planned Parenthood "scoop" all to herself, with no hat tip to WND, much less myself. That's how some bloggers roll. It's not the best way to build community, in any case.

Again, maybe Jill got that post going without ever seeing my tweet. But if it were me, I'd probably have replied on Twitter in the first place and then posted a hat tip if I blogged it. Your mileage may vary.

Either way, I couldn't help thinking that yesterday was one good example of the lack of collaboration in the blogosphere. And it's not an insignificant issue. Now more than ever American democracy needs alternative voices. American politics needs citizens to upend the establishment narrative. People frankly need to build on the social media revolution to bring greater accountability to government at at time when the press has abdicated its historic role as freedom's watchdog. Bloggers are upsetting and will continue to upset the accepted memes and force big media to report real news that's important to real Americans. Along with other forms of citizens' social media, blogs promote accountability and deliberation. William Jacobson had something on that yesterday, "If not for prior #Gosnell Twitter campaign, would MSM be covering Bronx and DC revelations?"

But "social" means you can't do it alone. The best of the top bloggers recognize the vital role newbies play in keeping the 'sphere an essential place for alternative reporting. And new bloggers entering the arena might heed the warnings of The Other McCain (and others) on the dangers of the death of collaboration in the independent blogosphere.

Review of the Rolling Stones at Echo Park Nightclub in Hollywood

I mentioned the surprise gig earlier.

Randall Roberts has a review at the Los Angeles Times, "Rolling Stones invade Echo Park, perform an hour of classics":

How was the gig? How the hell do you think it was?

It was the Stones in a little club, and for most in attendance, a dream come true.

That's how it was.

More here, a raw video of "Brown Sugar" from the show.

Blogger for CBS Houston Attacks 'Chunky' NBA Cheerleader Kelsey Williams

Chunky?

She's pretty smokin' actually.

But see PuffHo, "NBA Cheerleader 'Too Chunky'? CBS Houston Blogger Sparks Outrage For Questioning Kelsey Williams' Figure (PHOTO)," and at International Business Times, "Is Kelsey Williams Fat? Claire Crawford Blogs NBA Cheerleader Is ‘Too Chunky’ to Wear Oklahoma City Thunder Uniform."

Helen Mirren Named Best Actress at Olivier Awards 2013

At the Independent UK, "Olivier Awards 2013: Dame Helen Mirren rules the West End as she wins for another portrayal of the Queen - but Curious Incident team are top dog."

RELATED: At the Wrap, "'RED 2' Trailer: Helen Mirren at Her Deadliest (Video)."

I'm looking forward to that.

Benghazi Report Revives Troubling Questions

From Michael Barone, at RCP:

"What difference, at this point, does it make?"

That was former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's angry response to a question about the State Department's account of the attack on the Benghazi consulate where Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were murdered on Sept. 11, 2012.

Her response was cheered by leftist commentators on MSNBC. Righteous indignation is so attractive.

But of course it makes a difference. Hillary Clinton is leading in polls for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination and general election. It's always legitimate to examine the performance of a front-runner for the presidency. And of the president himself.

You can find such an examination in the Interim Progress Report that five House Republican committee chairmen released last Wednesday.

Democrats complain that this is a partisan effort. Sure, but Democrats are free to present their own view of the facts. My sense is that they would rather squelch critical examination of Benghazi and the Obama administration's response, as they did with the help of most of the press during the 2012 presidential campaign.

No doubt.

There's more at that top link.

PREVIOUSLY: "Obama Administration Threatened Whistleblowers on Benghazi (VIDEO)."

Fabulous Claudia Romani Bikini Hotness

Here's some lovely bikini blogging for the evening, at London's Dailly Mail, "Did you forget something? Italian model Claudia Romani nips out for a walk in Miami wearing a tiny black bikini."

Obama Administration Threatened Whistleblowers on Benghazi (VIDEO)

New explosive allegations out tonight.

At Greta Wire, "THREATS AGAINST BENGHAZI WHISTLEBLOWERS ALLEGED":

At least four career officials at the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency have retained lawyers, or are in the process of doing so, as they prepare to provide sensitive information about the Benghazi attacks to Congress, Fox News has learned.

Victoria Toensing, a former Justice Department official and Republican counsel to the Senate intelligence committee, is now representing one of the State Department employees. She told Fox News her client and some of the others, who consider themselves whistleblowers, have been threatened by unnamed Obama administration officials.

