Can Stupidity Suddenly Accelerate As Well?

So, as we all know, Toyota cars are death traps. Yes, these seemingly normal cars can suddenly accelerate -- without warning! -- to frightening speeds, even while the drivers try to stop. Something. Must. Be. Done. Or so our fearless lawmakers tell us.

Okay, but, umm, what causes the cars to accelerate? As Jeremy Anwyl, CEO of the car info website Edmunds.com, wrote in the Washington Post today, no one has yet shown a mechanical flaw despite vigorous testing:

We tried to re-create the circumstances surrounding some recent incidents. We took the highest-horsepower Toyota Camry to the test track to see whether the brakes could stop a runaway vehicle -- which they can. Next we looked at the Toyota Prius. We found that when the vehicle is accelerating, a simple tap of the transmission shifter into neutral disengages the throttle, and the vehicle coasts to a halt -- even if the brakes are not applied.

What does all this mean? As our testing confirms and government regulators and Toyota have said recently, it is extremely difficult to re-create the out-of-control incidents being reported.

Over at National Review Online, Walter Olson, who runs the outstanding Overlawyered.com website, argues that the reason may not be technical. It may be because the knuckleheads who are the victims of these "sudden acceleration incidents" causing them by stepping on the gas instead of the brake:

You know those unseen and undetectable gremlins that hide in Toyota’s electronic throttle controls? Turns out they have it in for elderly drivers. The Los Angeles Times has compiled a list of 56 fatal incidents over 19 years purportedly involving unintended Toyota acceleration, and according to my Overlawyered co-blogger Ted Frank — in a Thursday analysis refined and extended the next day by Megan McArdle of The Atlantic — the age of the driver can be publicly ascertained in a little more than half the instances. That median age turns out to be 60 — that is to say, half the drivers were that old or older. By contrast, only 16 percent of general auto fatalities in 2008 occurred with a driver 60 or older behind the wheel. Whatever is causing Avalons, Highlanders, and Tundras to misbehave is largely bypassing drivers in their twenties and thirties and instead homing in on drivers old enough to remember the Eisenhower era. (emphasis added)

As Reason's Ron Bailey notes there is a precedent for this kind of consumer scare. It hit the makers of the Audi 5000 in the late 1980s. And it turned out to be completely bogus:

Twenty-five years ago, sudden acceleration fears focused on the Audi 5000. At the time, most experts concluded that the drivers were mistakenly pushing the accelerator when they thought they were applying the brakes. Not surprisingly, pushing an accelerator accelerates a car. But in November 1986, the CBS television program 60 Minutes featured a mom who had run over her kid in her Audi. To illustrate the Audi menace, the CBS program also showed an Audi—rigged with a hidden canister of compressed air—lurching out of control.

By 1989, Audi was a plaintiff in 120 sudden acceleration lawsuits claiming damages amounting to $5 billion. Finally, in 1989, the Canadian government issued a report blaming the sudden acceleration on “driver error.” Two months later, a NHTSA report found the cause to be “pedal misapplication,” a euphemism for driver error.

Confirmed: John Edwards Co-Starred in Preggers Porn Video

Since our last post on the subject of John Edwards, a few more details of the alleged porn video have leaked out. First off we can scratch the "alleged" part. Edwards' mistress confirmed its existence by filing an injunction against ex-Edwards aide and tell-all book author Andrew Young releasing the tape.

Thesmokinggun.com has the documents:

According to an affidavit filed yesterday in North Carolina Superior Court, Hunter reported that she was having an "intimate relationship" with Edwards in 2006, and that the video was made around September of that year.

ABC News reports more details. Namely that the woman in the video is large and in charge:

Though Young never saw the woman's face in the tape, he said she was "visibly pregnant" and was "wearing a bracelet" and a "thumb ring" typically worn by Rielle Hunter.

"It's her jewelry," Andrew Young's wife, Cheri, told ABC News. "It could be on another woman with the same jewelry."

The Washington Post meanwhile notes a fascinating possibility. There may be multiple videos out there starring Edwards:

It remains unclear if Hunter's 2006 tape is the same one that Young claims to have found. Young admits the pregnant woman's face is never visible in the tape. Furthermore, Hunter gave birth to her and Edwards's daughter, Frances Quinn, more than a year after she says her 2006 "private" video was made.(Emphasis added.)

So Edwards has a thing for making amateur porn videos starring himself with pregnant chicks? Nahh, probably not; I'm guessing it is Hunter in the tape and somebody is just confused over the dates.

Oh, the ABC story has this other great tidbit:

Young claims that Edwards even called upon him in late May 2007 to convince Hunter to terminate her pregnancy.

"The senator tried to convince her to have an abortion. ... He tried to convince me to convince Rielle to have an abortion," Young told Woodruff.

"She [Hunter] asked me if I were in her shoes what would I do. And if I said, 'I'm pro-choice, but after having had three kids, if you're asking me what I would do, no, I would not do it,'" Young recalled of his conversation with Hunter.

Young claims that Edwards was infuriated with him for not convincing Hunter and stressed that he was not certain the baby was his because Hunter was a "weird slut and a freak." (Emphasis added.)

Stay classy, Edwards.

Senator Bow Chicka Wow?

Former senator and vice presidential candidate John Edwards is doing relief work in Haiti right now in a fairly obvious attempt at rehabilitating his name, i.e., get good press. Well, work hard senator.

Gawker reports that Edwards made a sex tape with the mistress that he knocked up:

Sources have told us that, in the throes of their affair, John Edwards and Rielle Hunter made a sex tape that contains "several sex acts." And that his aide, Andrew Young found it on an unmarked DVD.

The tape, say both our sources, is explicit and reveals that Edwards "is physically very striking, in a certain area. Everyone who sees it says 'whoa'. She's behind the camera at first."

And that is of course just the thing you want to leave lying around if you are running of the United States. Even Bill Clinton is shaking his head and saying, "Fucking amateur ..."

