CALIFORNIA YANKEE

Dem playbook in action, voting machines stealing Colorado

Some of you may remember how much fun the vote count was in Florida back in 2000. It seemed destined to go on forever until the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in. More of you may remember 2004 the last time we had a brutal get out the vote fight down to the wire. The DNC's 2004 Colorado Election Manual is a helpful reminder of what Democrats can be expected to do to try win President Obama's reelection. Page 54 of the manual instructs:

"If no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a pre-emptive strike..." 

With the presidential contest too close to call, Obama's Justice Department dispatching hundreds of lawyers to 23 states and Democrats having 2,500 lawyers stationed across Ohio, 600 in Cuyahoga County alone, to "monitor" elections there are bound to be more shenanigans than we can imagine. Don't forget Obama's Attorney General decided not to go after the New Black Panther Party members who were intimidating voters in 2008.

So it is troubling that we are hearing numerous reports of voting machines recording votes intended for Romney as votes for Obama.

Colorado's KRDO NewsChannel 13 reports that the Colorado Secretary of State's Office is investigating after more than a dozen Pueblo voters say voting machines switched their pick from Mitt Romney to Barack Obama.

One Romney voter, told KRDO that when she hit the touchscreen for Romney, a check mark appeared next to Obama's name. She said she asked for help to fix the problem, but still feels unsure about her vote:

"I wonder where my vote really counted," she said.

Pueblo County Clerk and Recorder Gilbert Ortiz says that voters have several chances to change their ballot before casting it, and said everyone who's experienced a problem has gotten help and voted how they intended to.

According to KDRO, some are worried that some voters may not notice the machine error, and this problem could persist on election day.

Chuck Schneider, a poll watcher who said he learned of the problem from a Democratic election judge said:

"How many more times has this occurred? None of us know. This could have a significant effect on the election in this county."

Pueblo Republican Chair Becky Mizel said this highlights the importance of voters double checking their print out ballot before casting their vote. She also expects the clerk's office to notify voters of the problem:

"At the very minimum, we would expect the county clerk's office to post a note on the door (of polling places) and have judges tell our voters there could be a problem with the DRE machine."

Similar "machine voting error" is also being investigated in Mesa and Arapahoe counties and, Fox News reports, in six other states -- Kansas, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio. You can watch Eric Shawn report on the Ohio voting machine machinations here.

The Republican National Committee has sent a letter to election officials in the seven states where voters have reported machines switching votes from Romney to Obama demanding tighter controls on touch-screen machines. In the letter the RNC asked for the following:

1. All voting machines be re-calibrated before Election Day.
2. Additional technicians in the event of further issues.
3. Sign notification reminding voters to double-check the correctness of their ballot in the machine before final submission.
4. Verbal guidance to remind voters to make sure that the ballot they cast is correct. 

You can read the entire letter here.

When I first first heard the claims of voting machines stealing Romney votes I didn't put much stock in it. But now that there are so many such reports spread across seven states, the complaints must be taken seriously. It also makes one wonder whether the false allegations that Romney was rigging voting machines was actually a cover story for some nefarious scheme to steal Romney votes.

It's going to be an interesting week.

Obama failed to heal the planet

Remember back on the last night of voting in the primary campaign for the 2008 presidential nomination, when then Senator Barack Obama had the audacity to promise to heal the world?:

"But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it … then I am absolutely certain that generations from now … this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal…"

Obama's promise to heal the world is from his June 3, 2008 remarks he gave in Minneapolis, Minnesota. If you are one of those context folks or nuancing so-called fact checkers, you can find a transcript of Obama's heal the world speech here.

Today, the Romney campaigned released a new web video, "Healed?" The video takes President Obama to task for his failure to deliver on his promise to "heal" the planet.

You can watch "healed?" below:

The video offers several examples of evidence demonstrating that Obama failed to heal the planet.

