Prosecutor Heckled by Shafia Guilt-Deniers at Press Conference in Canada Honor Killings Trial

More from Blazing Cat Fur:

The Economy Isn't Expanding Fast Enough to Make Up for Lost Years of Growth

From James Pethokoukis, "The economic chart that may doom the Obama presidency":

See also, "U.S. Economy Picks Up Steam: Fourth-Quarter Growth Rate of 2.8% is Fastest in 18 Months, but Doesn't Appear Sustainable."


PREVIOUSLY: " The Economy Still Sucks and It's Not Likely to Surge In Time to Save Barack Hussein," and "The Economy Still Sucks Democrat Donkey Dongs, No Matter What Islamo-Socialist President Barack Hussein Says Otherwise."

Hellfire Missile Takes Out Taliban Jihadist

Via Weasel Zippers:

And from yesterday, "The Taliban Go Mainstream: Afghanistan Terror-Sponsors Seek 'Softer Side' to Medieval Political Regime."

Occupy Protesters Burn the Flag at Oakland City Hall

Because, you know, they're just strangers from out of town, or something.

[VIDEO PULLED]

Also at CNN, "Oakland's mayor says city is fed up after hundreds of Occupy activists arrested."

PREVIOUSLY: "Racist Walter James Casper III Doubles-Down on Endorsement of Revolutionary Anti-Semitic Occupy Wall Street." And "Occupy Wall Street: Anti-Semitism, Socialism, Crime and Public Defecation."

Laura Ingraham on 'This Week': 'I Don’t Know If Mitt Romney Can Beat' Obama

From Jake Tapper at ABC News, "Laura Ingraham: Romney Has to Bring ‘A’ Game If He’s Going to Beat Obama." Scroll forward at the clip to just after 9:00 minutes

Millionaire Elizabeth Warren Claims She's 'Not One of Them' Wealthy Individuals...

At Weasel Zippers, "OWS-Founder Elizabeth Warren Says She’s Not In The 1% Despite Being Worth $14.5 Million…"

Progressives: liars, hypocrites, losers.

Shafia Family Guilty of Honor Killings in Canada: Updates

Okay, my earlier post is here: "Guilty Verdicts in Canada Honor Killing Trial."

And see Pamela here, "GUILTY! First Degree Murder Verdicts in Shafia Honor Killing Trial."

And don't miss the excellent Christie Blatchford, at National Post, "No honour in ‘cold-blooded, shameless’ murder of Shafia girls."

Plus, London's Daily Mail has a huge article, "Honour killing family jailed for life as judge says: 'It is difficult to conceive of a more despicable, more heinous crime'."

And an update at Blazing Cat Fur, "Shafia Murders: CBC Finds Apologist Who Implies Canada Racist & Just Like Islamist Hell Holes."

And here's an earlier clip with Ezra Levant on the tragedy of honor killings in Canada:

Whoa! Rep. Allen West Tells Democrats to 'Get the Hell Out of the United States of America'

Well, it's a good guess he's fed up with the left's bullshit civility meme.

Via Gateway Pundit, "Allen West: Obama, Pelosi, Reid… “Get the Hell Out of the United States of America” (Video)":

Well, yeah. You have to stand up against the mob.

See: "California Penal Code Section 646.9 on Criminal Harassment and Cyberstalking: Statement of Warning to Hate-Blogger Walter James Casper III."

Romney Hopes to Deliver Knockout Punch to Gingrich

At LAT, "Romney keeps pressure on Gingrich as Florida primary nears":

Reporting from Naples, Fla.  —

Seeking to deliver a knockout punch to Newt Gingrich in Tuesday’s Florida primary, Mitt Romney and his surrogates continued their heavy assault on the former House speaker’s record, urging voters to study his temperment, his work for mortgage giant Freddie Mac and the ethics investigation into his fundraising in the 1990s.

As a Romney rally got started before a crowd of several thousand outside a theater in downtown Naples on Sunday, U.S. Rep. Connie Mack IV contrasted Gingrich’s “very checkered past when it comes to ethics and honesty” with that of Romney, whom Mack said has lived his life “honestly, with integrity and character.”

Echoing that line a few minutes later, Mack’s father, former Florida Sen. Connie Mack III, called Mitt and Ann Romney “role models for all Americans” and said the former Massachusetts governor has “presidential temperament.”

“A lot of people say he looks presidential. And you do!” the former senator said. “But the important thing is, he acts like a president. Under fire, under attack, under challenge. He responds as a cool, calm and collected man, a person that we need in the White House.”

