Hot Shots Calendar Film Shoot

The lovely Hot Shots ladies.

Bruce Schneier on NSA and Snowden Documents

See, "NSA Spying Is Making Us Less Safe" (via Instapundit).

More at Schneier blog, "Senator Feinstein Admits the NSA Taps the Internet Backbone."

(I'm sure readers will recall my personal position on all of this. I think Snowden's a traitor, although that doesn't mean I'm unconcerned with the never ending growth of the Orwellian state. Security vs. liberty. There's a right balance. Getting there requires citizen participation, not treason, to beat back government secrecy.)

N.S.A. Examines Social Networks of U.S. Citizens

Big Brother keeps getting bigger.

At NYT, "N.S.A. Gathers Data on Social Connections of U.S. Citizens":

WASHINGTON — Since 2010, the National Security Agency has been exploiting its huge collections of data to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans’ social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews with officials.

The spy agency began allowing the analysis of phone call and e-mail logs in November 2010 to examine Americans’ networks of associations for foreign intelligence purposes after N.S.A. officials lifted restrictions on the practice, according to documents provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor.

The policy shift was intended to help the agency “discover and track” connections between intelligence targets overseas and people in the United States, according to an N.S.A. memorandum from January 2011. The agency was authorized to conduct “large-scale graph analysis on very large sets of communications metadata without having to check foreignness” of every e-mail address, phone number or other identifier, the document said. Because of concerns about infringing on the privacy of American citizens, the computer analysis of such data had previously been permitted only for foreigners.

The agency can augment the communications data with material from public, commercial and other sources, including bank codes, insurance information, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration rolls and GPS location information, as well as property records and unspecified tax data, according to the documents. They do not indicate any restrictions on the use of such “enrichment” data, and several former senior Obama administration officials said the agency drew on it for both Americans and foreigners.

N.S.A. officials declined to say how many Americans have been caught up in the effort, including people involved in no wrongdoing. The documents do not describe what has resulted from the scrutiny, which links phone numbers and e-mails in a “contact chain” tied directly or indirectly to a person or organization overseas that is of foreign intelligence interest.

The new disclosures add to the growing body of knowledge in recent months about the N.S.A.’s access to and use of private information concerning Americans, prompting lawmakers in Washington to call for reining in the agency and President Obama to order an examination of its surveillance policies. Almost everything about the agency’s operations is hidden, and the decision to revise the limits concerning Americans was made in secret, without review by the nation’s intelligence court or any public debate. As far back as 2006, a Justice Department memo warned of the potential for the “misuse” of such information without adequate safeguards.

Continue reading.

Victoria Arlen Not Paralyzed Enough

At the New York Times, "Swimmer Is Fighting a Ruling: She Is Not Disabled Enough":

EXETER, N.H. — Racked by sudden spasms in her shoulders, back and hands — the things she most relies upon to offset her paralyzed legs — the American swimmer Victoria Arlen failed to qualify for the final in the 100-meter breaststroke at the Paralympics last summer. But she persevered in the freestyle, going on to become one of the competition’s breakout stars. When Arlen returned home to New Hampshire with four medals and a world record, Exeter threw her a parade.

But Arlen’s glittering Paralympic career is now in jeopardy. This summer, she became enmeshed in a dispute with the International Paralympic Committee over an issue fundamental to her identity and to the complicated, often ambiguous science behind Paralympic competition: whether she is disabled enough even to qualify as a competitor.

Days before she was due to swim in the world championships in Montreal in August, she was ruled ineligible because, the committee declared, she had “failed to provide conclusive evidence of a permanent eligible impairment.”

Arlen, 19, spent three years in a vegetative state because of an autoimmune disorder and woke in 2010 with paralyzed legs and other symptoms of the neurological condition transverse myelitis. She said she was being punished because of her doctor’s belief that there was a chance that her condition might improve.

“Being penalized for maybe having a glimmer of hope of one day being able to walk again is beyond sad,” Arlen said in an interview at home. In a follow-up e-mail, she said: “To have trained so hard this past year and come so far only to be humiliated and targeted by the I.P.C. for reasons unknown baffles me.”