On April 22, 2011, Barry Peterson of CBS news reported that "tens of thousands demonstrators took to the streets in Syria to only to face bullets. Barry Petersen reports on what witnesses called the bloodiest day in the five week uprising against a regime that seems ever more desperate."

On August 3, 2012 the United Nations General Assembly, by a vote of 133 for, 12 against and 31 abstaining,  overwhelmingly denounced Syria’s deadly crackdown on "rebels" and demanded the lockdown of Syria's chemical and biological weapons.

During the September 16, 2012-edition of "Meet the Press," NBC's David Gregory noted there were "new tensions between the Obama administration and Israel." During his interview during that broadcast Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that "I always say the danger of not acting in time is much greater because Iran with nuclear weapons would mean that the kind of fanaticism that you see storming your embassies would have a nuclear weapon."

During the September 24, 2012-edition of MSNBC’s "Morning Joe," Chuck Todd reported about Obama's failure to get Russia to help resolve the civil war in Syria:

"And let’s be realistic here. Russia’s standing in the way of doing anything in Syria. Okay? That’s a foreign policy failure on the President’s part."

The new "healed?" video also reminds us about Obama's assurance to the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he can be more flexible concerning America's missile defenses after he is reelected. Surely four more years of a more flexible Obama won't heal the world any more than the last four years have.

The new video has it right, "The world can’t afford four more years."

'Shell-shocked' team Obama whines and plays a blame game over debate loss

Shell-shocked by Governor Romney's terrific debate performance, especially juxtaposed to President Obama's lackadaisical performance in front of a television audience of  about 67.5 million, team Obama is flailing around whining and pointing fingers of blame at each other.

Failing to convince any fair-minded person that Obama lost the debate because, as the Obama campaign continues to falsely claim, Romney lied; that the mile high altitude, which didn't bother Obama during his TelePrompted infamous Greek Column speech, was the reason for Obama's drubbing; or that it was because of something the moderator, Jim Lehrer, did or didn't do -- the Obama team has moved to blaming each other.

At Breitbart, Alexander Marlow reports that Obama's team is so distraught over Obama's debate shellacking they are throwing Senator John Kerry under the bus. They blame Secretary of State wannabe Kerry for being too diplomatic while playing Romney during Obama's debate practice.

Marlow quotes Norah O'Donnell and Bill Plante from CBS's "This Morning":

Norah O'Donnell: "Some Democrats say [Obama's] campaign needs a wake-up call.  Bill Plante is here with that part of the story.  Bill, you've been talking to your sources; what are they saying?

Correspondent Bill Plante: "Well Norah, they're simply upset and really outraged. They blame the President's team, first of all, for not preparing him to meet the challenge of an aggressive Mitt Romney. They say that nobody in the room challenged him, including the guy that he was debating with, John Kerry, because, as they say, he wants to be Secretary of State so he's not going to get in the President's face. And Presidents are used to deference; they're not used to people challenging them like that. So they think that the debate prep was terrible, but they also fault the President himself for not understanding that Romney was going to be more aggressive."

It is peculiar to see the Obama campaign blaming John Kerry for Romney cleaning Obama's debate clock, especially in light of the fact the President's deputy campaign manager and sometimes spokesperson, Stephanie Cutter, was communications director for  Kerry’s failed presidential campaign when it melted down in 2004. I remember article after article blaming Cutter for the Kerry's loss. Is team Obama pointing the finger at the wrong person to be the next victim under the Obama bus.?

 At The Daily Beast, James Warren quotes William Daley as admitting that Romney's "extremely good night" is a "big advantage." Warren also credits Obama campaign aides with using the term 'shell-shocked'  to describe the Obama campaign's reaction to the debate:

At least two current Obama campaign aides were more blunt than Daley and used the term “shell-shocked” over the Obama performance. There were various analyses of what went wrong, including finger-pointing at debate preparations. Those included claims that Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, who played the role of Romney in mock debates, probably wasn’t tough and aggressive enough. (“He does, after all, want to be Secretary of State,” claimed one aide.)