If it sounds like I am taking an unseemly delight in Edwards' troubles it is because I am. He is a lying, sleazy, narcissistic scumbag whose champion of the downtrodden pose is complete pr bullshit. I don't have the slightest doubt that he would not be in Haiti if there were not reporters and cameras to see him. And yet twice, if history had been slightly different, he would have gotten in the White House. What a country.

Some Thoughts On The Tragedy In Haiti

What he said.

State Of The Union 2010: From Hope To "Help"

Good evening, folks. I've been away from TtP for a while, so I'll try to make up for that by live-blogging the president's State of the Union address tonight. How will the Supremely Chill One spin the generally crappy state of the economy, his stalled legislative agenda and the fact that the Saints somehow made it to the Superbowl? Stay tuned ...

Update, 7:53 pm -- Okay, here is the TtP SOTU drinking game rules. Drink every time the Leader of the Free World:

1- Says Americans want Washington to act all bipartisan ... by passing his agenda.

2- Says the health care reform bill is just too important to the American people to be abandoned.

3- Attacks Wall Street greed.

4- Says he made some mistakes, then immediately glosses past them.

5- Says he will fight for American jobs.

6- Says we are failing future generations by not getting the nation's finances in order.

There, that should leave all of you as wrecked as Haiti by the time the speech is over.

Update 8:17 p.m. -- CNN reports the first real news of the evening: Obama may call for the end of the Pentagon's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy tonight. As somebody who is neither gay nor in the military, this doesn't really concern me much, but if a gay dude wants to pick up a rifle and shoot terrorists I am not going to object. Heck, I've met lesbians who were at least scary as anything on HBO's Oz. Why not send them to Afghanistan or where ever the fighting is?

Update 8:23 p.m. -- In case this evening wasn't enough of a downer, Anderson Cooper says the Haitian government is no longer bothering to bury the country's dead. They are just dumping them by the side of the road.

Update 8:26 p.m. -- Rob, on Twitter: "is that anderson coopers boyfriend? oh...it's just sanjay gupta."

Update 8:32 p.m. -- CNN notes that while this is Obama's first State of the
Union address, this is the third (or was it fourth?) time he has spoken to a joint session of Congress. Hmm ... Well, you cannot say he is not getting his message out. Double hmm, maybe that is his problem ...

Update 8:36 p.m. -- Whoa, Dr. C. Everett "Wear a condom" Koop just appeared in an ad basically echoing Sarah Palin's Democrats-want-to-create-death-panels argument. My thoughts on the subject here.

Update 8:40 p.m. -- For the record, I am drinking Miller Light while watching this. Why? 'Cause it is recession, dammit. As I write this, CNN is showing the presidential limo. Nice to know he is doing well, though I am a little disappointed that he has not pimped the limo out a little more. Of course, it is hard to beat basic black.

Update 8:44 p.m. -- Just saw an Allstate commercial starring that black guy who played the president on "24". If I get drunker and they keep running that ad this could get confusing.

Update 8:48 p.m. -- Just saw Al Franken on the floor. I keep forgetting that Stuart Smalley really is a senator now. Do you think that if Chris Farley had lived, he could have made it to Washington? He couldn't possible be worse than our current chief of homeland security.

Update 8:56 p.m. -- The glare from Joe Biden's forehead is distracting.

Update 8:59 p.m. -- Oh, shit. CNN just said the speech will run 70-75 minutes. Time to break out the whiskey after all. This is going to be an ass-number.

Update 9:02 p.m. -- Hey, did you know that Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor is a Latina? Damn, how did I miss that?

Update 9:05 p.m. -- Rob on Twitter: "the housing sec is the guy who leads the country if someone blows up the capitol??"

Update 9:07 p.m. -- So, was Bill Bennett the guy who played Norm on "Cheers"? I forget ...

Update 9:09 p.m. -- Okay, the Supremely Chill One has arrived. And we are off ...

Update 9:10 p.m. -- I don't know why, but Mrs. Obama looks pissed.

Update 9:13 p.m. -- Rob says he'd bone Nancy Pelosi. Well, that makes one of us.

Update 9:15 p.m. -- "... and my fellow Americans." What, no shout-out to his homeboys back in Illinois?

Update 9:16 p.m. -- "One year ago I took office in the midst of two wars ..." Which, ahem, are still ongoing ...

Update 9:17 p.m. -- So, the American people want Congress to work together. Drink.

Update 9:18 p.m. -- "It is time Americans get a government that matches their decency." Oh, shit, not that ...

Update 9:19 p.m. -- So he hated, hated the bank bailout but had no choice but to do it? If only he could get elected to some prominent political position where he could figure out some alternative way of dealing with the problem.

Update 9:22 p.m. -- "Let me repeat: We cut taxes." You didn't cut mine, buddy.

Update 9:23 p.m. -- So, we are on track to add one million jobs by the end of the year? Well, I am so fucking glad we spent that $787 BILLION to get one million jobs. What a deal that was!

Update 9:30 p.m. -- "These steps won't make up for the 7 million jobs that have been lost." Then what the fuck are we all doing here listening to you?

Update 9:35 p.m. -- "I am not interested in punishing banks ... but we can not allow financial institutions to take risks with our economy." Well, which is it? Are they evil or not?

Update 9:37 p.m. -- Okay he's giving it up for nuclear power AND offshore drilling? Maybe he really is getting past the old politics ... Oh, no, wait it's just window dressing for a climate change bill. Hello, skyrocketing energy bills.

Update 9:42 p.m. -- He is for free trade but only when our trading partners are playing by the rules, i.e., when the industries that contribute to political campaigns are not facing pesky competition from countries that want to sell the same thing to American consumers, only cheaper.

Update 9:45 p.m. -- "That is why we are doubling the child care tax credit ... " And those of us who don't have kids? Hello? Helloooooo?

Update 9:47 p.m. -- The health care bill will bring down the deficit? Bullshit.

