Cultural spinelessness advances:

Producer Barrie Osborne cast Keanu Reeves as the messiah in The Matrix and helped defeat the dark lord Sauron in his record-breaking Lord of the Rings trilogy. Now the Oscar-winning American film-maker is set to embark on his most perilous quest to date: making a big-screen biopic of the prophet Muhammad.

Budgeted at around $150m (£91.5m), the film will chart Muhammad’s life and examine his teachings. Osborne told Reuters that he envisages it as “an international epic production aimed at bridging cultures. The film will educate people about the true meaning of Islam”…

…In accordance with Islamic law, the prophet will not actually be depicted on screen…

Which, actually, tells us a lot about Islam – after all, put Mohammed on screen and people (including the producer) might get killed. And imagine what would happen if the film went in to Mohammed’s rather interesting married life!

Look, movies aren’t supposed to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth – they can’t. But there should be at least an approximation of it…and to bend the knee to Islam’s idiotic ban on the depiction of Mohammed is just craven. Moslems are free to not depict Mohammed till the cows come home – but non-Moslems are not bound by such strictures…and I doubt there’s a Hollywood producer out there who would be so sensitive to Christian or Jewish religious sensibilities.

I know, it isn’t news at all – completely “dog bites man”, but for the record:

The Democratic State Committee now admits paying for a robocall to Somerset County voters that slams Republican Chris Christie and promotes independent gubernatorial candidate Christopher Daggett.

A Democratic spokeswoman says the party’s chairman, Joe Cryan, was not aware of the robocalls when he denied that the state committee had anything to do with them yesterday afternoon.

Cryan, who told PolitickerNJ.com yesterday afternoon that the Democratic State Committee had “absolutely” nothing to do with the call, could not immediately be reached for comment.

The call angered Republicans and further fueled conspiracy theories that Daggett is in cahoots with the Corzine camp. A disclaimer at the end says it was paid for by Victory ’09, “a project of the NJDSC” (Democratic State Committee), and gave the committee’s Trenton address.

Daggett, for his part, disavowed the call.

Yeah, stuff like that just happens all the time…someone just accidentally recorded the robo-call and then the recording slipped and fell in to the phone system of the New Jersey Democrat party. The Democrats – and Daggett – are all just sweet, innocent bystanders. Anyways, its all Bush’s fault.

I’m confident that New Jersey voters will do the right thing tomorrow, and then Christie can get to work cleaning up this mess.

Jeremiah Wright strikes again. Here’s the video clip – according to Wright, Marxism and socialism are just not understood in America. I guess its hard to appreciate 100 million murders – and I guess Wright has found a way to believe such things are morally good.

We certainly don’t want the pencil-necked geeks to win this poll, do we? Head over and let NPR know how you feel.

Here it is:

Police in the Ohio city of Cleveland urged families of missing people to come forward with pictures of their absent relatives yesterday after the discovery of six badly decomposed bodies at the home of a convicted rapist, prompting a mass murder investigation.

Did you catch it? If you didn’t, I’ll give you another shot:

The bodies came to light on Thursday and Friday when officers visited his home to investigate an allegation of rape. Sowell has already served 15 years in prison for choking and raping a 21-year-old woman who was lured to his bedroom in 1989.

Get it? Ok, for those who are inattentive – key in on “convicted rapist” and “served 15 years in prison for choking and raping”. You see, if this man was still serving the life sentence without parole he should have got, then the six women in his home would still be alive.

There’s just something about a person who rapes – whether its a man raping a woman or an adult raping a child: once they do it, there doesn’t seem much chance they won’t do it again. Anyone who rapes, once convicted, should never be let out of jail. While good behavior might merit an easy prison, the fact remains that such people cannot be trusted around anyone they may be able to victimize.

Rape should not be a three strikes your out thing – once you rape, away you go, for good.

Geesh:

Company officials are banking that its novelty will help guarantee its success. Five times larger than the Titanic, the $1.5 billion ship has seven neighborhoods, an ice rink, a small golf course and a 750-seat outdoor amphitheater. It has 2,700 cabins and can accommodate 6,300 passengers and 2,100 crew members.

Accommodations include loft cabins, with floor-to-ceiling windows, and 1,600-square-foot (487-meter) luxury suites with balconies overlooking the sea or promenades.

The liner also has four swimming pools, volleyball and basketball courts, and a youth zone with theme parks and nurseries for children.

