If you were a fan of Luis Miguel Rocha’s best-seller The Last Pope, here’s the good news and the bad news about his latest thriller, The Holy Bullet: THE GOOD NEWS It’s a fast-paced amusement park ride for the mind — fast-paced with an intricate plot. It’s another great book from the Portugal-born Rocha. THE BAD NEWS: It’s a book you won’t want to put down. You’ll likely stay up later than you want once you start it. Some of the reviews for this book...

Has Turkey been lost to the West? Caroline Glick thinks so: Once the apotheosis of a pro-Western, dependable Muslim democracy, this week Turkey officially left the Western alliance and became a full member of the Iranian axis. It isn’t that Ankara’s behavior changed fundamentally in recent days. There is nothing new in its massive hostility toward Israel and its effusive solicitousness toward the likes of Syria and Hamas. Since the Islamist AKP party first won control over the Turkish...

Pakistan is pressing its military battle against Taliban forces that seek to destabilize its government — and the region — into Taliban strongholds. in recent recent weeks, Taliban forces have staged a series of stunning attacks and now the Pakistan government seems to be saying in effect “it’s our turn.” Meanwhile, in Washington, recent Taliban bombings in Pakistan have been so dramatic that analysts say the violence is likely to be taken into account when President...

Fats Waller was one of the greatest jazz performers and showmen of the early-mid 20th century. Here he is performing his song “This Joint Is Jumpin” And one of his most delightful songs: “Your Feets Too Big”: Even though he died of double-pneumonia while on a train trip in 1943, he left a substantial recorded legacy that we can still enjoy.

A major story is breaking on the East Coast in New York City — a brutal gay beating hate crime that was caught on video tape. The victim, 49-year-old Jack Price, crawled to his apartment and managed to call police and identify his attackers before being rushed to a hospital where he is reportedly in a medically induced coma with multiple serious injuries. Here is the AP raw video embedded on You Tube offered with the embed codes (which means the AP allows for it to be embedded): Here’s...

The brazenness of partisan rhetoric each day hits new lows. And here is one for the books: For months since January 20, 2009 when President Barack Obama took over any bad economic news was attributed to Obama, even when he was in office for less than a month. But now the stock market has hit 10,000 and amid some gloomy economic news there are some positive signs — so Fox News’ Neil Cavuto calls it “the Bush recovery.” Get it? If health care reform passes with no or one...

Some good news/bad news on the economic front. The good news is that the Dow has approached 10,000. The bad news is that retail sales are still lousy. The good news: Stocks rallied Wednesday morning, with the Dow industrials nearly hitting the 10,000 level for the first time in a year, following better-than-expected quarterly profit reports from Intel and JPMorgan Chase. The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) gained 116 points, or 1.2%, to 9987, almost 2 hours into the session. The blue-chip average...

Our political Quote of the Day comes from conservative talk show host Michael Medved who, in a detailed column and analysis on Town Hall, argues that if the Republicans want to make their way out of the national political wilderness they need to do two things: (1)embrace conservative ideas (2)moderate their tone to reach out to actually win over moderates. But, wait: when you read his analysis in full there is a sense of de ja vu: isn’t he calling for a kind of Republicanism that the GOP offered...

Health care reform is now formally on the move with the Senate Finance Committee’s passage of a historic bill that got the support of all Democrats and one moderate Republican. If it isn’t the undisputed bipartisan vote that the White House sought, it isn’t the totally Democratic party vote that the White House feared. So it’s likely to advance the drive to come up with a bill by the end of the year — and accentuate pressures on lawmakers from those on both sides who...

The Huffington Post reports: Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) said Tuesday that she intends to vote for the Senate Finance Committee’s health care reform package. She cautioned that her vote should be seen as a sign of her faith in the process going forward, not as support for the final package that will arrive on the Senate floor. “Is this bill all that I would want? Far from it,” said Snowe. “Is it all that it can be? No. But when history calls, history calls, and I happen to...

The prediction: It’ll pass on a straight party line vote.