“I’m not talking generally, I’m talking specifically about Benghazi – that people have been threatened,” Toensing said in an interview Monday. “And not just the State Department. People have been threatened at the CIA.”

Toensing declined to name her client. She also refused to say whether the individual was on the ground in Benghazi on the night of September 11, 2012, when terrorist attacks on two U.S. installations in the Libyan city killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens.

However, Toensing disclosed that her client has pertinent information on all three time periods investigators consider relevant to the attacks: the months that led up to September 11, when pleas by the ambassador and his staff for enhanced security in Benghazi were mostly rejected by senior officers at the State Department; the eight-hour time frame in which the attacks unfolded; and the eight-day period that followed the attacks, when Obama administration officials falsely described them as the result of a spontaneous protest over a video.

Continue reading.

Also at Newsmax, "Administration Blocking Benghazi Whistleblowers."

Tsarnaevs' 'Troubled Trail' Gets More Objective Treatment at the Los Angeles Times

Following up from yesterday's report, "Because Frustrated Boxing Aspirations Are So Horrible That Murdering Americans in Jihad Bombings is Totally Understandable, or Something."

Here's the front-page story at yesterday's Los Angeles Times, which eschews the heavy causal implications employed by the New York Times, "The Tsarnaev brothers' troubled trail to Boston":

Anzor Tsarnaev was tough, a championship boxer back home, and he wanted his oldest boy to be tough too.

Rain or shine, like a scene from "Rocky," the wiry Chechen immigrant would ride his bicycle as his son Tamerlan jogged to a Boston-area boxing gym, pushing him to run faster, to punch harder.

"He was his trainer, basically," said Joe Timko, Anzor's supervisor at Webster Auto Body, a corner repair shop in Somerville. "And he was an old Russian soldier. He'd make him run for miles."

Armed with a good left jab and powerful right, "Tam," as friends called him, climbed the ranks in regional tournaments and dreamed of joining the U.S. Olympic boxing team. At home, a crowded third-floor walk-up, he showed off by doing chin-ups outside. At night, he played the piano and accordion.

But by 2009, Tamerlan's life abruptly changed course. He told his parents that "the Koran prohibits beating people in the face." He grew a beard, began to pray more than five times a day, dropped out of college and gave up stylish leather pants for sweat pants. He argued with friends over politics, picked a fight at a pizza parlor, shouted at speakers at a mosque.

"He gave up drinking and smoking, and he even gave up boxing he loved so much," said his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva. Anzor Tsarnaev said he was brainwashed by religion.

His uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, asked why he didn't get a job.

"I'm doing bigger things," Tamerlan told him that August. "Now I'm with God. Now I'm happy."

Tamerlan, 26, died nine days ago after he and his 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar, were in a shootout with police. Dzhokhar is in custody at a medical facility for prisoners on federal charges that he planted one of the two nail-filled bombs that exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15.

Investigators are convinced both brothers carried out the plot, which killed three people and wounded more than 260. Yet it did not appear meticulously planned. Authorities say they planted homemade bombs in full view of surveillance cameras, and when their pictures emerged three days later, they tried to flee with no cash, no disguises and one firearm. Officials say that they killed an MIT police officer for his pistol but couldn't figure out how to unlock the holster.

Now investigators are struggling to understand: How did a cocky young athlete and his skateboard-riding brother, if authorities are correct, become do-it-yourself Islamist terrorists?

Read it all at the link.

It's an old-fashioned piece of journalism, although the difference between the New York Times' hack report yesterday is dramatic.

Planned Parenthood Sex Education Graphics Too Grisly for the New York Times

WND reports on the All American Life League's full-page advertisement that was rejected by the New York Times, "Sex-ed cartoons 'too graphic' for N.Y. Times."

Here's the ALL.org website. And the group's ad is at this PDF.

ALL.org says Planned Parenthood's materials are based on the Robie Harris book, "It's Perfectly Normal Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health."

Read all about it at the links. And I'll tell you, I couldn't even put that stuff up on an overhead in my classes at the college. But no doubt Planned Parenthood wants to put this stuff before your elementary school children. Way to go progs!

Because Frustrated Boxing Aspirations Are So Horrible That Murdering Americans in Jihad Bombings is Totally Understandable, or Something

Here's the front-page report at today's New York Times, "A Battered Dream, Then a Violent Path."

