Video: George Will Should Stay out of Prognostication Business

George Will is to establishment journalism what George W. Bush was to establishment Republicanism. There is a movement afoot that establishment types still don't fully understand. Conventional wisdom does not apply. Before Rick Perry entered the race last week, Mitt Romney was the presumptive Republican nominee. Less than one week later, Rick Perry is leading in the polls. Something tells me that he will drop in a fashion similar to what happened to Donald Trump. The entry and early success of Perry has started talk that Chris Christie and Paul Ryan may jump in next. There is still no telling what Sarah Palin might do either.

The Republican nominee - whoever it will be - may not even be in the current field. Conventional wisdom says that they are but the ground has shifted dramatically and this clip of George Will from May reveals that totally and completely. He was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong and he should probably start adjusting his paradigm.

Great clip posted at Michelle Malkin's site. Either George Will was saying that the only two candidates who have a chance to beat Obama are Mitch Daniels and Tim Pawlenty OR he was completely wrong about who the nominee will be. If it's the former, he should just stop talking about the nomination process because Obama will beat whoever the Republicans put on the ticket. If it's the latter, Will should stop prognosticating.

Columbine Copycat Wannabe is NOT Right Winger

Jared Cano is a teenager who wrote a manifesto that revealed he wanted to carry out a Columbine-style attack at his own high school in Tampa, FL. Whether his problem is genetic or upbringing makes no difference. His actions - or 'would be' actions - should NOT be ascribed to anyone else. There should be no guilt by association. That said, it is the right that is constantly having to defend itself as being partially responsible for these 'lone wolf' nut jobs. The left attempted to blame Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh for the Gabrielle Giffords shooting until it was learned that Jared Loughner's favorite books were Mein Kampf and the Communist manifesto.

A similar line of distinction needs to be drawn here. Cano may have been political but as you can see on his Facebook page, he likes Barack Obama. This is pointed out not to play gotcha with the left but to be pre-emptive against them.

The narrative that Timothy McVeigh was a right-wing extremist Christian continues to this day, despite the fact that he was an avowed agnostic. The recent shootings in Oslo were blamed on a Christian right wing extremist as well but Anders Behring Breveik admitted that he wasn't religious.

Here is more on Cano via Tampa's Fox affiliate:

Investigators say they found bomb-making materials and drugs in the New Tampa apartment of Jared Cano, a 17-year-old expelled Freedom High School student, after receiving a tip yesterday.

Cano had "intentions of exploding some devices at Freedom High School on the first day of school next week," police chief Jane Castor said.

"We were probably able to thwart a potentially catastrophic event the likes of which the city of Tampa has not seen, and hopefully never will," the chief told reporters this morning.

The department's bomb experts studied materials allegedly found in Cano's room and said the devices could have caused "serious injury up to and including death," the chief added.

Those materials included fuel sources, shrapnel, plastic tubing, timing and fusing devices, but no guns. However, Castor said Cano had previously been arrested for carrying a concealed firearm that he had stolen.

Also found in the teen's room was a "manifesto," Castor said, that included two specific faculty members to target and a minute-by-minute schedule for the attack.

"He mentioned his desire to cause more casualties than were suffered at Columbine," Chief Castor continued.

Just in case anyone tells you Cano was a politically-minded right wing extremist.

h/t Jawa Report

Jihadist Targets... David Letterman?

Apparently, an on-line jihadist objected to David Letterman joking about the death of Osama bin Laden because the former is calling for the comedian's head. The strangely ironic part is it may have been Letterman's comparison between bin Laden's replacement and Sarah Palin that pushed Umar al Basrawi over the edge. The other strange part of Basrawi's post was that he called Letterman a 'Jew' even though the late night comedian is not Jewish. This should wake people up to the fact that jihadists do not just target Jews exclusively.

Via New York Post:

David Letterman has become terror target No. 1.

The new threat comes from a frequent poster on Islamic jihadist forums, Umar al Basrawi, who implored American Muslims to "cut the tongue of this lowly Jew and shut it forever," according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, a non-profit that monitors online jihadists.

Letterman, who isn’t Jewish, became the object of al-Basrawi’s ire when the late-night funnyman told a joke about the death of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda’s search for his replacement.

"So [al Qaeda] picked a successor to Osama bin Laden and his name was Ilyas Kashmiri," Letterman said during his opening monologue on June 8th, "well, guess what, he was blown up by an American drone."

"It wasn’t going to work anyways because they got off to a rocky start with this guy," Letterman continued, "he botched up the story of Paul Revere."

Apparently, comparing the dead terrorist to Sarah Palin was one step too many for al-Basrawi, who ended his online rant with, "We ask Allah to paralyze his tongue and grant the sincere monotheists his neck. Oh Allah, amen."

He then compared Letterman fate to the successful hit of Rabbi Meir Kahane, who was called by Islamic radicals in Brooklyn in 1990.

"To the righteous Muslims in America: Isn't there among you [a man like] Sayyid Nosair, the Egyptian, who can cut off the tongue of this lousy Jew and silence him forever, just like Sayyid – may Allah hasten his release – did to his fellow Jew, [Rabbi Meir] Kahane?" al-Basrawi wrote in a translation provided by MEMRI.

The reference to Paul Revere on the part of Letterman was obviously due to Sarah Palin's comments on her bus tour a few months back but what's interesting here is that Letterman is a far left guy. This is the kind of thing that should wake them up to the fact that they are not safe either.

By the way. Anyone remember another person who was called a 'Jew' who was not? Lara Logan, as she was suffering a sexual assault at the hands of a mob in Cairo.

h/t Hapblog