The two officers were working the late shift in the 9th Precinct that night as the woman, identified as 27-year-old professional, was out drinking with friends at a bar in Brooklyn. Her blood alcohol was at least double the legal limit and possibly more, investigators said, when her friends put her in a taxi and told the driver to take her to her apartment in Manhattan.

When the driver got to her address, she was so drunk she couldn’t get out of the taxi, so he called 911 for help, prosecutor said. Mata, 27, and Moreno, 41, responded within minutes. Surveillance tape shows them helping the woman into her building and leaving a few minutes later.

via NYPD officers face rape charges.

I just love the AP, don’t you? Yes, this is a sad story, and if these officers committed the crimes of which they are accused, they should go away for a very long time, but explain to me what the description of the woman as a “professional” adds to the relating of this troubling event?

A professional what? A professional drinker? Apparently not. Is she a lawyer or a doctor? Indian chief? They don’t say. Only that the girl who drank herself silly and ended up passed out in bed face down was someone who otherwise is worthy of our respect.

That’s why they called her a “professional”. To dress her up a bit.

Which is fine if you were this woman’s mother or neighbor or good friend relating the story of her misadventure to family members, but not if you’re an “objective journalist”. What this person did for a living OR what kind of person she is is IRRELEVANT to whether she was raped by police officers.

Why didn’t they just tell us she was 27? And if they knew her profession, why not tell us she was a lawyer or a doctor?

Keep asking yourselves these questions as you read stories that are offered up by these organizations as “news”. They’re not. They’re editorials masquerading as news, and this ultimately harms us as a civilization.

[Former Senator George] Mitchell, who helped to resolve the Northern Ireland conflict, was named by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week to lead U.S. efforts to end the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Mitchell’s tour will also take him to Israel, the West Bank, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, France and Britain. He said he would later report his findings directly to Obama and Clinton.

“I look forward to returning to the region in the very near future to continue this effort,” Mitchell said. Western and regional diplomats said that while Mitchell was expected to meet Palestinian officials, he would not have direct contacts with Hamas.

Obama has made clear the Middle East conflict will be a high priority as he tries to repair a U.S. image battered by the war in Iraq.

First—What’s this nonsense about the U.S. image being battered since the Iraq war? I’ll bet that al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Saddam Hussein and every government of consequence in the Greater Middle East (including Israel, Iran and Syria) all think much more highly of the United States now than they did on 9/10/01. They had little to no respect for our capacity to effectively retaliate to aggression on that date. Since then? Let’s dig up Saddam’s bones and ask him how he feels now.

So again, who thinks that our image has been battered since Iraq? Europe? Maybe. If so, so what? How does repairing our image to Europe benefit the US at all? Will it make us safer? Will it make us more secure? Will it do anything to conquer the jihad that’s been unleashed against the West? Not bloody likely.

The only people who think a) that our image has been battered since Iraq; and b) that it makes a shred of difference to anything are the American Left. These are image fetishists, for whom it is more important to appear friendly and respectful to Europeans than it is to be safe.

Second—how is Mitchell’s experience in Northern Ireland relevant to solving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict? Fundamentally, the Irish “Troubles” were an isolated and local conflict between 2 factions of Christian Europeans battling for the political status of Northern Ireland. The predominately Catholic “nationalists” (the minority, guerrilla group) believed that Northern Ireland was part of the Republic of Ireland and the predominately Protestant “unionists” believed that it was part of the United Kingdom. Watch “In the Name of the Father’.

The Palestinian “trouble” if you will, is a veritable global conflict between Israel and the United states and the governments of Syria, Iran and the rest of the Muslim Middle East. Seeking to destroy the nation of Israel and push the Jews that live there into the sea, Iran and Syria have infiltrated Palestine, installed Hamas and Hezbollah as their military proxies, and ordered them to terrorize Israel on their behalf—lobbing rockets into playgrounds, kidnapping soldiers and drawing Israel into retaliation which is chastised by Europeans.

Whether the IRA convinced England to surrender Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland was relevant to a whole bunch of Irish, but not a lick to the rest of the world. England would still be England. Ireland would still be Ireland, and we’d all go on our merry way. If Israel surrenders ITSELF to IRAN and SYRIA…it ceases to exist. It’s population would likely be crucified. Literally. Before being set on fire and dumped into the sea.