Update 9:51 p.m. -- Again, he says any problems are all Bush's fault. Okay, Bush was loser, but, hey, you did ask for this job. Don't give us that weaselly everything was wrong before I walked in the door line.

Update 9:55 p.m. -- So, the budget freeze won't take place until next year? This is on top of that fact that it excludes defense spending, entitlements like Social Security and Medicare and isn't even across the board on what remains. So in what sense is this even a freeze? And even then the Democrats are acting like he just took a piss in the punchbowl.

Upfront 9:59 p.m. -- So now he is all about openness and limiting lobbyist influence? I don't buy it.

Update 10:04 p.m. -- CNN just just followed his lines about renewing the focus on our national security will a shot of Janet Napolitano looking like she has to get Daddy to sign her straight F report card.

Update 10:09 p.m. -- "We will have all of our combat troops out of Iraq by August." Umm, combat troops? Not just troops? Am I reading too much into that?

Update 10:10 p.m. -- "That is why North Korea is more isolated." Are they so isolated that they are feeling ronrey, so ronrey? Sorry, I know that was dumb, but frankly I got nothing. This speech mind-numbingly dull and as well as longer than John Holmes' penis.

Update 10:13 p.m. --His Justice Department is prosecuting more civil rights cases against business and beefing up hate crimes statutes. Well, thank goodness he is not pushing that big government agenda all those right-wing nuts keep complaining about.

Update 10:16 -- No, Mr. President we are not too cynical. We are not cynical enough ...

Update 10:18 p.m. -- "What keeps me going is that that sense of determination ... that core decency, lives on." Yeah, what keeps me going is Jameson, neat.

Update 10:22 p.m. -- And that is it. And now he is off to the White House to break out the Courvoisier and En Vouge albums.

The GOP Rebuttal: We Still Suck But We Are Not Responsible

Okay, now time for the GOP response, featuring the new governor of my state, Virginia. I am not sure but I think his name is Ken Doll.

Update 10:31 p.m. -- I just saw a black person in the room with the Republicans. One of the 5 or 6 in the party.

Update 10:32 p.m. -- He says even his sons are watching SportsCenter instead.

Update 10:34 p.m. -- And hey there is an Asian guy on the right! See, they are too diverse! I think he is the driver.

Update 10:36 p.m. -- Solutions.gop.gov. Now, why wasn't that website snatched up before now?

Update 10:38 p.m. -- Wow, off shore drilling gets these people hot. Me, I'd like to get a yacht and do some offshore drilling on Natalie Portman.

Update 10:40 p.m. -- My daughter is a Marine. Kick ass.

Update 10:41 p.m. -- Underwear bomber, bad. Okay, check, got that.

Update 10:42 p.m. -- "Where opportunity is unequal, we must make it open to everyone." Well, so much for keeping government from being intrusive.

Update 10:43 p.m. -- Wait, that is it? It is over? Wow, he must really want to catch Jon Stewart.

We Must Be Getting To The End Because The Fat Ladies Are Singing

Now to the CNN focus group, where the official CNN focus group hottie talks to a bunch of ordinary Americans who just happen to be in that television studio.

Update 10:59 p.m. -- I find it ironic that the CNN State of the Union coverage is brought to me by Koons Nissan and Toyota.

Update 11:01 p.m. -- Anderson Cooper oddly unexcited by the Don't Ask, Don't Tell announcement.

Update 11:02 p.m. -- CNN's Candy Crowley: "He is a president who often leaves things open to interpretation." Well put, Candy.

Update 11:07 p.m. -- I would so do Soledad O'Brien.

Update 11:09 p.m. -- Obama advisor David Axelrod: soul of an accountant in the body of a high school guidance counselor with the mind of a Washington Bureaucrat.

Update 11:12 p.m. -- Oil Billionaire T. Boone Pickens appears in an ad to get Americans to move forward on energy, i.e., give him federal subsidies for his windfarms. Oh, come on. You're a rich asshole. Fund it yourself if it is such a great fucking idea.

Update 11:15 p.m. -- Mary Matlin and James Carville are not real. They are cartoons. He sounds like Foghorn Leghorn and looks the result of some unholy human/lizard interbreeding. And if his wife gets one more face-lift, she'll have a beard.

Update 11:23 p.m. -- Anderson Cooper just happens to be wearing a t-shirt that shows off his biceps. Funny how these things happen.

Update 11:26 p.m. -- Gupta notes that the president referred to health insurance reform not health care reform. Hmmm ...

Update 11:32 p.m. -- National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru on why insurance reform is next to impossible.

FINAL THOUGHTS -- Aside from the Don't Ask, Don't Tell stuff, this was a boring rehash of things Obama has said several times before. In two weeks nobody will even remember this speech. Me, I'm going to bed ...

You Think Your Thanksgiving Is Awkward ...

Imagine if you just found out your dad is Charles Manson. Yeah, that Charles Manson. Then again, judging from the picture after the link, the apple didn't fall too far from the tree.

They Get Younger And Younger

The johns, we mean. A 13 year-old boy was busted for soliciting an undercover cop.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — An undercover officer posing as a prostitute in Alabama tried more than once to run off a 13-year-old boy who asked her for sex, but police say the teen insisted and had to be arrested.

Authorities in Mobile said Wednesday the teenager has been charged with a misdemeanor count of loitering while looking for a prostitute. The next-youngest suspect nabbed in the sting was 22.

Police set up the sting in a residential area last week because of complaints about prostitutes trolling for business. Officer Christopher Levy says it's not clear exactly what the teen said to the officer, or how she responded.

Bravo, kid. We wish we had that much balls when we were young.

Special Alert To All TtP Readers In Georgia

Especially if you are a teacher. The good news is you can actually legally sleep with that hot, hot piece of jailbait ass who has been giving you that look all semester. The bad news is that that right is about to be taken away from you:

MARIETTA - Teachers across Georgia may legally engage in sexual relationships with students 16 or older if the sex is consensual.