For his part, Romney keyed off his strong performances in two recent debates, as well as an NBC/Marist preference poll released Sunday morning that showed him leading Gingrich by 15 percentage points in Florida. He accused Gingrich of “making excuses” for his sliding poll numbers during the Sunday morning talk shows.

“He’s on TV this morning going from station to station complaining about what he thinks were the reasons he’s had difficulty here in Florida,” Romney said, “but you know, we’ve got a president who has a lot of excuses, and the excuses are over; it’s time to produce.”

“If we failed somewhere, if we failed the debate, if we failed to get the support of people, it’s time to look in the mirror,” Romney said. “My own view is the reason that Speaker Gingrich has been having a hard time in Florida is that people of Florida have watched the debates, have listened to the speaker, have listened to the other candidates and have said, ‘You know what, Mitt Romney’s the guy we’re going to support.’ ”

And see "Polls see Mitt Romney cruising to Florida victory."

Plus, at Astute Bloggers, "ATTENTION PSEUDO-POPULIST GINGRICH AND HIS NEWTNUTZ EVERYWHERE: CAPITALISM WORKS; SOCIALISM NOT SO MUCH."

Sarah Palin: 'Newt Gingrich Would Clobber Barack Obama'

She's talking about "clobbering" Obama in a debate, and by implication in the general election. Palin says GOP voters should take that into consideration in the primaries. And this is pretty much a Palin endorsement for Gingrich, which has been mostly unarticulated at this point, but see C4P, "Governor Palin’s Clarion Call: “Rage Against the Machine…Vote for Newt!”"

Newt Gingrich: '"I Will Go All the Way to the Convention. I Expect to Win the Nomination' (VIDEO)

The video's at RealClearPolitics, "Gingrich Vows to 'Go All The Way to the Convention'."

And at Washington Wire, "Gingrich Predicts ‘Straight-Out Contest for Next 4 or 5 Months’" (via Memorandum):

LUTZ, Fla. — A pugnacious Newt Gingrich reiterated his intention to stay in the Republican presidential primary “all the way to the convention,” telling reporters Sunday morning that he believed that “this is going to be a straight-out contest for the next four or five months” between him and Mitt Romney.

Newt Gingrich speaks to media during a news conference outside the Exciting Idlewild Baptist Church, Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012, in Lutz, Fla. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Mr. Gingrich said after attending a morning service with 2,000 worshipers at the Exciting Idlewild Baptist Church that he didn’t agree with polls that show him trailing in Florida, and in any case, he’s not bowing out of the race.

“I think that the election will be substantially closer than the two polls that came out this morning,” he said, adding that he was eying support for Rick Santorum as potential source of votes in the coming months. “When you add the two conservatives together we clearly beat Romney,” Mr. Gingich said. “I think Romney’s got a very real challenge trying to get a majority at the convention.”

Astute Bloggers says meh, "MORE GRANDIOSITY FROM NEWT: PROMISES 5 MONTH CONTEST FOR NOMINATION."

Guilty Verdicts in Canada Honor Killing Trial

See Blazing Cat Fur, "Justice: Shafia Honour Murderers All Guilty."

And at National Post, "Shafia accused guilty of first-degree murder."

KINGSTON, Ont. — After Canada’s first mass-honour-killings trial, three members of a Montreal family have all been found guilty of first-degree murder in the drowning deaths of four other family members — including three teenage sisters.

A jury on Sunday handed down its guilty verdicts for Mohammad Shafia and Tooba Mohammad Yahya, as well as their 21-year-old son, Hamed.

They had been charged with murder after the bodies of three Shafia sisters — Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and 13-year-old Geeti — were discovered in a submerged vehicle in a canal near Kingston, in June 2009.

Also in the vehicle was Rona Amir Mohammad, the 52-year-old first wife of Shafia, whom he married in his native Afghanistan before the polygamous family moved to Canada in 2007 and settled in Montreal.

A conviction for first-degree murder carries with it an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.

The trial, which began in October 2011, heard from 58 witnesses and was presented with more than 160 exhibits from both prosecutors and defence lawyers. While some described Shafia as the ultimate family man, other witnesses painted a picture of strict control in the family and limited freedoms for his daughters.

Marco Rubio Delivers GOP Weekly Address

Well, Senator Rubio's been in the news with the immigration blowback on the campaign trail in Florida.

And see Toronto's Globe and Mail, "Marco Rubio coy about endorsing Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich."

The Taliban Go Mainstream: Afghanistan Terror-Sponsors Seek 'Softer Side' to Medieval Political Regime

Well, you gotta give it to the Obama administration.