Not only that, but what nobody seems to understand is that Hamas and Hezbollah do not represent PALESTINIAN interests. They represent Iranian and Syrian interests and are agents in the continuing war (since 1948) to overthrow Israel and claim the land for Islam. This isn’t about whether the PALESTINIANS can have a homeland. They HAD a homeland after the UN Partition Plan of 1948. They LOST that homeland when the Muslim world invaded Israel and LOST.

The fact that Mitchell is meeting with “Palestinian officials” not including Hamas is troubling. Not that he should meet with Hamas, but that he pretends that the Palestinian people have anything relevant to add to the conversation or any authority to do anything anyway.

We settle the Palestinian conflict by engaging Iran and Syria militarily. Israel is doing that by slapping Hamas and Hezbollah down every year or so, but they won’t “win” that way. They’ll only succeed in bringing Israelis and Palestinians peace when Iran and Syria assume room temperature. Until then, it’s all image fetishists preening for Europe.

Logos have to be simple, you see. Not too complicated. Colorful. Eye-catching. The idea of a logo is to have a single, iconic image replace in people’s minds all the smaller, more complex reasons a person may have for buying a particular product.

Pepsi is refreshing. It’s bubbly. It’s relatively inexpensive. It’s easy to find. It’s fun. It makes me think of being with friends. Watching the game. Going out on that first date. It’s sweet and I know that it has too many calories but DAMN I just want one now.

But Pepsico can’t have all that cluttering up the label. Instead, to get you to buy their product, it puts this on the label:

Because all of our petty grievances and our ability to give voice to them in government present the One with a problem, he’s announcing an end to all that. Trust in the Logo and leave your shoes at the door. Invest in the Obama brand and you won’t have to think ever again.

Was that the Obama bargain?

As always, Mark Steyn speaks volumes with few words. Here’s his take:

The idea of a politics conducted within less ideological and more technocratic bounds is seductive. It’s how things work in much of Europe: You have a choice between a left-of-center candidate and an ever so slightly right-of-left-of-center candidate, and, regardless of which one you plump for, you wind up with the same old smidgeonette right-of-left-of-right-of-left-of-center government. The result has been to deliver a society of permanent high unemployment, unaffordable entitlements, and deathbed demographics—even before the economic downturn put more immediate question marks over the future. As Obama was inaugurated, rioters were besieging their parliaments in Iceland, Latvia, and Bulgaria, the beginnings of a civil unrest that will spread inward from the fringes of the European map. Unlike Ashton Kutcher, these people are not worried about arts-education mentoring.

Ideas are the energy in politics, and on health care, Social Security, war, immigration, and much else this country could use more. Instead, the moribund U.S. media—a very good example of what happens when stultifying conformity becomes your be all and end all—are urging us to fall in line: “Just days after taking office vowing to end the political era of ‘petty grievances,’” reported the Washington Post, “President Obama ran into mounting GOP opposition yesterday to an economic stimulus plan that he had hoped would receive broad bipartisan support.”

Ah, yes. How “petty” these losers are to have concerns about a trillion bucks in spending. Fortunately, Obama will stay cool, though hopefully not in the Icelandic sense.

via Conformity’s Seduction by Mark Steyn on National Review Online.

I thought I was already post-racial. Oops. I am going to be 39 years old this year. Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963–7 years before my birth. There has never been a time in my life when there was anything controversial at all about his words. I have never judged anyone by anything so superficial as the color of their skin. I do not like or dislike anyone because they are (or are not) black, Jewish, Italian, old, male, female, a Yankee fan, rich or poor. No, if I’m going to dislike you, it will be because you’re not nice. Or you are untrustworthy. Or you hurt people perhaps. Or you’re malicious.

Black, white or otherwise, if you’re a bastard, I have little tolerance for you. I’m supremely confident that Dr. King and I would see eye to eye on this.

For this reason I resent hearing people tell me that Obama’s election is somehow good for me. Good for America. As if it doesn’t matter what type of person he is, so long as he’s black and President, we can all be proud.

What utter nonsense. Is he a good man? Will he be good for America? What type of character does he possess? These questions—the only relevant ones, actually, as Dr. King said, to judge a man (especially one wishing to be President of the U.S) were never asked of Obama. In fact, the press went to great length to discredit anyone with the temerity to even fathom asking such questions. It is enough that he’s black, we were told. Pay no further attention to him than to register the color of his skin.

Is this the fulfillment of Dr. King’s dream? If I were Obama, I’d have answered all questions about my character. I’d have defended the associations I’d made in my political career and attempted to explain them to people not disposed to understand.