That is what the state Supreme Court held last summer when it ruled, 5-2, in Chase v. The State, a case out of Richmond County. The decision has immediate effects in Cobb County, where at least two former high school teachers are charged with sexual assaults of students older than 16.

***

A lawmaker from Gainesville has already drafted legislation for the 2010 session to crystallize the illegality. And a Cobb lawmaker, Rep. Rob Teilhet, says if that bill can't be passed quickly, "I don't know what we'll do this year of any value."

You know, Teilhet, ol' buddy, sometimes inaction is an option.

Stimulus Not Just Saving Or Creating Jobs, It's Creating Whole New Congressional Districts

This ABC News story has already been blogged a couple of places on the web, but it is too unbelievable for TtP to not jump on the bandwagon as well:

Here's a stimulus success story: In Arizona's 15th congressional district, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that's what the Web site set up by the Obama administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.

There's one problem, though: There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona; the state has only eight districts.

And ABC News has found many more entries for projects like this in places that are incorrectly identified.

How is this happening? Well, let's just say the recipients aren't too careful about reporting on the money once they get it.

Late Monday, officials with the Recovery Board created to track the stimulus spending, said the mistakes in crediting nonexistent congressional districts were caused by human error.

"We report what the recipients submit to us," said Ed Pound, Communications Director for the Board.

Pound told ABC News the board receives declarations from the recipients - state governments, federal agencies and universities - of stimulus money about what program is being funded.

"Some recipients clearly don't know what congressional district they live in, so they appear to be just throwing in any number. We expected all along that recipients would make mistakes on jobs numbers, on award amounts, and so on. Human beings make mistakes," Pound said.

Here's an alternate theory: They funding recipients just making shit up and the jobs numbers they are providing aren't any more reliable than the other information. Oh, and one final thing:

The recovery.gov Web site was established as part of the stimulus bill "to foster greater accountability and transparency" in the use of the money spent through the stimulus program. The site is a well-funded enterprise; the General Services Administration updated it earlier this year with an $18 million grant.

If We're Starving How Come We Have Such Goddam Fat Asses?

Shocking news in the Washington Post today. Children are starving - everywhere!

The nation's economic crisis has catapulted the number of Americans who lack enough food to the highest level since the government has been keeping track, according to a new federal report, which shows that nearly 50 million people -- including almost one child in four -- struggled last year to get enough to eat.

And this, of course, is a major, major problem, say people whose job it is to get federal money to fund their programs:

"This is unthinkable. It's like we are living in a Third World country," said Vicki Escarra, president of Feeding America, the largest organization representing food banks and other emergency food sources.

And sure enough, the Post reports that the Obama administration is pumping $85 million more tax dollars into subsidized food programs.

I, on the other hand, being the insensitive, uncaring prick that I am, thought: "If the poor are starving, then how come every one I see has a Michelin-size spare tire around their gut? Riddle me that, Batman."

So I re-read the story paying close attention for any statistic that would show how the hunger is really hurting people. Are hospitals reporting more children being delivered with low birth weights? Are schools reporting students being malnourished? That sort of stuff. But that isn't there. And I have to believe if there were statistics on that the Post would use them.

Instead it refers to reports of "food insecurity". That refers to people "who lack a dependable supply of adequate food ... and those whose food shortages are so severe that they are hungry." And where do those numbers come from? Way down towards the end of the story we are told:

In the survey used to measure food shortages, people were considered to have food insecurity if they answered "yes" to several of a series of questions. Among the questions were whether, in the past year, their food sometimes ran out before they had money to buy more, whether they could not afford to eat nutritionally balanced meals, and whether adults in the family sometimes cut the size of their meals -- or skipped them -- because they lacked money for food.

So the numbers came from people saying, yeah, I'd like to have more food in the fridge, but I cannot afford it right now. Or as I call it, balancing a budget. Shit, I would say yes to that survey, but I don't think I fit the image the hunger activists are trying to send..

Look, I am not such a prick that I will say that nobody ever goes hungry in the U.S. But to compare us to third world countries -- where people really do sometimes starve to death -- is bullshit just because a recession has us all cutting back. When I start seeing fewer gigantic asses on the streets, then I'll believe we have a hunger problem.

How White Is Maine?

The head of the NAACP's state prison chapter is a white dude. And convicted murderer/honorary soul brother William "Billy" Flynn doesn't sound overwhelmingly down with the cause either:

And if the question is why he is in the association at all, he explains that it seems better than the Jaycees and the Longtimers, the only other organizations the prison allows, because the NAACP chapter receives outside support. The leaders of the Portland NAACP branch and Jealous have been willing to meet with prison officials on behalf of the inmates. With "an extra-powerful support group on the street," Flynn says the prisoners can get the officials' attention. They have been able to get them to grant them lower phone rates and to issue new rules that let social groups meet more often.

Catch Phillie Fever! And Possibly An STD!

In other sports-related news, I would be remiss if I didn't blog this story from the New York Post:

A rabid Philadelphia fan -- apparently believing the "P" on the team's cap stands for "prostitution" -- was busted yesterday for offering sex in exchange for World Series tickets, police said.

Susan Finkelstein, 43, was nabbed after allegedly soliciting an undercover Bensalem, Pa., cop who answered her innuendo-laced craigslist ad seeking the coveted ducats.

The married Finkelstein posted her ad -- with a subject line that read, "DESPERATE BLONDE NEEDS WS TIX (Philadelphia)" -- on Monday in the "tickets for sale/wanted" section.

Describing herself as a "Diehard Phillies fan" and "gorgeous tall buxom blonde," Finkelstein said she was "in desperate need" of two tickets to see the Phillies play the Yankees at Citizens Bank Park.

Then came the zinger: "Price negotiable -- I'm the creative type! Maybe we can help each other!"