For its part, the committee says it had no choice. “According to the rules, athletes have to provide evidence of permanent impairment to compete in the Paralympics, and we do not have satisfactory confirmation of that,” said Peter Van de Vliet, the committee’s medical and scientific director.

A Difficult Task

Classifying disabled athletes — sorting them into classes according to the type and severity of their disabilities — is immensely complex, often subjective and among the toughest tasks the Paralympic committee faces. Some cases, likes those involving congenital limb deformity, are straightforward. But others, like neurological illnesses with fluctuating multiple symptoms like the one afflicting Arlen, are not.

“If you’re classifying an amputee, either they’ve got a leg or they haven’t, and in 12 months, they still won’t have a leg,” Van de Vliet said. “But when you get to these types of wheelchair athletes, it gets tricky.”

Officials are not suggesting that Arlen is lying, but the Paralympics is becoming increasingly competitive, and there are many cases of athletes exaggerating or faking disabilities. The committee is still haunted by the saga of Monique van der Vorst of the Netherlands, who won two silver medals in handcycling at the Beijing 2008 Paralympics. She was paralyzed when she competed, apparently having muscular dystrophy. But two years later, after 13 years in a wheelchair, she walked again. She was given a new diagnosis: conversion disorder, a psychiatric condition in which patients suffer inexplicable neurological symptoms.

The committee allowed van der Vorst to keep her medals, ruling that she had not deliberately misled them. But later it emerged that perhaps she had. Reports surfaced in which even van der Vorst said there had been times when she could stand and walk while competing as a Paralympian.

“What would be the reaction of competitors who had raced Victoria if, in a few years, she was able to walk?” Van de Vliet said.

The committee often reclassifies athletes and places them into different competition classes, depending on the severity of their impairments. It has declared athletes ineligible before, including some who have simply misinterpreted the rules. Recently, Van de Vliet said, a Jamaican competitor showed up at a competition with a note from his optician saying “this man has a visual impairment, but when he wears his glasses, everything’s fine.”

The committee sent him home. Van de Vliet said, “It was a particularly sad case.”

Arlen’s situation is different, in part because she is such a high-profile athlete. After the International Paralympic Committee ruled her ineligible, her case became a cause célèbre, with sympathetic reports on “Good Morning America” and other outlets. New Hampshire’s governor and two senators publicly criticized the committee’s ruling.

Photogenic, poised, articulate, bitterly disappointed, a television natural (she also models and works as a motivational speaker), Arlen makes a formidable opponent for the Paralympic committee. It is impossible to hear her story — about being a star child athlete who suddenly grew weaker and weaker and sicker and sicker until she became incapacitated; about her years in a vegetative state and her family’s search for medical answers; about how she woke and had to relearn to talk, read and eat; about how she resolved to be a Paralympic swimmer; about her triumph last summer — without feeling sympathetic.

“She was brought into the Paralympic movement by people who knew about it and told her she could be good at it, and she trained and did everything she was asked to do,” Arlen’s coach, John Ogden, said in an interview. “She has been emotionally scarred and traumatized by this. I am so disappointed in the Paralympic movement right now, I can’t even tell you.”

But it is hard to ignore the committee’s arguments that the matter is far from simple.

A bureaucratic clusterf-k.

Let the lady compete, for crying out loud. She aint' fakin'.

More at the link.

Single Head Shot Takes Out Two Syrian Rebels

At Blazing Cat Fur, "Not for the Squeamish."

'The Tide of War is Receding' — Well, Not So Much, Actually

A must-read leader, at the Economist, "The new face of terror":

A FEW months ago Barack Obama declared that al-Qaeda was “on the path to defeat”. Its surviving members, he said, were more concerned for their own safety than with plotting attacks on the West. Terrorist attacks of the future, he claimed, would resemble those of the 1990s—local rather than transnational and focused on “soft targets”. His overall message was that it was time to start winding down George Bush’s war against global terrorism.