Maybe we haven’t yet fulfilled Dr. King’s dream. Maybe I’m being naive. But if that’s the case, it’s got nothing to do with me, and that’s what I find so resentful and hurtful about the Obama phenomenon. I was only interested in his character, but kept being told by my betters in the press that this was irrelevant, that it was the color of his skin that mattered. Listen to the news today. Why was this inauguration so special? Was it because a man of great character was elected president? No. It was because a man of color was.

Are we and our children to believe that color is still relevant? Apparently so, right? When my son asks me one day what the big deal was about a black man being elected President, what do I tell him? I’m going to tell him that there was no big deal, that a black person or spanish person or a mixed race Korean-American person like him can become president. There are no impediments to greatness except the limits you place on yourself. But I didn’t need Obama’s election to tell me that. I already knew that.

The longer we go into the future believing that it is some “big deal” for a black person or any minority to actually do anything important in this country, the longer we’ll continue to be a racist society. And the only people who seem to be perpetuating the myth that it’s a big deal for a black person to become president are the same people criticizing Americans for being racists. It’s maddening.

How patronized must Obama feel right now? How would you feel if after having achieved something so great as becoming President of the United States, everyone complimented you on the color of your skin? What? Don’t you understand that this was difficult and that I succeeded because I was good and not because of something so superficial as the color of my skin?

Not to insert another pop-reference, but it’s like on this season of The Office when Holly has the mistaken belief that because Kevin acts slow and stupid at work that he is mentally retarded. So whenever he completes a sentence or buys candy from the vending machine on his own, or does anything at all really, she praises him like a little boy because isn’t it great that a retarded person can function in today’s big world.

If I were Obama, I’d feel something like Kevin right now. Though if I was Obama, I’d have probably let on long before today that I was actually someone of substance with a character that Americans could rely on. That he has permitted himself to be used in this way says something.

Something of his character.

President Barack Obama’s inauguration next week is set to be the most expensive ever, predicted to reach over $150m (£102m). This dwarfs the $42.3m spent on George Bush’s inauguration in 2005 and the $33m spent on Bill Clinton’s in 1993.

Part of the spending includes emergency funding announced by the White House on Tuesday to help with the soaring costs. Most of this new federal funding will be to deal with the huge influx of people, estimated 1.5 million to 2 million.

A White House statement said that President Bush “declared an emergency exists in the District of Columbia”.

If there is snow, the costs will grow higher. The long-term forecast suggests there is a chance of snow on Sunday and again on the day of inauguration, on Tuesday.

Carole Florman, spokeswoman for the joint congressional committee on inaugural ceremonies, told the New York Daily News, which estimated the cost at $160m: “We’re always very budget conscious. But we’re sending a message to the entire world about our peaceful transition of power, and you don’t want it to look like a schlock affair. It needs to be appropriate to the magnitude of events that it is.”

First, someone from a congressional committee claiming that she’s always very budget conscious? Is that a sick joke? Doesn’t she read the papers?

Second, $150,000,000 for a party. Man, that’s some serious bread, isn’t it? Bush’s bash in 2004 was at $48.3 (in 2008 dollars) and Clinton’s in 1993 was at $48.8 (in 2008 dollars). What’s this bozo doing spending $150,000,000? Especially now. Doesn’t he know that there’s a recession going on? Personal sacrifice and all?

Third, where’s the press on this? Check this out from the BBC in 2005:

But with the recent tsunami in the Indian Ocean and the ongoing war in Iraq, some think the expensive inaugural is an inappropriate, ostentatious display.

Precedent suggests that inaugural festivities should be muted – if not cancelled – in wartime,” New York Democrat Representative Anthony Weiner said in a letter to President Bush.

He noted the money could be used to buy 690 Humvees and pay for a $290 bonus for each soldier serving in Iraq.

What about this from the NY Times:

Ordinary citizens might have hoped that the overriding issue in Washington – the perilous Iraq war, with its drain on the nation’s blood and treasure – would dictate restraint. But plans for the four-day extravaganza roll forward with nine celebratory balls being underwritten by the usual corporate and fat-cat supplicants in the political power mill.

There’s nothing new in Washington’s triumphalist celebrations, festooned with price tags for access, but war usually mutes the singing and dancing. Not this year.