The suggestive line caught the attention of a Web-trolling cop, who set up a meeting at a Bucks County bar.

The officer said he had one ticket, but when Finkelstein said she needed two, the cop said his brother might have an extra, Bucks County Public Safety Director Fred Harran told The Post.

"She offered to take care of both men," Harran said.

Asked what specific activities Finkelstein offered, Harran said, "Let's just say she wanted to go around the bases the other way."[emphasis added.]

Her lawyer, while claiming his client is innocent, neverthless explains: "She's a rabid fan who, if anything, was overcome with Phillies fever."

Read the whole story, with pic, here.

In other New York Post prostitution reporting, we learn that Eliot Spitzer's favorite hooker is now working at the Scores strip joint as a cocktail waitress.

A 'Skins Fan's Lament

As Rob notes below, the Washington Redskins have, after years of being merely mediocre, become a national laughingstock. I was at the 'Skins-Eagles game Monday night and it was four hours of my life that I want back. As if the shitty play of the team wasn't bad enough, my section was filed with the Eagles' thuggish fans. Throughout the game, I had to endure them opening their greasy cheesesteak holes to tell me how much my team sucked.

They were at least telling the truth though. The Redskins management has apparently adopted an aggressive "let's make a bad situation worse" policy. The sign issue Rob notes is just one part. Another is being in complete denial of the problem. As they repeatedly say: Things are fine, just fine.

Consider this article from the Washington Post's Sunday section about declining stadium attendance and other signs of fan discontent:

David Donovan, the Redskins' chief operating officer, disputed Powell's analysis, saying that team records show a 12 percent dip in merchandise sales, which he said was understandable in a down economy.

Donovan also said that the team hasn't detected a significant decline in fan loyalty and that the team's attendance figures are accurately gathered by bar-code scanners at the turnstiles.

"I think the relentless negative coverage in The Washington Post is a real difference from previous years," Donovan said. "But in terms of the way our actual fans are behaving, we don't see any difference." [Emphasis added]

Yeah, that is it. The Post is just making shit up when they report that fans like me are pissed off.

God almighty, is Dan Snyder exclusively hiring ex-Bush appointees or something?

Nice Work If You Can Get It ...

This only sounds like a joke. Thanks to their union, the stagehands at Carnegie Hall make more money than the performers. Way more:

Depending on wattage, a star pianist can receive $20,000 a night at [Carnegie Hall], meaning he or she would have to perform at least 27 times to match the income of Dennis O’Connell, who oversees props at the New York concert hall.

O’Connell made $530,044 in salary and benefits during the fiscal year that ended in June 2008. The four other members of the full-time stage crew -- two carpenters and two electricians -- had an average income of $430,543 during the same period, according to Carnegie Hall’s tax return. [Emphasis added.]

***

The stagehands benefit from a strong union: Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees demonstrated its clout in November 2007 when its members walked off their Broadway jobs and closed 26 shows for almost three weeks. The strike ended after stagehands and producers agreed to a five-year contract that both sides called a compromise.

***

How exactly do the stagehands earn their money? According to Carlino, they move equipment in and out of the hall, prepare the three stages for performances and operate audiovisual and sound fixtures. In addition to Stern Auditorium (2,804 seats), the company has Zankel Hall (599 seats) and Weill Recital Hall (268).

Producers who work there said a prop manager usually moves and supervises the moving of objects that aren’t plugged in, such as a piano or music stands. An electrician handles objects that get plugged in, like microphones and amplifiers, while carpenters are involved in the construction and handling of scenery.

Read the whole Bloomberg story here.

Hat tip: NRO's Corner.

Yes, But Did Peaches Get To Keep The Playstation?

The Washington Post has been running a bang-up series on the waste and fraud the DC city government's contracting for HIV/AIDS services. The city shelled out no less than $25 million in taxpayer dollars to nonprofit agencies that were notable for their "questionable spending, a lack of clients, or lapses in record-keeping and care," according to the Post.

As with any story of this nature, it is the details that fascinate. Sorry this excerpt is so long, but it is the only way to get the full flavor of the thing:

Money from Rowe's department also went to Lurn-N-Ern, a youth education agency formed in 1997 by one-time D.C. Council candidate Mona Odom, who had been an executive with the Girl Scouts of America in New Mexico.

Odom told The Post that she started Lurn-N-Ern to help troubled kids and that she applied for an AIDS grant looking for a new line of business. Odom said she was qualified to do the work because she had run computer classes and had helped women on welfare find jobs.

"I'm a motivator," she said. "When you own a business, you don't have to have [any] background or skill. You look for the people who had it."

In October 2005, Lurn-N-Ern was awarded a $135,000 grant to provide housing for 20 women with AIDS over the course of a year at Odom's four-bedroom house in Northeast.

"Come on over to our house," a Lurn-N-Ern flier said. "Put on your learning shoes."

On incorporation records, Odom's aunt was listed as Lurn-N-Ern's president. The aunt, now 72, lived in Baltimore and had filed for bankruptcy four times, records show.

Lurn-N-Ern's executive director was Odom's friend Benita Blaine, who had a criminal record for theft, assault and prostitution. Blaine's street name was "Peaches." In mid-2006, Blaine was indicted by a grand jury in Alexandria of stealing a co-worker's credit card to buy a $209 Sony PlayStation. After her arrest, records show, she tested positive for cocaine and the illegal hallucinogen PCP. She was sentenced to two years' probation.

***

In October 2006, monitors went back to Lurn-N-Ern to look into complaints from a former staff member and clients who said that Odom had been stealing their food stamps and that night supervisor Rachel Hunter "did not exist," records show.

Odom told The Post that Hunter is her mother, a 73-year-old New Jersey resident. "She was just to be a filler person until I could find someone to fill the spot," Odom said.

Odom acknowledged that the address on the résumé submitted to the city "might have been wrong."

Odom said she did not steal food stamps from her clients.

Despite this, Odom, whose program was revealed only have two clients at one point, told the Post it was "a great success".