And some of the reactions:

* At Atlas Shrugs, "THE NEW YORK TIMES WAGES JIHAD ON THE TRUTH: BOSTON BOMBER WENT JIHAD BECAUSE THE GOLDEN GLOVES CHANGED THEIR RULES."

* At Blazing Cat Fur, "Shocka! New York Times Article Blames Boston Bombing On America."

* At Israel Matzav, "NY Times: 'If we'd let Tamerlan become a citizen despite being an Islamist and beating his girlfriend, he wouldn't have blown up the Marathon'."

You've got to read the piece. It's like seriously?

BOSTON — It was a blow the immigrant boxer could not withstand: after capturing his second consecutive title as the Golden Gloves heavyweight champion of New England in 2010, Tamerlan Anzorovich Tsarnaev, 23, was barred from the national Tournament of Champions because he was not a United States citizen.

The cocksure fighter, a flamboyant dresser partial to white fur and snakeskin, had been looking forward to redeeming the loss he suffered the previous year in the first round, when the judges awarded his opponent the decision, drawing boos from spectators who considered Mr. Tsarnaev dominant.

From one year to the next, though, the tournament rules had changed, disqualifying legal permanent residents — not only Mr. Tsarnaev, who was Soviet-born of Chechen and Dagestani heritage, but several other New England contenders, too. His aspirations frustrated, he dropped out of boxing competition entirely, and his life veered in a completely different direction.

Mr. Tsarnaev portrayed his quitting as a reflection of the sport’s incompatibility with his growing devotion to Islam. But as dozens of interviews with friends, acquaintances and relatives from Cambridge, Mass., to Dagestan showed, that devotion, and the suspected radicalization that accompanied it, was a path he followed most avidly only after his more secular dreams were dashed in 2010 and he was left adrift.

His trajectory eventually led the frustrated athlete and his loyal younger brother, Dzhokhar, to bomb one of the most famous athletic events in this country, killing three and wounding more than 200 at the Boston Marathon, the authorities say. They say it led Mr. Tsarnaev, his application for citizenship stalled, and his brother, a new citizen and a seemingly well-adjusted college student, to attack their American hometown on Patriots’ Day, April 15.

Hey, no doubt.

Who could miss the inevitable causal relationship! It must have been horrible. Horrible! Whaaaaa!!! Next time life throws up a roadblock I think I'll run out and buy a pressure cooker, some gun powder, a few boxes of carpenter's nails and some ball bearings. Now where are are my old copies of Inspire?

Progressives Launch Anti-Koch Brothers Jihad on Rumors of Tribune Company Sale to Billionaire Brothers

From Michael Calderone, at PuffHo, "Koch Brothers Media Strategy, Political Agenda Raise Concerns Over Tribune Ownership."

The LA Weekly first reported news of the Kochs' possible interest in Tribune newspapers last month. But a Sunday front-page New York Times story describing a strategy of using media to promote free-market policy ideas prompted Tribune journalists to speak out, both anonymously and on the record. Clarence Page, a liberal Chicago Tribune columnist who opposes Koch ownership, said the Kochs “seem to be coming in upfront with the idea of using a major news media as a vehicle for their political voice."

This week's outcry is reminiscent of Wall Street Journal staffers’ fears in May 2007 as Rupert Murdoch, the conservative mogul behind Fox News and the New York Post, bid for the august broadsheet parent-company, Dow Jones. While the Journal’s framing of political and policy stories sometimes tilts more to the right, journalists’ worst fears of right-wing tabloidization of the newsroom never came to pass. But the response to Koch ownership is different six years later in that journalists are now pining for Murdoch.

“Murdoch, for all his flaws, is a newspaper man. The Kochs are not,” a Chicago Tribune journalist told media writer Jim Romenesko. “I have no faith in their belief in the importance of a free and robust watchdog press. Frankly, such a press seems antithetical to their goals and harmful to their influence in the political process.”

Steven Pearlstein, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post writer, suggested Thursday that Tribune Co. staffers band together to oppose any sale to the Kochs.

Because nothing promotes robust debate and deliberation like leftist campaigns to squelch competing views.

More at the link.

And who knew? There's a whole website set up to fight the smears. See, "Mother Jones Gets It Wrong… Again."

Well, yeah, Mother Jones has been getting it wrong quite a bit lately, the idiots.

RELATED: At Neiman Labs, "The newsonomics of the Koch Brothers and the sales of U.S.' top metros."