Mr Obama might argue that the assault on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi by al-Qaeda’s Somali affiliate, the Shabab, was just the kind of thing he was talking about: lethal, shocking, but a long way from the United States. Yet the inconvenient truth is that, in the past 18 months, despite the relentless pummelling it has received and the defeats it has suffered, al-Qaeda and its jihadist allies have staged an extraordinary comeback. The terrorist network now holds sway over more territory and is recruiting more fighters than at any time in its 25-year history (see article). Mr Obama must reconsider.

Back from the dead

It all looked different two years ago. Even before the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, al-Qaeda’s central leadership, holed up near the Afghan border in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, was on the ropes, hollowed out by drone attacks and able to communicate with the rest of the network only with difficulty and at great risk. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), its most capable franchise as far as mounting attacks on the West is concerned, was being hit hard by drone strikes and harried by Yemeni troops. The Shabab was under similar pressure in Somalia, as Western-backed African Union forces chased them out of the main cities. Above all, the Arab spring had derailed al-Qaeda’s central claim that corrupt regimes supported by the West could be overthrown only through violence.

All those gains are now in question. The Shabab is recruiting more foreign fighters than ever (some of whom appear to have been involved in the attack on the Westgate). AQAP was responsible for the panic that led to the closure of 19 American embassies across the region and a global travel alert in early August. Meanwhile al-Qaeda’s core, anticipating the withdrawal of Western troops from Afghanistan after 2014, is already moving back into the country’s wild east.

Above all, the poisoning of the Arab spring has given al-Qaeda and its allies an unprecedented opening. The coup against a supposedly moderate Islamist elected government in Egypt has helped restore al-Qaeda’s ideological power. Weapons have flooded out of Libya and across the region, and the civil war in Syria has revived one of the network’s most violent and unruly offshoots, al-Qaeda in Iraq, now grandly renamed the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham.

The struggle to depose the Assad regime has acted as a magnet for thousands of would-be jihadists from all over the Muslim world and from Muslim communities in Europe and North America. The once largely moderate and secular Syrian Free Army has been progressively displaced by better-organised and better-funded jihadist groups that have direct links with al-Qaeda. Western intelligence estimates reckon such groups now represent as much as 80% of the effective rebel fighting force. Even if they fail to advance much from the territory they now hold in the north and east of the country, they might end up controlling a vast area that borders an ever more fragile-looking Iraq, where al-Qaeda is currently murdering up to 1,000 civilians a month. That is a terrifying prospect.

No more wishful thinking

How much should Western complacency be blamed for this stunning revival? Quite a bit. Mr Obama was too eager to cut and run from Iraq. He is at risk of repeating the mistake in Afghanistan. America has been over-reliant on drone strikes to “decapitate” al-Qaeda groups: the previous defence secretary, Leon Panetta, even foolishly talked of defeating the network by killing just 10-20 leaders in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. The general perception of America’s waning appetite for engagement in the Middle East, underlined by Mr Obama’s reluctance to support the moderate Syrian opposition in any useful way has been damaging as well.

A second question is how much of a threat a resurgent al-Qaeda now poses to the West. The recently popular notion that, give or take the odd home-grown “lone wolf”, today’s violent jihadists are really interested only in fighting local battles now looks mistaken. Some of the foreign fighters in Syria will be killed. Others will be happy to return to a quieter life in Europe or America. But a significant proportion will take their training, experience and contacts home, keen to use all three when the call comes, as it surely will. There is little doubt too that Westerners working or living in regions where jihadism is strong will be doing so at greater risk than ever. The final question is whether anything can be done to reverse the tide once again.

Continue reading.

Hacked and Pilfered iPads Expose Epic Folly of LAUSD's $1 Billion Technology Program

I didn't think too much of this at first, but as details of this epic idiocy emerge, it's increasingly difficult to comprehend.

So neat in theory, giving students iPads for their work ---- no doubt many of whom whose families would be unable to afford such devices. By now though, students have hacked the security features to facilitate personal browsing and 71 iPads from the pilot program have been stolen. This could be the biggest taxpayer boondoggle in the history of urban education in the U.S.