Read the whole infuriating thing here.

Going Green Prevents Blue Balls

Finally, a "save the earth" project TtP readers can get behind. AFP reports that a Berlin brothel is offering discounts to "environmentally conscious" patrons:

"Everyone's a winner," explained Regina Goetz, a former prostitute who runs the "Maison d'envie" (House of Desire) brothel in Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg, a district in the former East Berlin, which is a stronghold for the ecologist Green party.

"The environment is a topic on everyone's lips and it's pretty difficult to park around here. So we came up with the idea of an 'eco discount' of five euros (7.40 dollars) to anyone who leaves the car at home," Goetz told AFP.

You get the discount by showing a bike helmet, a padlock or your bus ticket stud, er, stub. It doesn't exactly sound like a foolproof system to me, but, hey, they're Germans. They'll find a way to make it more efficient.

Umm, Okay ...

The New York Times reports on the art the Obamas borrowed from museums to decorate the White House. Some of the choices were ... kind of revealing:

Another contemporary work chosen by the Obamas is a word painting by the California artist Ed Ruscha. Called “I Think I’ll ... ” it deals with the subject of indecision. The work depicts a brilliant red sunset against which Mr. Ruscha has painted phrases like “Maybe ... Yes ... ” and “Maybe ... No ... ” and “On Second Thought.”

Headline of the Day: "Crowds turn out for Boobs on Bikes"

Because my last few posts have been on the heavy and angry side, I think it's time this blog got back to one of its specialties -- boobies. And that is as good of a reason as any to link to this story from New Zealand's Stuff magazine:

Motorbikes, tanks, half-naked girls, flamboyant cross-dressers and the woman with the world's largest breasts took over central Auckland today for the annual Boobs on Bikes parade.

The parade kicked off at 12.45pm, accompanied by a heavy police presence and security guards on Segways.

The procession was led by porn king Steve Crow in a roofless car. Following behind on a tank was adult entertainer Chelsea Charms, who claims to have the world's biggest breasts.

Crow said over 100 people were involved in today's parade and despite the rain, thousands of onlookers crowded along Queen Street.

There were some protesters at the event. Well, I just want to state for the record that this blog supports breasts.

Oh, Shit ...

A Census worker was found dead today with the word "Fed" scrawled on his chest. He was hanging from a tree. The FBI is still investigating -- there hasn't been an autopsy yet -- so very little is known. The victim was a 51 year-old teacher who worked for the Census Bureau to make a few extra bucks.

It's a horrible tragedy for the guy's family of course and I hope they catch the sick fuck who did it, assuming it was a murder.

Unsurprisingly the guy's body wasn't even cold before left-wing bloggers started saying the murder was because of town hall meetings and anti-Obama protests. "Another Glenn Beck Killing?" asks Oliver Willis (What, is Beck a serial killer or something?). "Again I ask, at what point does someone using fiery rhetoric, grossly false claims, and race baiting become responsible for the violence it incites?" asks the New Atheist. "[N]ow, people are getting killed as collateral damage from this game," says one of Daily Kos's bloggers.

Never mind that we have no idea yet what actually happened to the Census worker. Never mind that vast overwhelming number of protesters just want to peaceably air their grievances and that the claims of violence at the protests are ridiculously overblown.

That whizzing sound you hear is these bloggers pissing on the ashes of liberaltarianism. They are not interested in expanding freedom or defending the rights of people to peaceably (if obnoxiously) protest. They hate it when anyone opposes them and will wave whatever bloody shirt they can find -- bogus claims of racism, Joe Wilson's outburst, now this guy's death -- to shutdown their opponents. Well, fuck them.

To Protect And Serve And High-Score

It's a tough job protecting Polk County, Florida, from drug-dealing scum but not so tough that the deputies cannot have a little fun while they are doing it.

Unfortunately for them, the suspect's house was wired with security cameras and somebody gave the recordings to a local TV station:

With guns drawn and flashlights cutting through darkened rooms, Polk County undercover drug investigators stormed the home of convicted drug dealer Michael Difalco near Lakeland in March.

As investigators searched the home for drugs, some drug task force members found other ways to occupy their time. Within 20 minutes of entering Difalco's house, some of the investigators found a Wii video bowling game and began bowling frame after frame.

While some detectives hauled out evidence such as flat screen televisions and shotguns, others threw strikes, gutter balls and worked on picking up spares.

***

Task force members played the video game at various times during the day, for a total of a little over an hour of playing time. The competition proved to be quite competitive at times. A task force supervisor from the Lakeland Police Department, gun at his side, pumped his fist after picking up a strike on the first ball he threw. The video showed he continued bowling frame after frame, competing with another undercover detective.

"Obviously, this is not the kind of behavior we condone," Lakeland Police Chief Roger Boatner said. "There was a lot of down time, but that does not excuse the fact that we should act as the consummate professionals."

How About We Just Call It "Shit The Government Forces You To Pay For" Instead?

Barack Obama got into a telling exchange with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos Sunday when they spared over whether his health care plan's mandate that people buy insurance coverage or get fined amounted to a tax.

From ABC's transcript:

STEPHANOPOULOS: I -- I don't think I'm making it up. Merriam Webster's Dictionary: Tax -- "a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes."

OBAMA: George, the fact that you looked up Merriam's Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you're stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn't have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition.

Obama apparently thinks dictionaries are a bad place to learn the meanings of words. Good to know, good to know ...

In any event, this is beside the point since the Senate health care bill that is the vehicle for Obama's reform explicitly calls the mandate a tax. From the Politico:

In the most contentious exchange of President Barack Obama’s marathon of five Sunday shows, he said it is “not true” that a requirement for individuals to get health insurance under a key reform plan now being debated amounts to a tax increase.

But he could look it up — in the bill.

Page 29, sentence one of the bill introduced by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont) says: “The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax.”