So much for the formerly much ballyhooed nonchalant and diffident "No Drama Obama." I guess that was too much of what was obviously incorrectly perceived to be a good thing.

Meanwhile, in an effort to recover ground lost by Romney's debate take down of Obama, Senior Strategist for Obama's re-election campaign, David Axelrod, is taking over the debate preparation for Vice President Biden for the debate this Thursday with Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan. Axelrod's takeover is already raising expectations for a great debate performance from Biden who wasn't able to win the 2008 vice presidential debate Sarah Palin.

Debate Newsfeed

Romney vs. Obama still too close to call

Rasmussen Reports' daily presidential tracking poll for Thursday, Sept. 27, 2012, finds the presidential race tied at 46 percent for both Governor Romney and President Obama. If you count "leaners," it’s tied at 48 percent. 

The Rasmussen tracker has had Romney and Obama tied or within a point of each other for each of the seven days since we reported  that Obama's seven point lead went up in the smoke of burning U.S. flags and diplomatic missions.

Rasmussen's Electoral College projections also show a close race -- Obama: 237, Romney: 196, and nine states representing 105 electoral votes still toss-ups. Obama has a small lead in Florida, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin. Romney is similarly ahead in Colorado, Iowa, Missouri and New Hampshire.

This race is far from over.

Before you criticize my reliance on Rasmussen, consider the organization's record. In 2004, Rasmussen was the only firm to project totals for both President George W. Bush and  Senator John Kerry within half a percentage point. In 2008, Rasmussen was again right on the money. If you don't want to take Rasmussen's word for it you can go to Wikipedia. 

And while we are discussing polls, get over the skewed poll issue. I have also been guilty of complaining about the over sampling of Democrats in most of the major polls. I have now gone back and looked at the 2004 campaign and discovered that in September 2004, the lefties were complaining bitterly about major polls over sampling Republicans.

Forget the polls and the main stream media's effort to convince everyone Obama has already won.

Obama permanently out to lunch

When even the media is starting to point out that the incumbent president is too busy campaigning for re-election to govern, you know you have a problem.

Yet that's precisely what the Associated Press noticed in a new report this morning. The first line: "It’s awfully quiet at the White House these days."

Sure, when you have a president who spends most of his time on the trail spinning rhetoric and fundraising for his campaign coffers, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will tend to be "awfully quiet." This might explain why while our Libyan ambassador is dead and our embassies are under repeated siege, the White House still appears to know next to nothing about what went down in Benghazi. Even top Senate Republicans are fuming today that they are learning more details from the New York Times than from closed-door State Department briefing. Unemployment is rising in half of the states, and US industrial production is falling at the sharpest rate in three years, and our President is focused on hard-hitting interviews with radio hosts like Pimp with the Limp. On David Letterman, he casually admitted that he doesn’t know what the national debt is, and that it’s not a pressing concern.

Obama said this week that he has learned you "can't change Washington from the inside." Apparently his solution is to go AWOL. It’s definitely not going to change from his campaign re-election HQ in Chicago.

The good news is that every day Americans are not stupid. We notice when our leader is out to lunch. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are talking to voters, discussing real issues, with no spin. Yesterday, Paul Ryan spoke to the AARP about the urgent need to repeal ObamaCare. He was booed (no surprise there considering that AARP is set to profit handsomely from the legislation). Standing up to special interests, that is real leadership, and miles above what we've been getting from the White House lately.

The main street media, also known as the biased media wing of the Democrats' party, can and will do their best to hide this contrast from the American people. That might be why Gallup has reported that trust in the media has reached a depressing but unsurprising low. But real leadership is not something that can be hidden from the voters, and failures in leadership cannot be easily brushed away.

Happy 'Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation' day

One hundred and fifty years ago, on Sept. 22, 1862, Republican President Abraham Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, announcing his intention to free the slaves in the states rebelling against the Union.