See, "71 iPads issued to students have gone missing, LAUSD says," and "LAUSD halts home use of iPads for students after devices hacked."

I found this comment on the policy while trolling the Times' website yesterday:

This iPad project clearly doesn't stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. And so far, it's only the slightest scrutiny that's taken place.

But the question now is how can we trust these buffoons who've spent two years developing this plan?  They're committing $1 billion of taxpayers' money for technology that will probably need to be replaced in five years.  Nobody at LAUSD has been able to say what happens at that point.  When these devices need to be upgraded, how will the district pay for that?

In the Phase I iPad rollout, several different forms were sent to parents, the spanish version of which was labeled "incomprehensible" at yesterday's ad hoc committee meeting.  Nobody at LAUSD knew for sure whether parents would assume financial liability for devices beyond Apple's 5% warranty.

What kind of people decide to spend $1 billion while failing to work out even the most basic details of this plan?  If I as a teacher performed my job this amateurishly, how long do you think I'd be allowed to teach?  Supt. Deasy; his bureaucratic henchmen; board members Galatzan, Garcia, and Zimmer, all of whom have publicly backed this deal; and UTLA, which for the umpteenth time has seen fit to stand on the sidelines watching the parade of incompetence pass by - all of them should be held accountable.

We deserve better.

Lobo Gris at 11:58 AM September 26, 2013

More, "Letters: In LAUSD, iPads become toys."

Russian Media Protests Detention of Journalists With Greenpeace Activists

Screw Greenpeace.

At the New York Times, "Russian News Sites Protest Detention of Journalists With Greenpeace Activists":

A Russian court on Thursday ordered that 22 members of the Greenpeace team that protested Arctic drilling by trying to scale a state-run oil rig may spend up to two months in detention in a Murmansk jail, while investigators decide whether to charge them with committing an act of piracy.

Among the activists were two journalists: Kieron Bryan, a British videographer who formerly worked for The Times of London, and Denis Sinyakov, a well-known Moscow-based freelance photographer, whom their colleagues and international organizations say have been jailed for merely doing their jobs. Mr. Sinyakov is a former Reuters photojournalist who has been granted behind-the-scenes access by protest groups including Pussy Riot and Femen.

Reporters Without Borders called on the Russian government to release both photojournalists. And more than a dozen independent Russian media sites responded to the detention of Mr. Sinyakov with a literal blackout: covering all the images on their sites with black squares on Friday as a sign of protest.

More at the link.

But like I said. They're enviro-terrorists. Screw 'em.

#ObamaCare: 'Working the Way It's Supposed to...'

Yes, working to destroy the American healthcare system.

From Reason TV, "5 Reasons Obamacare Won't Save You."



Yeah, it's all f-ked up. At the Hill, "DC Delays Key Pieces of Obamacare Exchange."

Also at Reuters, "Computer Snags Delay Parts of Obamacare In Some U.S. States," and Politico, "Obamacare Faces New Delay In Small-Business Enrollment."

Yep, failing the way it's supposed to!

PREVIOUSLY: "#ObamaCare's Uphill Battle in Colorado."

Katherine Webb for Carls Jr.

Via Theo Spark.

Paul McCartney on Jimmy Kimmel Live

McCartney played live on Jimmy Kimmel's Monday night --- a big deal in music-land, to say the least.

The live stream recording is on Kimmel's MySpace page. Tight set. Totally freakin' rockin'. It's beautiful. McCartney's in full health and vigor. It makes me happy to watch and listen. It makes the world happy. As one commenter writes, "Paul has found the fountain of youth through his music!"

Here's the studio interview:



Also see Part II and Part III.

And at the Los Angeles Times, "Paul McCartney shuts down Hollywood Blvd. for Kimmel concert":

Paul McCartney doesn't really need the publicity, but when he desires it he sure can make a dent. On Monday he and his band shut down a stretch of Hollywood Boulevard to perform a handful of songs for a lucky few thousand as part of "Jimmy Kimmel Live." Many in the crowd had been waiting much of the day for a chance to catch the ex-Beatle in action.