They got Bin Laden so now it's time to go easy on the Taliban, the medieval Islamist terror-sponsor who executes teenage girls for escaping arranged marriages and who is now looking to build deeper alliances with Pakistani militants to fight U.S. forces. But hey, it's a new day. Barack Obama's on the way!

At Wall Street Journal, "Emboldened Taliban Try to Sell Softer Image":

KABUL — When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s, Maulvi Qalamuddin headed the Committee to Protect Virtue and Prevent Vice, the religious police that shut down girls' schools, beat up men with insufficiently long beards and arrested those in possession of music or video tapes.

Nowadays, the 60-year-old Taliban cleric is on a different mission: He is overseeing a network of schools that teach reading, writing and math to thousands of girls in his home province of Logar, an insurgent hotbed just south of Kabul.

"Education for women is just as necessary as education for men," Mr. Qalamuddin thunders. "In Islam, men and women have the same duty to pray, to fast—and to seek learning."

The Taliban's restrictions on women and schooling, combined with support for al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, turned the group into an international pariah even before the September 2001 attacks on America. Now, as the U.S. pulls out its troops and tries to negotiate a peace settlement with the insurgents, the international community grapples with a crucial question: If returned to power, will the Taliban behave any more responsibly this time around?

In recent public statements, the Taliban have made an effort to appear a more moderate force, promising peaceful relations with neighboring countries and respect for human rights. The big unknown is whether this new rhetoric represents a meaningful transformation—or is merely designed to sugarcoat the Taliban's real aims.

"One might believe that they would change over time," says U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the day-to-day commander of the U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan. "You see some messages that they might open their thinking a bit about women, a woman's place in society. But I don't know that I would bet on it."

U.S. and Taliban representatives have met over the past several months, trying to establish a dialogue that could end America's longest foreign war. In a tangible sign of progress in early January, the Taliban dropped their insistence that all foreign troops must leave Afghanistan before any peace talks begin and agreed to set up a representative office in Qatar to facilitate future negotiations. To create trust in these talks, the U.S. is considering transferring to Qatari custody five senior Taliban officials incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Despite a new willingness to negotiate with the U.S., however, the Taliban's leadership still believes it can reach its war aim of seizing Kabul and the rest of Afghanistan after most foreign forces withdraw in 2014, American military commanders agree.

Continue reading.

For some reason optimism eludes me here.

But the drumbeat for precipitous withdrawal continues on the left, and even some on the mainstream right think we should pull out --- because the Obama administration's prosecution of the war has endangered American lives.

Another reason to vote Republican in the fall, no matter who wins the nomination. We need to repair American foreign policy and commit to completing the gains in international security that the Bush administration had secured before the Corrupt-o-crats took office. Sheesh.

Hot Go Daddy Super Bowl Ads 2012!

Are these "sleaze merchant" ads?

Better check in with TrogloPundit, who doesn't seem to be protesting too much: "Hey, you guys wanna see this year’s GoDaddy.com Superbowl ads?"

Also, at Vancouver Sun, "Sexy Super Bowl ads set to get racier."

PREVIOUSLY: "Adriana Lima Super Bowl Commercials."

Adriana Lima Super Bowl Commercials

Well, another reason to tune in on Super Bowl Sunday.

See Puff Ho, "Adriana Lima to Star In Two Super Bowl Commercials (VIDEOS)."

And see: "Vote Victoria's Secret for Greatest Super Bowl Commercials," and "Victoria's Secret 2008 Super Bowl Commercial."

Netanyahu Expected to Call Early Elections

The clip below via Israel Matzav, "The most popular video of the week is..."

And see Los Angeles Times, "Election fever grips Israel as Netanyahu maneuver expected":

Israel's current coalition government is one of its most stable in decades, and the next scheduled national poll is nearly two years off. Yet election fever has gripped the country and some believe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is quietly preparing to call for an early vote, perhaps in the middle of this year.

The two biggest political parties — Netanyahu's conservative Likud and its main rival, the centrist Kadima — recently announced that they would hold primaries to select leaders whose names would be on the next election ballot.

The left-leaning Labor Party held a leadership convention in September. And this month, popular TV news anchor Yair Lapid promised to shake up the status quo, saying he would compete for prime minister as head of a new party.

In a country where the prime minister's average term in recent decades has been shorter than three years and most governments collapse prematurely, some believe that Netanyahu, who took office in 2009, will seek to capitalize on his improving popularity by securing another term before the U.S. presidential election in November.

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."

Also at Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's Sunday Funnies," and Theo Spark, "Cartoon Roundup..."