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."

Also at Jill Stanek's, "Stanek Sunday funnies 4-28-13," and Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's SUNDAY FUNNIES."

And see Randy's Roundtable, "Friday Nite Funnies," and Theo Spark, "Cartoon Round Up..."

BONUS: At Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Hard Boiled."

CARTOON CREDIT: William Warren.

Jessica Davies for Loaded Magazine

Via Twitter:

Shot from my @loadedmag spread x twitter.com/_JessicaDavies…
— Jessica Davies (@_JessicaDavies) April 28, 2013

And at Egotastic!, "Jessica Davies for Loaded Magazine April 2013."

Celebrating Babies

At iOWNTHEWORLD.

Salon's Geller-Obsessives Shill for Islamic Supremacy

You know, it'd actually be hilarious if it wasn't so perverted.

The far-left trolls are relentless in their endless politics of personal destruction. Few folks know this better than Pamela Geller, but every time she shows them out as sh-t-eating dregs of humanity who have no business even commenting on the most grievous threats facing the nation.

At Atlas Shrugs "@Salon's Greatest Hits."

Pamela first smacks down the idiot Alex "Ping Pong Balls" Pareene, and then continues:

Has Salon learned anything? No. And then there is this: the obsessed troll, Alex Seitz-Wald, ran this headline after the Boston bombings.

Read the whole thing.

Again, this kind of epic left-wing juvenility would be mostly mock-worthy if it wasn't so fiendish. Leftists turn their disagreement with Pamela into a Manichean crusade to destroy her. And she has a lot of help from the legions of deranged progressive trolls prowling the Internet. People of decency and faith must continually redouble their efforts at beating back these scummy leftist enemies from within.

NYT's Mark Leibovich Slams White House Correspondents' Dinner

A great clip.

Leibovich hammers Washington's entitled celebrity class, which partied last night at the exclusive correspondents' dinner:

Leibovich discusses his forthcoming book, "This Town: The Way it Works in Suck Up City."

And see Politico, "'This Town': A Washington takedown."

Plus, at Twitchy, "Tweet like a girl: Sarah Palin blasts ‘DC assclowns’ at ‘pathetic’ Correspondents’ Dinner." (The responses to Palin on Twitter have been utterly pathological.) And at Memeorandum.

BONUS: At The Other McCain, "Have You Heard the One About the President Who Was a Miserable Failure?"

Robert Downey Jr. Sprained His Ankle Last Year While Filming the Finale of 'Iron Man 3' in Wilmington, N.C.

Iron Man's my favorite super hero, and my youngest boy's into the franchise, so it's a win-win situation. The film opens next Friday.

The Los Angeles Times reports on some of the challenges of finishing the production, "‘Iron Man 3′: Tony Stark lives by his wits in Marvel’s latest":

It was the moment that brought a $200-million blockbuster to a screeching halt.

Robert Downey Jr. stood frozen in pain after leaping onto a platform of an oil tanker on the Wilmington, N.C., soundstage where “Iron Man 3” was shooting its fiery finale last year. The actor had made ambitious wire jumps for stunt scenes before, but this time was different. The impact of the landing left him with an ankle sprain so severe he was unable to walk for seven weeks.

“I was feeling a little bit invincible, I guess,” Downey said last week while making the promotional rounds for “Iron Man 3,” which rockets into theaters on May 3. “I checked it out, and I was like, ‘Oh, we got this.’ And we didn’t have it.”

When it comes to playing Tony Stark, the genius-billionaire-playboy-inventor whom Downey first brought to the screen in 2008’s record-breaking “Iron Man,” the Oscar-nominated actor could be forgiven for overreaching.

More at the link.

Rolling Stones Play Surprise Gig at Hollywood's Echo Park Nightclub

One lady walked out of the show quipping, "Best bar band ever."

That would have been great.

At LAT, "Rolling Stones rock Echo Park club in surprise 'warm up' gig."

Bomb Couldn't Stop Bill Iffrig

An awesome column, from Chris Erskine, at the Los Angeles Times, "Bomb blast couldn't keep him down in Boston":

If anything proves that you will get up off the ground after being knocked down, it's getting up off the ground after being knocked down ... in an apparent terrorist attack, at the tender age of 78, hell's bells ringing in your ears.

If anyone should make us feel good about our better selves, it's Bill Iffrig, a carpenter by trade, but a man who made history with his feet in Boston, the town where America was born.