Flanked by the El Capitan and Dolby theaters, McCartney was pushing his forthcoming album "New" by doing a few songs for TV, but stuck around for a set that included older songs we wanted to hear.

His list was full of big-ticket songs. He and his touring band tore through Beatles classics "Hey Jude," "Let It Be," "Back in the USSR," "Magical Mystery Tour," "Birthday," "Lady Madonna" and more, and peppered in solo and Wings songs such as "Band on the Run," "Another Day," "Jet" and three new works, including the excellent title track.

Keep reading.

More at LAist, "Photos, Video: Paul McCartney Shuts Down Hollywood Blvd. to Rock 'Jimmy Kimmel Live' With Old and 'New' Tunes."

Senate Approves Stopgap Spending Bill Restoring #ObamaCare Funding

At the New York Times, "Budget Clash Nears as Senate Restores Funds Cut by House."

And at the Washington Post, "Senate passes spending bill; showdown with House looms":

The Senate passed a short-term spending bill Friday after voting to restore funding for President Obama’s health-care law, sending the measure back to a fractured House just four days before a threatened federal government shutdown.

The vote on final passage was 54 to 44. The measure is intended to keep the government operating through Nov. 15.

The fate of the bill remained uncertain in the House, where the Republican Party’s rebellious right wing is blocking a strategy by Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) for navigating a series of deadlines to keep the government funded and avoid the nation’s first default.

Senators began holding a series of votes starting after midday to move the bill forward. They voted 79 to 19 to invoke cloture on the House-passed bill, formally ending debate on it so that it could be amended to delete House Republican provisions to defund the health-care law. The cloture motion required 60 votes for passage.

The Senate subsequently voted 54 to 44 to restore funding for the health-care law. Minutes later, the body approved the overall bill by the same numbers.

They were straight party-line votes that highlighted the core disagreement between the two parties and the two chambers on how to proceed with funding the federal government.

All members of the Senate Democratic caucus voted to restore the funding and to pass the bill, while all Republicans present voted no. Two Republican senators, Jeff Flake (Ariz.) and Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), were absent Friday and did not vote.

House Republicans are vowing to reject the restoration of funding for the law commonly known as Obamacare, and may opt to send the bill back to the Senate again with more changes. But with the government shutdown hanging in the balance, House leaders had not yet signaled early Friday how they will proceed.

And on it goes.

I'll have more later.

Meanwhile, check Memeorandum for updates.

Cue Apocalypse: Metallica Rocks 'Through the Never'

At LAT, "'Larger than life' proves too small for Metallica":

SAN DIEGO — Singer and guitarist James Hetfield wore a familiar trickster grin and a pair of 3D glasses as he bobbed his head to the thundering riffs of "Enter Sandman," but it was a different sort of arena that was playing host to the world's bestselling hard-rock band.

Metallica had come to Comic-Con International in July to premiere the trailer for its movie "Metallica Through the Never," and the charismatic frontman had turned his chair to watch the clip unspool along with the 6,500 fans in the San Diego Convention Center's main hall. Towering likenesses of the musicians strode across a massive stage outfitted with electric charges, laser lights and fire pots, while a young roadie encountered an angry mob led by a mysterious figure on horseback known as the Death Dealer.

"It's our 'Apocalypse Now,'" drummer Lars Ulrich said.

Continue reading.

Also, "Review: 'Metallica Through the Never' an intriguing but weird beast."

James Delingpole Slams IPCC's 'Junk Science'

At Telegraph UK, "95 per cent of intelligent people know the new IPCC report is utter drivel," and "Global warming believers are feeling the heat":

At the heart of the problem lie the computer models which, for 25 years, have formed the basis for the IPCC’s scaremongering: they predicted runaway global warming, when the real rise in temperatures has been much more modest. So modest, indeed, that it has fallen outside the lowest parameters of the IPCC’s prediction range. The computer models, in short, are bunk.

