Mercedes Benz SLS AMG

Next year, if you have somewhere in the neighborhood of $200,000 to spend on your next car, Mercedes will be importing to the United States the spiritual successor to the legendary 1950s 300SL. It will even have gull-wing doors, and just watch what it can do.

2:54 video.

Hat tip to Jan Hartigan via Robert Breedlove.

Latest Der Untergang parody: 4:07 video

Hat tip to Anne Tiffin Taylor.

We knew it all along. The Onion has the story: 2:24 video.

Hat tip to Sarah Jenislawski.

BP Spills Coffee: 2:48 video. Unfair, but funny.

Hat tip to Ann Althouse.

SPC Bradley Manning

Back in April, Wikileaks released a video of a US Apache helicopter firing on a group of armed Iraqis in southeastern Baghdad on July 12, 2007.

The video appeared in a shorter and longer version, titled “Collateral Murder,” accompanied by an extremely partisan commentary expressing open opposition to the US military effort in Iraq. An Iraqi employed as a news photographer by Reuters and his driver were killed in the course of the helicopter’s attack.

The perspective taken by the videos editors was that the helicopter’s attack was unwarranted and a war crime, and the video was edited and annotated in a fashion designed to persuade its viewers to accept that interpretation.

In reality, the Apache was operating in close cooperation with US infantry looking for armed insurgents who had engaged American troops in fierce fighting nearby a little while earlier. The group of Iraqis encountered by the helicopter undoubtedly included armed men who, despite being “relaxed” at the time and not at the moment actively engaged in combat with American forces, could very reasonably be supposed to be some of the hostile insurgents being pursued.

The Reuters photographer’s equipment probably was mistaken for a weapon, but combat requires quick decisions based on limited and imperfect information. The level of restraint implicitly expected by the video’s producers is completely unreasonable. If a photographer is carrying equipment easily mistaken for arms and places himself in the immediate vicinity of enemy forces who are really armed, his being fired upon should be no surprise to anyone.

“Collateral Murder” is a deeply dishonest piece of anti-US propaganda, and as such it was, of course, enthusiastically covered by HuffPo, Dan Froomkin, Rachel Maddow, and the rest of the leftwing commentariat.

The source of the leak which made the Apache’s video available for use against the United States was a 22 year old Army Intelligence analyst who has just been arrested. Wired has the story:

SPC Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Maryland, was stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer, 40 miles east of Baghdad, where he was arrested nearly two weeks ago by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. A family member says he’s being held in custody in Kuwait, and has not been formally charged.

Manning was turned in late last month by a former computer hacker with whom he spoke online. In the course of their chats, Manning took credit for leaking a headline-making video of a helicopter attack that Wikileaks posted online in April. The video showed a deadly 2007 U.S. helicopter air strike in Baghdad that claimed the lives of several innocent civilians.

He said he also leaked three other items to Wikileaks: a separate video showing the notorious 2009 Garani air strike in Afghanistan that Wikileaks has previously acknowledged is in its possession; a classified Army document evaluating Wikileaks as a security threat, which the site posted in March; and a previously unreported breach consisting of 260,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables.

US Intelligence for a change moved rapidly on this one. The leak that made all the news was in early April.

It does seem odd that someone of such extreme leftwing views would not only be serving in the volunteer Army, but would have been assigned to work in Intelligence and given a Top Secret clearance. What does it take, one wonders, to be disqualified from high level clearances?

Cute blonde does a musical performance using only bubble wrap.

1:38 video

Hat tip to Doug Mataconis.

1:05 video CPR instructions (with nice lingerie).

Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan, though I don’t quite understand why he was interested.

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Woody Allen says it would be nice if Obama could be dictator for a few years.

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Elsewhere the left is getting nervous, a TPM reader speaks of a crisis of legitimacy.

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The New York Times exposes CT Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s lies about serving in Vietnam. Another noisy state attorney general with a long record of expanding boundaries and innovative litigation winds up in disgrace.

Walter Olson forwards a link to this YouTube 2:37 video performance of:

The Parting Glass

Oh all the money that e’er I had
I spent it in good company
And all the harm that e’er I’ve done
alas, it was to none but me
For all I’ve done for want of wit
to memory now I can’t recall
So fill to me the parting glass
good night and joy be with you all

Oh all the comrades that e’er I’ve had
they are sorry for my going away
And all the sweethearts that e’er I’ve had
they would wish me one more day to stay
But since it falls unto my lot
that I should rise and you should not
I’ll gently rise and softly call
good night and joy be with you all

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Not a high quality recording, but the singer has a very nice voice. She is from Derry, currently residing in New York, and says her name is Sheena.

I’m not sure what those two guys have to do with one another, but the video is amusing, Karen and I both like Joss Whedon‘s shows (Dollhouse not so much), and I tend to feel a personal responsibility in blogging to include as much Glenn Reynolds-friendly libertarian nerd culture material as possible. Besides, when I blog it, that means I don’t have to email it to friends.

2:10 video

Whedonesque — key Whedon fan-site providing information on new Whedon programming and a lot more than I want to know.

Hat tip to Brett via Karen L. Myers.

The democrats are in charge up in my home state of Pennsylvania, and this is what you get:

0:31 video

Some days it’s easy to be happy that I don’t live there anymore.

Baby moose (and family) discover the joys of a lawn sprinkler, Anchorage, Alaska, June 2008. In Europe, they call these elk.

3:52 video

Long a popular occasion for self congratulation on our side. 4:47 video

Hat tip to Bruce Kesler.