Umm. We’re still at war, aren’t we? Much better off now in Iraq (thanks to Bush) than we were in 2004, but nonetheless, still bleeding blood and treasure as the author of this piece so eloquently put it. Not only that, but our economy is in terrible shape. Perhaps reasonable people could disagree as to the propriety of having a big expensive celebration while the nation is at war. Fine. But there should be unanimous opposition to an expensive celebration while we’re at war AND while our economy is in the tank, people are losing jobs and home values are plummeting. Go ahead, have your party. You deserve it. But $150,000,000? More than 3 times that of Bush’s in 2004? Can we at least get 3 times as much righteous indignation from the suddenly incurious press?

Finally, this bit about the party needing to be “appropriate to the magnitude of the event that it is.” Ah, finally we get to the meaty nub. This isn’t an ordinary transition of power, you see. This is different. More magnitude and all. This isn’t two WHITE guys exchanging power. Oh no. This is a white guy giving power to a mixed race guy who grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia in fancy private schools. A real man of the people, you see. Hope, change and all that. We’ve got to show the world how IMPORTANT this is not only to US but to THEM (whether they realize it or not!).

Spare no expense for the spectacle of OBAMA.

I laugh, and it’s funny, but only to a point. Obama’s deathly serious about all this. If he wasn’t, we’d get an occasional “aw shucks” from him here or there. You know, these followers of mine, “what can you do!” We get nothing of the sort from him. He basks in this. He’s a cipher. A performer. On him, the inarticulated hopes and dreams of the masses are writ, you see.

It’s all too Nuremberg for me, thank you.

I know, I know, it isn’t gone yet. Just on the gravy train in that direction. With biscuit wheels.

NEW YORK — President-elect Barack Obama is on his way to the big screen, thanks to a deal between MSNBC and Screenvision that will put the news channel’s inaugural coverage in 27 theaters around the country.

Free tickets are being handed out via MSNBC.com to see the inauguration and parade from 11 a.m.-3:30 p.m. ET at the 27 theaters run by 11 exhibitor partners in 21 markets. Midday Tuesday isn’t necessarily a big movie time, so it helps to fill the theater — and boost popcorn and soda sales — at a time when it’s not usually busy.

via Obama inauguration to air in theaters.

I’m telling you, bargain bins and remainder tables inside of 18 months.

Bank on it.

I dunno. People seem to like it.

They beat every other cable news program.

Handily.

Check out Monday night’s Hannity:

9 PM – P2+ (25-54) (35-64)
Hannity–2,835,000 viewers (703,000) (1,155,000)
Larry King Live—934,000 viewers (319,000) (468,000)
Rachel Maddow Show –1,341,000 viewers (441,000) (723,000)
Saving GM: Inside Crisis– 293,000 viewers (167,000) (183,000)
Lou Dobbs- 597,000 viewers (247,000) (339,000)

GREENFIELD, Calif. (AP) – Police have arrested a Greenfield man for allegedly arranging to sell his 14-year-old daughter into marriage in exchange for $16,000, 100 cases of beer and several cases of meat.Police said they only learned of the deal after the 36-year-old man went to them to get his daughter back because payment wasn’t made as promised. The man was arrested Sunday on suspicion of human trafficking.

Officers also arrested an 18-year-old man on suspicion of statutory rape. Investigators believe the girl went willingly with the man, but she’s under California’s legal age of consent and can’t legally marry.

Police say arranged marriages involving underage girls have become a problem in this small Central Coast farming community.

First, this guy…makes an illegal contract to sell his daughter for beer and meat (that’s right, beer and meat) and then goes to the cops when his future son in law renegs? Did he expect the cops to enforce the contract?

“You in there?”

“Yeah, who’s that?”

“It’s the cops. You owe this guy some meat?”

“No way, man! The girl’s a dud! Watches Oprah all damn day!”

“Doesn’t matter. A deal’s a deal! Fork it over, Oscar Mayer!”

Second…kudos to the AP where kudos are due….accurately citing the practice of sexual intercourse with a minor as “statutory rape”.

Not “seduction“.

The media wants Israel to appear the bad actor here. Obviously.

The question is why?

Ask yourself that the next time you tune into CNN or MSNBC or watch the Today Show. If they’re willing to pull the wool over your eyes so blatantly to protect terrorist organizations like Hamas which uses its own women and children as human shields to protect weapons caches they’ve got hidden in schools and mosques, then what else are they willing to do.

It’s an issue of character and credibility. CNN’s is long gone, so I’d recommend just stop tuning in. I mean, what purpose does a news organization serve if a) you can’t trust what they’re saying; and b) they promote a terrorist agenda?

I mean…hello?