Fifteen wobbly steps to the finish. Fifteen wobbly steps to moving on.

More at the link.

Dennis Miller Just Tears Into #Boston Jihad Family on O'Reilly Factor

He calls out O'Reilly too.

An awesome segment, via Kathy Shaidle, "‘Obama Doesn’t Care About Dead Children’":

Oh My! Judge Jeanine Pirro Slams Psycho Jihad Mom Zubeidat Tsarnaeva

Oh my goodness the Judge is on fire!

Don't miss a word of this pissed off rant just destroying the hypocrisy, entitlement, and evil of Ms. Tsarnaeva:

Russia Had Wiretap on Suspect Tamerlan Plotting With Jihad Mom Zubeidat Tsarnaev

Man, jihad mom is into the hardcore terror program.

And Tamerlan was getting tips from the old lady.

At BCF, "Officials say Russian wiretap caught suspicious call between Boston Bomber & Mama Tsarnaev."

Added: At Pamela's, "RUSSIA HAD WIRETAP ON BOSTON SUSPECT, DISCUSSING JIHAD WITH MOM":

The FBI is whining now that they didn't get more info from the Russians? Sorry, fellas, do your own surveillance and investigative work. They are obviously getting their whining cues from Obama.

They are not allowed to be lazy when it comes to protecting American lives on American soil. O's priorities.

Genocide in Syria?

If it's genocide, the U.S. is obliged to act, says Anne Marie Slaughter, at the Washington Post, "Obama should remember Rwanda as he weighs action in Syria."

She's calling for humanitarian intervention, regime change frankly. It's a human rights argument. Leftists can get behind that kind of stuff. Just not intervention for raw realpolitik. That's criminal.

Related: See Michael Burleigh, at London's Daily Mail, "Horrific - but sending troops to Syria would be a catastrophe."

Jodie Gasson Saturday Rule 5

On Twitter:

Just updated my blog :) jodiegasson.com/tour xx twitter.com/Jodie_Gasson/s…
— Jodie Holly Gasson (@Jodie_Gasson) April 25, 2013

Bob Belvedere's got the babe-blogging roundup: "Rule 5 News: 27 April 2013 A.D."

Plus, bonus flashback: "Jodie Gasson Topless Pictures at Egotastic!"

Bagram Batman

This is cool!

At the Wall Street Journal, "A Superheroic Caped Crusade to Keep Troops Safe in Afghanistan: Bagram Batman TV Spots Educate Military; 'He Acts Just as Well as Adam West Did'":

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan—In fictional Gotham City, Batman protects citizens from crime. Here, at the largest U.S. base in Afghanistan, another Dark Knight is on a different kind of crusade: making sure soldiers carry their rifles and don't get run over at night.

"Bagram Batman" is the star of a recent series of public-service announcements broadcast to troops deployed in and around Afghanistan. The camouflaged superhero—and his catchphrase, "SWEAR TO ME!"— have become an unlikely hit, winning a cult following among soldiers, and going viral on the Internet.

"He acts just as well as Adam West did," marvels Maj. Crispin Burke, an Army officer and military blogger, referring to the star of the original Batman movie and TV series in the 1960s.

While his do-it-yourself costume—rubber Batman mask, black cape and reflective belt over combat fatigues—may look like a joke, Bagram Batman has a very real mission: reminding the troops about the do's and don'ts of life on a forward operating base like Bagram, a small American town planted in the middle of a war zone.

Continue reading.

Gwyneth Paltrow: 'I have to work out Monday through Friday for almost two hours, and it's a nightmare...'

Says Ms. Paltrow, at People Magazine, when asked about how great she looks and how "it's easy to see  why women could be intimidated by you now." The full interview is hard copy only. My wife's a subscriber, however. Here's one of the photos from the magazine:

More: "Gwyneth Paltrow: My Family Makes Me Feel Beautiful."

Plus, at CNN, "Paltrow: 'Most beautiful' title not true," and at US Weekly, "Gwyneth Paltrow Feels "Humiliated" After Ditching Underwear at Iron Man 3 Premiere."

I'll have more babe-blogging later!

PREVIOUSLY: "Gwyneth Paltrow — 'World's Most Beautiful Woman' — Shows Off Smokin' See-Through Mesh Panel Gown at Hollywood Premiere of 'Iron Man 3'."