There was a cyberspace firestorm yesterday after an unnamed White House official took a swipe at progressive blogs (the White House later on the record tried to defuse the anger). Was it justified or not? Here’s a blunt take on the issue by Booman.

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The big political news story of the day — in fact, one of the biggest arguably in decades — will be the perhaps pivotal Senate Finance Committee vote on health care legislation. And, in that vote, most political eyes will be focused on Maine’s Republican Senator Olympia Snowe. Will she vote for the plan and give it at least a smattering of bipartisan aura? And, if she does, will she face political consequences in her party and perhaps at home? Or will she vote against it and instantaneously...

Our political Quote of the Day comes from Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, who looks at the GOP reaction over Barack Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize so early in his term: The problem for the addlebrained Obama-rejectionists is that the president, as far as they are concerned, couldn’t possibly do anything right, and thus is unworthy of any conceivable recognition. If Obama ended world hunger, they’d accuse him of promoting obesity. If he solved global warming, they’d...

Tasers are under fire in Australia where a manufacturer’s warning is seen as a possible bonanza for lawsuit seeking lawyers. The Courier-Mail reports: Manufacturer Taser International has issued the directive based on controversy over the impact of the stun guns on the human heart. It recommends Tasers instead be aimed at a suspect’s legs or back. Queensland Police are considering the directive as part of its revamped Taser training package to be rolled out next year. But criminal defence...

This will sway the world.

When 10 militants burst into Army headquarters in Pakistan in a dramatic bid to take military bigwigs hostage, it signaled a major escalation in the Taliban’s ongoing efforts to undermine Pakistan’s political and military establishment. The fact that the operation flopped on the face of it doesn’t obscure one fact: it was daring and it has put Pakistan’s military on the defensive and showed how vulnerable it is and can be. And, indeed, it turns out that the militants’...

Despite a thumbs down from much new and old media punditry, a new Gallup poll suggests that President Barack Obama’s surprising Nobel Peace Prize win may have boosted his approval rating: Barack Obama appears to have gotten a slight bounce in support after he was announced as the Nobel Peace Prize winner on Friday. His 56% job approval rating for the last two Gallup Daily tracking updates is up from a term-low 50% as recently as last week, and 53% in the three days before the Nobel winner was...

CNN’s controversial anchor Lou Dobbs, the CNN anchor many progressives love to hate, may be pondering a jump to Fox Business News, the New York Times reports: The anchor Lou Dobbs appears to be exploring an exit from CNN, his longtime employer. Certainly, Fox continues to aggressively bolster its on-air talent, most recently with the hiring of John Stossel, the libertarian investigative journalist from ABC News, for its spin-off channel, Fox Business. Mr. Dobbs, an administration critic who...

The latest — and biggest — political news is that the Democrats now seem poised to lose governor’s races in two key states, losses that will mean the old conventional political wisdom will be tossed out and the new narrative will be how the Democrats have seriously lost independent voter support and how the GOP’s hopes of regaining power soon are no longer perceived as unrealistic. The news in this Reuters report should be troubling to the Demmies: Democrats running for governor...

Our Quote (zinger) of the Day comes from the State Department’s spokesman, responding to a question about President Barack Obama winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize — an award that sparked a shower of criticism from Republicans: “Certainly from our standpoint, this gives us a sense of momentum — when the United States has accolades tossed its way, rather than shoes.” That’s the take of Hillary Clinton’s State Department on President Obama being awarded the Nobel...

When I was a kid in the 50s and 60s, the Miss America Pageant was a broadcasting national unifying event — earning whopping ratings, even though viewers had to endure host Bert Parks warbling “There She Is Miss America” (when I lived in India in the mid 70s I would play a tape of that to get back at the teenage son of a family with whom I lived and he’d beg me to stop. Parks also sang other songs and sometimes seemed on the same level as William Shatner as a singer). But...

Is this.

Here’s a video of President Barack Obama’s statement on winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. He says he will accept the award as a “call for action:”