To a few distinguished scientists, this will hardly come as news. For years they have insisted that “sensitivity” – the degree to which the climate responds to increases in atmospheric CO₂ – is far lower than the computer models imagined. In the past, their voices have been suppressed by the bluster and skulduggery we saw exposed in the Climategate emails. From grant-hungry science institutions and environmentalist pressure groups to carbon traders, EU commissars, and big businesses with their snouts in the subsidies trough, many vested interests have much to lose should the global warming gravy train be derailed.

This is why the latest Assessment Report is proving such a headache to the IPCC. It’s the first in its history to admit what its critics have said for years: global warming did “pause” unexpectedly in 1998 and shows no sign of resuming. And, other than an ad hoc new theory about the missing heat having been absorbed by the deep ocean, it cannot come up with a convincing explanation why. Coming from a sceptical blog none of this would be surprising. But from the IPCC, it’s dynamite: the equivalent of the Soviet politburo announcing that command economies may not after all be the most efficient way of allocating resources.

Which leaves the IPCC in a dilemma: does it ’fess up and effectively put itself out of business? Or does it brazen it out for a few more years, in the hope that a compliant media and an eco-brainwashed populace will be too stupid to notice? So far, it looks as if it prefers the second option – a high-risk strategy. Gone are the days when all anybody read of its Assessment Reports were the sexed-up “Summary for Policymakers”. Today, thanks to the internet, sceptical inquirers such as Donna Laframboise (who revealed that some 40 per cent of the IPCC’s papers came not from peer-reviewed journals but from Greenpeace and WWF propaganda) will be going through every chapter with a fine toothcomb.

Also at IBT, "James Delingpole Leads Climate Change Sceptics in Trashing IPCC's 'Sexed-up' Report."

Stacey Dash on Hannity LIve

I caught this last night.

She's a sweet lady --- and she's got a book forthcoming as well.

At Twitchy, "‘It’s personal’: Stacey Dash calls Eric Holder’s war on school vouchers immoral."

Gory, Horrific Details of Kenya Mall Massacre — #Westgate

At Pamela's, "JIHAD IN KENYA: "EYES GOUGED OUT, BODIES HANGING FROM HOOKS, AND FINGERS REMOVED WITH PLIERS": HORRIFIC CLAIMS OF TORTURE EMERGE AS SOLDIERS REVEAL GORY KENYAN MUSLIM MALL MASSACRE."

'Eyes gouged out, bodies hanging from hooks, and fingers removed with pliers': Horrific claims of torture emerge as soldiers reveal gory Kenyan mall massacre details Kenyan soldiers claim to find scenes of torture by mall terrorists They say children found dead in food fridges with knives still in bodies Men were said to have been castrated and had fingers removed...

Also at BCF.

And at My Pet Jawa, "al-Shabaab's Savagery Detailed."

Liverpool Model Punches FEMEN Protesters at Paris Fashion Week

At Independent UK, "Model 'punches' Femen protesters who storm catwalk during Paris fashion week."

And at Canada's National Post, "Model Hollie-May Saker furious after topless protesters ‘ruin’ Paris Fashion Week show."

And at WWTDD, "Crazy Topless Feminists Also Hate Fashion."

Muslims Need to Confront Muslim Evil

From Dennis Prager, at Town Hall:

With this weekend's massacre by Muslim terrorists at a mall in Nairobi, Kenya, and Muslim terrorists killing about 80 Christians at a Christian church in Pakistan, most people wonder what, if anything in addition to a continuing war on terror, can be done to minimize the scourge of Islamic terror.

The answer lies with Muslims themselves. Specifically, it means that Muslim religious leaders around the world must announce that any Muslim who deliberately targets non-combatants for death goes to hell....

Muslim leaders -- specifically, every imam in the world who is not a supporter of terror, the leaders of the most important Sunni institutions, such as the Al-Azhar Mosque and University in Cairo, and religious leaders in Saudi Arabia and the in Gulf states -- must announce that any Muslim who participates in any deliberate attack on civilians goes to hell.

This must be announced as clearly and as repeatedly as, for example, Muslim condemnations of Israel.