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy thereof, do hereby proclaim and declare that hereafter, as heretofore, the war will be prosecuted for the object of practically restoring the constitutional relation between the United States, and each of the States, and the people thereof, in which States that relation is, or may be, suspended or disturbed.

That it is my purpose, upon the next meeting of Congress to again recommend the adoption of a practical measure tendering pecuniary aid to the free acceptance or rejection of all slave States, so called, the people whereof may not then be in rebellion against the United States and which States may then have voluntarily adopted, or thereafter may voluntarily adopt, immediate or gradual abolishment of slavery within their respective limits; and that the effort to colonize persons of African descent, with their consent, upon this continent, or elsewhere, with the previously obtained consent of the Governments existing there, will be continued.

That on the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

That the executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States, and part of States, if any, in which the people thereof respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof shall, on that day be, in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States, by members chosen thereto, at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States.

That attention is hereby called to an Act of Congress entitled "An Act to make an additional Article of War" approved March 13, 1862, and which act is in the words and figure following:

"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That hereafter the following shall be promulgated as an additional article of war for the government of the army of the United States, and shall be obeyed and observed as such:

"Article-All officers or persons in the military or naval service of the United States are prohibited from employing any of the forces under their respective commands for the purpose of returning fugitives from service or labor, who may have escaped from any persons to whom such service or labor is claimed to be due, and any officer who shall be found guilty by a court martial of violating this article shall be dismissed from the service.

"Sec.2. And be it further enacted, That this act shall take effect from and after its passage."

Also to the ninth and tenth sections of an act entitled "An Act to suppress Insurrection, to punish Treason and Rebellion, to seize and confiscate property of rebels, and for other purposes," approved July 17, 1862, and which sections are in the words and figures following:

"Sec.9. And be it further enacted, That all slaves of persons who shall hereafter be engaged in rebellion against the government of the United States, or who shall in any way give aid or comfort thereto, escaping from such persons and taking refuge within the lines of the army; and all slaves captured from such persons or deserted by them and coming under the control of the government of the United States; and all slaves of such persons found on (or) being within any place occupied by rebel forces and afterwards occupied by the forces of the United States, shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be forever free of their servitude and not again held as slaves.

"Sec.10. And be it further enacted, That no slave escaping into any State, Territory, or the District of Columbia, from any other State, shall be delivered up, or in any way impeded or hindered of his liberty, except for crime, or some offence against the laws, unless the person claiming said fugitive shall first make oath that the person to whom the labor or service of such fugitive is alleged to be due is his lawful owner, and has not borne arms against the United States in the present rebellion, nor in any way given aid and comfort thereto; and no person engaged in the military or naval service of the United States shall, under any pretence whatever, assume to decide on the validity of the claim of any person to the service or labor of any other person, or surrender up any such person to the claimant, on pain of being dismissed from the service."

And I do hereby enjoin upon and order all persons engaged in the military and naval service of the United States to observe, obey, and enforce, within their respective spheres of service, the act, and sections above recited.

And the executive will in due time recommend that all citizens of the United States who shall have remained loyal thereto throughout the rebellion, shall (upon the restoration of the constitutional relation between the United States, and their respective States, and people, if that relation shall have been suspended or disturbed) be compensated for all losses by acts of the United States, including the loss of slaves.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington this twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord, one thousand, eight hundred and sixty-two, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty seventh.

[Signed:] Abraham Lincoln
By the President

[Signed:] William H. Seward
Secretary of State

President Lincoln didn't officially free the slaves in the Confederacy until the formal Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863. According to Wikipedia, Lincoln first discussed the proclamation with his cabinet in July 1862. He believed he needed a Union victory on the battlefield so his decision would appear positive and strong.

The Battle of Antietam in Maryland, the bloodiest single day in American military history, gave Lincoln his opportunity. In the battle almost 23,000 Union and Confederate soldiers dead, wounded, missing or captured. Military historians consider the battle a draw. President Lincoln called it a Union victory and said it showed that the Union army could enforce orders coming out of Washington. Five days later, Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. When it went into effect on January 1, 1863, it freed slaves in the rebellious Confederate states and made the abolition of slavery an official U.S. policy. 