Republican Candidates Fight for Direction of the Party

At Los Angeles Times, "In Florida, Romney vs. Gingrich is a fight for GOP's direction":

As Brenda Mulberry stepped into the natural-food grocery in Cocoa Beach this week, she paused to tick off elements of her shopping list for a candidate in Tuesday's Florida primary. Electability was at the top, and for that reason she's backing Mitt Romney.

Mulberry, 53, owns a small business manufacturing souvenir T-shirts, so she appreciates Romney's moneymaking skills and thinks critics should stop attacking him simply because he's rich. As for Newt Gingrich, Mulberry is certain the thrice-married former House speaker would lose in November.

She can hear President Obama now: "Well, I've been married to Michelle for all this time.... If he can't run his own personal life, then how's he going to run a country?"

But Jeff Cloud, 59, who makes a living doing yardwork in Florida's rural interior, questions whether Romney has the toughness it takes to sit in the Oval Office. For that reason, he leans toward Gingrich.

"He's fought a lot of battles," Cloud said, sitting at a picnic table outside the public library in Brooksville. "With Romney, I just don't know if his background is strong enough to be what we need as a leader."

The fight for the Republican presidential nomination, now centered in Florida, has become more than just a contest between Romney and Gingrich. It has become a battle over the direction of the party, between different visions of whom it serves — Wall Street or Main Street? — and whom it should represent.

It is an old fight, waged intermittently for more than 50 years, with different candidates — Eisenhower versus Taft, Rockefeller versus Goldwater, Dole versus Buchanan — in the roles of establishment favorite and conservative alternative. (Spoiler alert: The establishment pick almost always wins the nomination.) It is a fight, as well, between classes and cultures, evidenced by the support won this year by each of the main contenders in the three contests so far.

Well, it's a pretty nasty fight by this point. And Romney's coming back up in the Florida polls, so perhaps the Sunshine State might be decisive.

More later.

Hundreds Arrested in Oakland as Occupy Protesters Storm Barricades With Rocks, Bottles, and Improvised Explosive Devices

Damn, these people are freakin' terrorists.

See New York Times, "Occupy Protesters and Police Clash in Oakland":

A march to take over a vacant building by members of the Occupy movement in Oakland, Calif., turned into a violent confrontation with the police on Saturday, leaving three officers injured and about 200 people arrested.

The clashes began just before 3 p.m. when protesters marched toward the vacant Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, the police said, and began to tear down construction barricades. Officers ordered the crowd to disperse when protesters “began destroying construction equipment and fencing,” the Oakland police said in a press release.

“Officers were pelted with bottles, metal pipe, rocks, spray cans, improvised explosive devices and burning flares, the police said.” Officers responded with smoke, tear gas and beanbag projectiles. Twenty people were arrested.

Most of the arrests occurred in the evening, when large groups of people were corralled in front of the Downtown Oakland Y.M.C.A. on Broadway. At one point, one group of protesters broke into the City Hall building.

On a livestream broadcast on the Web site oakfosho.com, dozens of protesters could be seen sitting cross-legged in darkness on the street in front of the Y.M.C.A. Their hands appeared to be bound behind them, while police officers stood watch. Occasionally the protesters sang or cheered.

The events were part of a demonstration dubbed “Move-in Day,” a plan by protesters to move into the vacant convention center and use it as a commune-like command center, according to the Web site occupyoaklandmoveinday.org.

“We were going to set up a community center,” said Benjamin Phillips, 32, a member of the Occupy Oakland media team. “It would be a place where we could house people, feed people, do all the things that we have been doing.”

In an open letter to Mayor Jean Quan on the Move-in Day site, the group threatened actions like “blockading the airport indefinitely, occupying City Hall indefinitely” and “shutting down the Oakland ports.” Occupy protesters did briefly shut down the city’s busy port in November.

In a statement issued before the march, Ms. Quan said that “the residents of Oakland are wearying of the constant focus and cost to our city.” On Saturday night, she added: “Once again, a violent splinter group of the Occupy Movement is engaging in violent actions against Oakland. The Bay Area Occupy Movement has got to stop using Oakland as their playground.”

In a statement, city officials said the total number of arrests was estimated at 200.

Actually, these are the original occupiers, not a "violent splinter group." The Occupy Wall Street movement piggy-backed onto to initial violent occupations that have been ongoing for the last couple of years. Once the "we are the 1%" slogan went mainstream, the Democrats and their MFM enablers deliberately ignored. the anarcho-revolutionary agenda of the protests. These people are violent militants and radicals. See also, "Manifesto: Occupy for the Revolution."

PREVIOUSLY: "Racist Walter James Casper III Doubles-Down on Endorsement of Revolutionary Anti-Semitic Occupy Wall Street."