And the rest of the bill is clear that the Finance Committee does, in fact, consider it a tax: “The excise tax would be assessed through the tax code and applied as an additional amount of Federal tax owed.”

Read the whole thing here.

So who are you gonna believe? Obama or your lying eyes?

Quiet Fade Into Obscurity Or Flaming Death Spiral?

As far as John Edwards' once-promising political career goes, the answer appears to be the latter. In fact, it is now achieving Lindsay Lohan-levels of self-destruction.

Cheating on your cancer-stricken wife is bad; knocking up your mistress is worse; creating an elaborate cover-up to keep said career alive is Nixonian; but having to admit that your earlier emotional mea culpa was an elaborate lie is in a class all by itself:

[A] federal grand jury in nearby Raleigh is investigating whether any crimes were committed in connection with campaign laws in an effort to conceal his extramarital affair with a woman named Rielle Hunter. At the same time, Mr. Edwards is moving toward an abrupt reversal in his public posture; associates said in interviews that he is considering declaring that he is the father of Ms. Hunter’s 19-month-old daughter, something that he once flatly asserted in a television interview was not possible.

Yes, I am gloating because, fuck it, it's fun.

This detail, also from the New York Times' Sunday story about Edwards linked above, has already been blogged in a couple of places, but c'mon, it's a beaut:

Mr. Young says that he assisted the affair by setting up private meetings between Mr. Edwards and Ms. Hunter. He wrote that Mr. Edwards once calmed an anxious Ms. Hunter by promising her that after his wife died, he would marry her in a rooftop ceremony in New York with an appearance by the Dave Matthews Band.(Emphasis added.)

This is as good of a time as any to point out that Edwards's pose as champion of the poor and downtrodden was bullshit too.

Do Everything The Nice Officer Tells You

Not exactly news: A woman is arrested for leading a double life as a prostitute by night. News: Her day job was as a cop.

Now That's Social Work!

ACORN, a liberal activist group that receives millions in federal funding, was punk'd by a couple of young conservative activists posing as a prostitute and her pimp. The two pretended that they were trying to set up a brothel and needed legal and tax advice. The ACORN folks not only provided it, but didn't flinch when the pranksters said they intended to bring in 13 girls "about 15" years old from El Salvador. ACORN employee: "You know what? You can always claim them as dependents."

She adds later: "If they're making money and they're underage, you shouldn't be letting nobody know anyway."

Also amusing: The ACORN activist's advice to the "prostitute" that she can write off her "special clothes" from her taxes.

How Not To Conduct An Affair If You Are A Politician

Do not talk about your two mistresses and your new spanking fetish into an open mike, especially if one of the women is involved in lobbying the committee that you are on.

Jane Hamsher Will Not - Repeat, Not - Be A Veal Cutlet For Obama

The buzz in Washington today was all about the, ahem, parting of ways between the Obama administration and Van Jones, it's green jobs "czar". It happen primarily because Jones had signed a petition by the crackpot conspiracy group 9/11 Truth Movement. Jones defended himself by saying, yeah, I signed it, but I didn't read what I was signing. Which may actually be worse come to think of it.

David Corn does a pretty good job here of explaining why - even if you are the kind of person who absolutely hates George W. Bush and Dick Cheney - the supposed conspiracy doesn't even pass the laugh test.

Rightwingers predictably gloated over getting a scalp. It was especially sweet for talk show host Glenn Beck who had been targeted by Jones's allies and helped to publicize that Jones had signed the petition.

Mickey Kaus meanwhile was in awe that the New York Times was once again behind the curve on this one. And remained there.

Reason's Jacob Sullum and Matt Welch weighed in that the real problem with Jones was that he was selling snake oil by claiming that green jobs can ever come close to replacing the amount of jobs that will be lost by getting rid of carbon-based fuels. Welch was particularly incisive in noting how expertly Jones managed to shake down various public and private groups with this hustle.

And of course, there was the predictable anguish and anger from the Left over this. It was interesting to note also the number of lefties who kinda, sorta said that while they didn't necessarily endorse the 9/11 Truthers, they, you know, understood. Lefties like the Nation's John Nichols:

While some who circulated that petition may have believed the worst about members of the former administration, Jones clearly and unequivocally stated the more extreme position "certainly does not reflect my views, now or ever."

Jones wanted a more serious inquiry, as did many mainstream Democrats and Republicans who worried about the constrained and ineffectual approach of the 9/11 Commission and a Bush-friendly Congress. As the NAACP's Jealous says, "I have known Van Jones for more than 15 years. In that time he, as is characteristic of great public servants, has continuously grown and increased his capacity for improving the condition of humanity. Throughout, he has been guided by a powerful sense of patriotism and love for all."

Jones' Republican critics knew this.(Emphasis added.)

As National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru notes:"There's a lot of crazy in John Nichols's piece."

Even wackier, though, was the reaction of Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake.com, who turned the loss of Jones into an extended metaphor about how the Democrats are treating their liberal allies like veal. I shit you not.

If Only Obama Would Listen To Himself

Washington is set to raise the debt ceiling, again, pushing this country even deeper into a sea of red ink. Was it only three years ago that Democrats were citing this as proof of George W. Bush's failure? Yes, it was:

“Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren,” Obama said in a 2006 floor speech that preceded a Senate vote to extend the debt limit. “America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.”

Obama later joined his Democratic colleagues in voting en bloc against raising the debt increase.

Now Obama is asking Congress to raise the debt ceiling, something lawmakers are almost certain to do despite misgivings about the federal debt. The ceiling already has been hiked three times in the past two years, and the House took action earlier this year to raise the ceiling to $13 trillion.

Maybe it's just me but I don't think going even further into debt was the change people voted for in 2008.

What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate

There was a good piece in the Moonie Times today about the fact that eight years after 9-11, we still don't have enough translators of Arabic, Urdu, Pashto and other languages used by radical Islamic terrorists:

The gap has become critical in the war effort, especially in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater, where al Qaeda and Taliban operatives text message, e-mail and talk in languages that the intelligence community had largely ignored before 2001.