President Lincoln deserves much credit for the emancipation. As Frederick Douglass said during his speech at the unveiling on the Emancipation Memorial, in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C.:

"Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined."

The only surviving version of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in Lincoln's handwriting is on display as part of "The First Step to Freedom" exhibition at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem through Monday. The exhibit  is on an eight-city tour of New York state:

September 21-24: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York City
September 27: The Oncenter, Syracuse
October 5-6: Burchfield Penny Art Center, Buffalo
October 15-16: Tilles Center for the Performing Arts at LIU Post and Greenvale
October 19: Plattsburgh State Art Museum, Plattsburgh
October 27-28: Rochester Museum and Science Center, Rochester
November 1: Roberson Museum and Science Center, Binghamton
November 9-10: New York State Museum, Albany

Obama's seven point lead up in smoke

Gallup's Presidential Election tracking poll for September 5-11 had President Obama leading Governor Romney by seven points 50% to 43%.

Now the Gallup tracking poll shows that Obama's seven point lead has gone up in the smoke from burning U.S. embassies. For the last two days Obama only leads Romney by a single point. That is why the biased media wing of the Democrats' party is desperately trying its darnedest to convince you the election is over.

As Obama's convention bounce rose to seven points, we saw the smoke from the burning U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya and we saw the smoke from the remains of the stars and stripes that riotous Muslim mobs pulled down from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt. We also learned al Qaeda attacked the American-lead multinational peacekeeping force in the Sinai. They also attacked a U.S. Marine base in Southern Afghanistan in an effort to kill Britain's Prince Harry.

The next day, September 12, we learned that four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Stevens, were killed in what the Obama regime finally admits was a terrorist attack in Benghazi. We also saw the smoke from the U.S. Embassy in Tunis, Tunisia, as more riotous Muslim mobs attacked there, in Khartoum,Sudan and Sana'a, Yemen.

On September 13, we learned that Obama did not attend any of his daily intelligence briefings since September 5. Obama didn't care enough about the fact that our adversaries are known to use the anniversary of 9/11 to target the United States to attend intelligence briefings during the six days before the terrorists' 9/112012 offensive. American Crossroads took Obama to task for his lackadaisical approach to critical foreign policy issues in this hard hitting video.

On September 16, we saw Susan Rice, Obama's ambassador to the United Nations, appear on several of the Sunday morning news shows and mislead the American people by claiming the vicious attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was unplanned and provoked only by an anti-Islam video.

The hateful Muslim mobs have continued their rioting against American and the Obama administration was forced to close the U.S. consulate in Medan, Indonesia on September 19, due to ongoing "protests." An event which disproves Obama's naive belief that he could just say nice things, and because he had lived in Islamic country of Indonesia during his youth and his half-sister is Muslim, the Muslim hate for America would dissipate. On September 21, all U.S. diplomatic missions in Indonesia will be closed. 

So it is not at all surprising that the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that Obama's approval rating on foreign policy has dropped five points since August. Now, only 49 percent approve of the president's job in handling foreign policy. Last month, 54 percent approved of Obama's foreign-policy handling. Worse, only 41 percent of Independents approve of Obama's foreign-policy handling, versus 53 percent who did so last month.

The biased media incorrectly insisted Romney was wrong to Obama's incoherent response to the Cairo debacle, and to question Obama's now discredited policies of appeasement and apology that have left us so dangerously vulnerable in the Middle East and still hated in the Muslim world.

The lesson to be learned from the terrorists' 9/11/12 offensive is that despite Obama's protestations to the contrary, the War Against Terror is not over, and Governor Romney was right to criticize Obama for sending mixed signals about the violence of the hateful Muslim mobs.