Just as the promise of immediate entrance into paradise animates many Muslim terrorists, the promise of immediate hell would dissuade many Muslims from committing acts of terrorism. Just as the promise of 72 virgins animates many Muslim terrorists, the promise of hell would dissuade many Muslims from terrorism.

Whenever non-Muslims ask Muslim organizations about Muslim terrorism, these organizations trot out the various anti-terrorism statements they have issued. But these are largely useless because: a) they are usually issued by Western Muslim organizations; b) even when they are issued by Middle Eastern Muslims, they almost always include condemnation of "state terrorism," which is Muslim-speak for condemnation of any use of force by Israel; and c) these statements usually also condemn non-Muslim terror, as if Christian or Jewish or Buddhist terrorism is as great a threat to humanity as is Muslim terrorism.

Therefore the statements that need to be made by every Muslim teacher, school, mosque and organization that does not support Muslim terror must be unequivocal. They need to state that any Muslim who targets any civilian for death -- whether that civilian is Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu or of no religion -- goes to hell.

In addition, there need to be large Muslim demonstrations against Muslim terrorism. I understand that Muslim clerics who would organize such demonstrations in the Muslim world might be risking their lives. But what about Muslims in America and Europe?

There have been huge Muslim demonstrations against cartoons depicting Muhammad and any other perceived "insult" against Islam. But I am unaware of a single demonstration of Muslims against Muslim terror directed at non-Muslims.

And if morality doesn't persuade Muslim leaders to issue such a statement and organize such demonstrations, perhaps self-interest will. To just about everyone in the world outside of academia and the media, Islam is not looking good. Muslim leaders should be aware that with Muslims burning Christian churches and Christian bodies in Pakistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Egypt and elsewhere, and the regular massacring of innocents by Muslim terror groups, the protestations by Muslim spokesmen that "Islam is religion of peace" are beginning to wear thin. For a religion that seeks converts, this is not a positive development.

On the other hand, perhaps not that many Muslim religious leaders do believe that Muslim terrorists are going to hell.

Don't stop there.

Any regressive leftist who does not denounce the killing should go to hell.

Some India Reynolds for Friday #Rule5

She's lovely.



Via Twitter.

Previous India Reynolds blogging here.

#ObamaCare's Uphill Battle in Colorado

At USA Today, "Colorado: Microcosm of confusion on health law":

DENVER — President Obama's legacy just might be in the hands of people such as Matt Wright.

The 31-year-old real estate agent worries less about his lack of health insurance coverage than he does about the costs of buying it when the Affordable Care Act mandates kick in, on top of all the expenses of providing for his 4-year-old daughter. "I have an open mind with a bunch of 'if's,'" he says.

In Colorado and across the country, the insurance marketplaces known as exchanges are scheduled to open Tuesday, and the success or failure of Obama's signature legislative achievement is at stake. Passing the health care overhaul defined much of his first term in the White House, and defending it from Republican assault has defined much of his second — including in the current budget showdown.

Americans who don't have insurance, or who have been buying individual policies, or who work for some small businesses, are urged to go online to shop for plans and to determine if they're eligible for federal tax credits to help cover the cost. Whether the system is easy to navigate and the plans judged a good value are likely to set attitudes toward a law that at the moment remains unpopular — shaping Obama's legacy.

USA TODAY decided to explore the issue in Colorado, one of the nation's most critical swing states and the place where Barack Obama was nominated for president in 2008 with a pledge to overhaul the nation's health care system. The news organization sponsored a statewide poll this month and convened a focus group of 10 Denver-area residents who don't have health insurance.

What we found underscored the uphill battle for "Obamacare" three years after it was signed into law. Confusion about the law is widespread, including among those who are supposed to benefit from it, and opposition as fierce as ever.

By 52%-33%, Colorado residents disapprove of the Affordable Care Act. More than two-thirds say they don't understand it very well, and a majority predict the overall effect of the law on the country in coming years is going to be mostly negative.

Continue reading.

It's failing. Barack Hussein's signature legislative "accomplishment" is failing, badly.

No matter. Idiot leftists are still blindly touting their healthcare utopia, despite overwhelming evidence of the inevitable crackup. Damn losers. So sad.