Oasis of the Sea, nearly 40 percent larger than the industry’s next-biggest ship, was conceived years before the economic downturn caused desperate cruise lines to slash prices to fill vacant berths.

Well, it might make a great troop ship if we ever had to go to war with China…other than that, I can’t see them filling the rooms unless a week starts to cost $250 a person, or some such. And, hey, I like cruises…but who had two or three thousand dollars to spend on a week’s vacation these days?

Mark Steyn over at NRO’s The Corner finds the perfect situation:

Two stories from The Times of India. One:

NEW DELHI: Prime ministerial lunches are rarely fun affairs. People sort of get on with it, and then get on with their lives. Not on Friday. Early in the day, former US president George Bush, on a pleasure trip to India, announced cheerily, “I’m off to have lunch with my old pal…”

Colleagues reported that Singh was rarely as “chirpy” as he was on Friday afternoon. The conversation was light and sparkling, there was a lot of laughter and banter. So when Singh talked about how much he appreciated the huge gesture of the nuclear deal, Bush quipped, “Yeah, it was a big deal and to get it we had to break a bit of china.”

Two:

Washington Gasps At Hillary Charm-El-Shake Offensive That Leaves Islamabad Stunned

Good thing those arrogant swaggering Texas cowboys aren’t blundering around the world screwing up America’s global relationships anymore.

Remember – the only thing “screwed up” in American foreign policy during the Bush Administration was that a whole bunch of hand-wringing, liberal bed-wetters were upset about it. Normal people thought things were going just fine – and they were. Now Obama is rapidly undoing all the good that was done…

So, how much longer will the Obama administration call the Cash For Clunkers program a success?

A new report from last week gives us an interesting analysis in terms of how many new car sales the program actually generated.

A total of 690,000 new vehicles were sold under the Cash for Clunkers program last summer, but only 125,000 of those were vehicles that would not have been sold anyway, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the automotive Web site Edmunds.com.Still, auto sales contributed heavily to the economy’s expansion in the third quarter, adding 1.7 percentage points to the nation’s gross domestic product growth.

Of course, it doesn’t necessarily matter when or if these consumers planned to buy a new vehicle or not, that’s still nearly 700,000 shouldering a huge, new debt in teh middle of a bad economy. But, that 125,000 number is important in another context… Let’s consider what the government spent to create new car sales that othervise would not have happened.

The Cash for Clunkers program gave car buyers rebates of up to $4,500 if they traded in less fuel-efficient vehicles for new vehicles that met certain fuel economy requirements. A total of $3 billion was allotted for those rebates.The average rebate was $4,000. But the overwhelming majority of sales would have taken place anyway at some time in the last half of 2009, according to Edmunds.com. That means the government ended up spending about $24,000 each for those 125,000 additional vehicle sales.

“It is unfortunate that Edmunds.com has had nothing but negative things to say about a wildly successful program that sold nearly 250,000 cars in its first four days alone,” said Bill Adams, spokesman for the Department of Transportation. “There can be no doubt that CARS drummed up more business for car dealers at a time when they needed help the most.”

So, $24,000 for each new car put on the road. That’s more than the MSRP on my new car with no additional features. So, one could look at it as though in order get 125,000 new cars on the road, the government (read: the taxpayers) had to buy 125,000 cars.

Is this something to be proud of? Are we expecting the government to subsidize car purchases just because it gets cars on the road and out of dealer lots? Where does it end if the Obama administration thinks they are seeing evidence that the only way to generate economic growth is to subsidize? They are already patting themselves on their backs over the Q3 GDP number… just what do you think they’ll justify doing next?

And who do you think is going to pay for it?

She endorses the Democrat:

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., was among those who urged Dierdre K. Scozzafava to endorse Democratic congressional candidate William L. Owens, the senator’s spokesman said Saturday.

The spokesman, Maxwell Young, said the senator called a number of north country political leaders after Ms. Scozzafava suspended her campaign and had more than one conversation with the Republican candidate ahead of her announcement. He said the senator also called other Democratic leaders about the situation, including White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Mr. Owens said he was “honored” by the endorsement.

This is the lady who seriously wanted our GOP support? Who wanted us to expend money and effort getting her in to the House?

Good riddance to bad rubbish – and GOP leaders, please take a hint!

UPDATE: Newt sees the light. A little late, but better late then never, I guess…