Obama is the problem

Today, American Crossroads launched a new television ad that takes President Obama to task for "bad decisions" which have made it difficult for small businesses to create jobs.

In the ad  small business owners cite increased taxes, rising health care expenses, and burdensome regulations, to make the case that Obama is destroying small businesses – the most important job engine of the U.S. economy.

Watch the new ad:

The ad is titled, "Next," but I prefer the "Obama is the problem" tag line that appears at the end of the ad.

Crossroads is spending $8.3 million to run the new ad in eight battleground states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia.

American Crossroads director of state and regional media relations Nate Hodson said Obama's excessive regulation causes uncertainty:

"With Barack Obama calling the shots in the White House, entrepreneurs feel threatened and admit they are uncertain of their ability to create jobs. President Obama would rather make small business owners the enemy than take responsibility for mismanaging the economy over the last four years."

During Obama's presidency the total cost of regulations has increased 49 percent — from $1.17 trillion to $1.75 trillion.

There is a reason there aren't more jobs. Obama has made a lot of bad decisions.

Do not submit

Do you have enough faith in you religious convictions and your belief in the First Amendment to refuse to submit to the murderous Muslim religious zealots who not only believe, but actually preach, that it is okay to murder innocent people simply because you perceive yourself to be offended by something?

I'd like to think I do. My friend Peter Ingemi, also known as DaTechGuy, proved he does. After a fatwa was issued by one of those murderous Muslim religious zealots calling on the Muslim youth in America and Europe to kill the director, the producer and the actors and everyone who helped and promoted the so-called film, "Innocence of Muslims," Peter posted this video titled, "I will not submit to Islam."

Peter describes his video as follows:

"My response to the declaration of FATWA on anyone who makes a film insulting Islam, come and get me you murderous bastards, I won't give up my 1st Amendment rights I'm a American."

Before you say you are that courageous think about the ordeal the murderous Muslim religious zealots have put some folks through when they have been unable to actually have them murdered. Think about Salman Rushdie, who has been living in hiding and under police protection since 1989. Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie's death following the publication of Rushdie’s 1988 prize winning book, The Satanic Verses.

Like Peter, Salman Rushdie is courageous. He eloquently denounces the murderous Muslim zealots. Here is some of what he had to say during an interview broadcast yesterday on NPR's "Morning Edition.":

"STEVE INSKEEP: What do you think when you hear about violence in the Muslim world, because people perceive that their religion has been insulted?

SALMAN RUSHDIE: Yeah. Well, what I would say, in a general sense, is that I feel that something has gone wrong inside the Muslim world, because I can remember - within my living memory - when some of these now-beleaguered, embattled cities like Beirut, Tehran, Damascus, Baghdad, when these were cosmopolitan, outward-looking, cultured cities which were interested in the rest of the world and were much more like open societies.

And the fact that, in the last half-century, these cultures seem to have slid backwards into medievalism and repression is one of the - I think it's one of the great self-inflicted wounds. And out of that comes the rise of this new, much harsher Islam, come all these phenomena that you're talking about: the thin-skinnedness, the paranoia, the ease with which violence is engaged in, the readiness to believe that it's OK to kill people if you declare yourself offended by something. This is the mindset of the fanatic, the mindset of the tyrant. And it's a real shame that it seems to have spread so widely across the Muslim world.

INSKEEP: You're saying that it says more about the perpetrators of violence than it does about whatever was written that offended them.

RUSHDIE: Yes, of course. Of course it does. I mean, I think if we wish to live in any kind of a moral universe, we must hold the perpetrators of violence responsible for the violence they perpetrate. It's very simple. The criminal is responsible for the crime. I mean, it's quite clear that this YouTube film is a disgraceful, shoddy little thing. And it's, I think, perfectly proper to condemn it and the people who made it. But to murder people who had nothing to do with it because you deem yourself insulted and therefore other people's blood can randomly be spilled, that's clearly a deeply uncivilized attitude [Emphasis added]."

I can't say it any better than that.