Knife-wielding ISIS wannabe auto-darwinates himself at Parisian police station.

I have to agree with Instapundit: when you put on a fake suicide vest, then charge a French police station while screaming Allahu akbar and brandishing a knife, and the French cops then proceed to fill you full of bullets… that’s not really a fake suicide vest, is it?  I mean, it accomplished its purpose.  You successfully committed suicide.

I’d say ‘Well done,’ except that, according to my religion, this guy’s problems are pretty much just beginning.

Quote of the Day, You Don’t Need To Hear John Kerry’s Explanation edition.

RCP: “Secretary of State John Kerry explains why there are not any penalties for countries that do not respect the climate agreement made in Paris yesterday.”

…Do we need to even continue, here?  I mean, really. Further comment is pretty much superfluous. (Via Hot Air Headlines)

Some free advice to the University of Missouri people…

…why don’t you sit down, get comfortable, and pour yourself a nice, big glass of Shut The Hell Up?

Nobody really wants to hear about how much more awful your situation is than the one in Paris. Nobody wants to hear about how it’s merely just as bad. Hell’s bells, nobody really wants to hear about your damn situation at all.

Seriously. Shutting up is the smart call. You won’t regret it.

Barack Obama’s Harriet Miers moment. Seriously.

This is getting remarkable. We’re seeing some possibly unexpectedly hostile reactions to the administration’s decision not to send anybody to participate in France’s anti-terrorism unity march:

  • Mike Lupica: “Everybody knows how complicated this country’s relationship with France has been, in war and in peace. Certainly there have been times when the leaders of France could have done better by us. We should have done better by them on Sunday. Only you couldn’t find us.”
  • Jake Tapper: “I say this as an American — not as a journalist, not as a representative of CNN — but as an American: I was ashamed.”
  • Michael Tomasky: “Look, it’s just my opinion, but extraordinary event; it’s our fight too. I, as a citizen, feel underrepresented.”
  • Fareed Zakaria: “Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN’s “Global Public Square,” called the absence of top U.S. officials a mistake… France is the United States’ “deepest ideological ally,” he said, and it would have been a meaningful image to have a senior administration member, or the President, standing shoulder to shoulder with other leaders.” (via Gateway Pundit, who is doing his own round-up.)
  • The New York Daily News (endorsed Obama for President): “The United States of America, Barack Obama, President, was inexcusably absent from one of the most critical turning points in the war between radical Islam and the West since 9/11.”

Continue reading Barack Obama’s Harriet Miers moment. Seriously.

Probable Islamist attack in Paris: 11 dead at satirical magazine.

Via @PhilWillSays comes this report of Islamist* terror in Paris: “Armed men stormed the Paris offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday morning, killing 11 people and injuring more, French President François Hollande said. The men opened fire inside the magazine’s offices using automatic AK-47 rifles before fleeing, a police officer said.” The ‘Islamist’ bit is not yet confirmed; but, given that this isn’t the first time that the magazine has been violently attacked (not to mentioned threatened, criticized, and sued), and given that every other time it’s been over Charlie Hebdo’s willingness to ‘draw Mohammad’ – well, it’s a well-traveled road at this point, no?

The French actually do not suffer as many attacks like these as one might expect, given how often their banlieues riot.  And I fully expect that the French anti-terror domestic security apparatus will be doing quite a bit to make sure that future attacks of this sort are discouraged.  That’s a polite, bloodless way of saying “Roughly several hundred people involved in radical Islamism will be snatched off of French streets in the next few weeks, and then tortured** for information. Many will not survive the process.” I don’t think that this is actually a superior way to handle things – frankly, it reeks of a colonialist mindset that has plagued Europeans for the last six decades –  but it is very much a French way of handling things.

In the meantime, our prayers and thoughts for the people attacked and murdered.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Note suffix.  That is not a request, by the way.

**No, I don’t mean water-boarding. I mean the stuff that you don’t want to think about too much.

Most museums have a list, actually.

Sure, this is sort of satirical: Art World Relieved As Thieves Steal Pretty Terrible Late Period Renoir Work

CHICAGO—The art world let out a collective sigh of relief Tuesday when it was announced that thieves had made off with one of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s more god-awful late-period paintings, 1919’s The Great Bathers (The Nymphs). “The palette was too rosy, the brushstrokes were something out of a college art class, and Renoir’s gift for capturing his subject’s inner mystery seemed to have completely abandoned him—in short, it was garbage and I’m glad it’s gone,” said Malcolm Stewart, a curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, which has done little to assist the police in their investigation.

…but as I understand it a lot of museums have artworks that they sort of can’t stand, but have to display for a variety of reasons, usually involving a bequest. One museum in Paris – I forget which one – bit the bullet and put all of their really bad art in a room, on the principle that they had the finest collection of really bad art in Europe, by God, and they were going to show it off.

I have to say, the French are very good at museums. For that matter, when I went to Paris in the Nineties everyone was quite nice to the American.

Moe Lane