Why don't we have more of these people? As the Times explains, because that would have hurt the promotion prospects of people working in the government intel field:

"In the Cold War, people studied Russian or Chinese and came up through the ranks speaking those languages. But in the war on terror, with these languages, it just came upon the United States," Mr. Kohn said. "It was all of a sudden different languages are needed. No one spoke it. In the entire FBI, at the GS-15 level and above, there were three fluent Arabic-speaking agents at the time of 9/11. Three in 15,000. The same thing for the CIA.

"If they made Arabic or any of these other languages required, those people who were in line to get management jobs, and had friends, wouldn't get the jobs. So I can tell you at the FBI, as startling as this sounds, they decided consciously not to require Arabic speaking for any supervisory position in the entire FBI."(Emphasis added.)

"Accountability Bullshit"

There is a great article in New Yorker about how teacher's unions effectively control the city's school system and have made firing any teacher - no matter how incompetent - impossible.

It focuses on so-called "Rubber Rooms", places where the NYC school system houses the teachers (still getting full pay BTW) it is trying to fire until their cases can be heard:

The [teachers] union’s Web site has a section that features stories highlighting the injustice of the Rubber Rooms. One, which begins “Bravo!,” is about a woman I’ll call Patricia Adams, whose return to her classroom, at a high school in Manhattan, last year is reported as a vindication. The account quotes a speech that Adams made to union delegates; according to the Web site, she received a standing ovation as she declared, “My case should never have been brought to a hearing.” The Web site account continues, “Though she believes she was the victim of an effort to move senior teachers out of the system, the due process tenure system worked in her case.”

On November 23, 2005, according to a report prepared by the Education Department’s Special Commissioner of Investigation, Adams was found “in an unconscious state” in her classroom. “There were 34 students present in [Adams’s] classroom,” the report said. When the principal “attempted to awaken [Adams], he was unable to.” When a teacher “stood next to [Adams], he detected a smell of alcohol emanating from her.”

Adams’s return to teaching, more than two years later, had come about because she and the Department of Education had signed a sealed agreement whereby she would teach for one more semester, then be assigned to non-teaching duties in a school office, if she hadn’t found a teaching position elsewhere. The agreement also required that she “submit to random alcohol testing” and be fired if she again tested positive. In February, 2009, Adams passed out in the office where she had to report every day. A drug-and-alcohol-testing-services technician called to the scene wrote in his report that she was unable even to “blow into breathalyzer,” and that her water bottle contained alcohol. As the stipulation required, she was fired.

It gets even better than that. The author contacted the teacher in question. She said that she sabotaged her own career and the article was a pack of lies put together by the union against her own wishes.

Read the whole thing, especially the bit featuring the teacher who scorns the city's recent efforts at firing bad educators as "accountability bullshit".

"Hey, have you heard the latest one about me drowning that chick?"

Here's one for the you-cannot-make-this-shit-up file. Ted Kennedy apparently loved to collect and tell Chappaquiddick jokes. No, seriously. National Review's Mark Hemingway made the catch:

Jules Crittenden mentioned on his blog he heard Ed Klein, former foreign editor of Newsweek and editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine, recalling on air that Ted Kennedy liked to joke about Chappaquiddick. It seemed to defy belief, so I listened to the episode of The Diane Rehm Show in question and sure enough — I've transcribed what Klein told guest host Katy Kay (Here's a link to the audio in WMA format, relevant portion starts at about 30:15):

I don't know if you know this or not, but one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself. And he would ask people, "have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?" That is just the most amazing thing. It's not that he didn't feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that he still always saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things, too.

That's odd 'cause I saw saw the funny and ridiculous side of things that night I vomited in the backseat of the sheriff's deputy's cruiser and yet somehow I still ended getting charged and having to go to court for it.

Here's a handy youtube clip of the same radio interview.

Get A Second Opinion ...

There's been a fair amount of talk in recent weeks about so-called "death panels" being part of the health care reform bill in Congress, especially since Sarah Palin mentioned it. Democrats have pushed back hard against this and virtually all mainstream news outlets have followed along. Only crackpots and cynical right-wing talk show host are pushing this, so the conventional wisdom goes.

It is true there is nothing specifically like that in any of the health care bills floating around Congress. So where does this notion come from? Well, from comments like this from Barack Obama:

In terms of these expert health panels -- well, this goes to the point about "death panels" -- that's what folks are calling them. The idea is actually pretty straightforward, which is if we've got a panel of experts, health experts, doctors, who can provide guidelines to doctors and patients about what procedures work best in what situations, and find ways to reduce, for example, the number of tests that people take -- these aren't going to be forced on people, but they will help guide how the delivery system works so that you are getting higher-quality care.

Why should anybody who is concerned about rationing of care find such assurances that these panels will be merely advisory even remotely satisfying? One of the supposed purposes of this whole initiative is to reduce costs after all. Why shouldn't people who are on Medicare or some other government program fear that these panels will become more than advisory at some point? Especially when this effort is being lead by a man who has openly questioned whether his own grandmother's late in life care was worth the trouble?

The Downside Of Marrying A Porn Actress

You cannot be town manager at Ft. Myers Beach, Florida:

MIAMI (AP) — A South Florida town manager who married a porn star last year was fired at an emergency meeting after the mayor and council members learned about it.

Fort Myers Beach town council voted 5-0 to fire Scott Janke "without cause" after Mayor Larry Kiker called the Tuesday night meeting.

Kiker said he learned that afternoon that Janke's wife is an adult film star, and the elected officials took the action a few hours later.

"At no time did we make a judgment call on the activities of Mr. Janke or his wife," Kiker told The Associated Press. "It's a matter of how effective he becomes after this situation. How much disruption there is."

***

"Our heads are held high," Scott Janke said. "We have nothing to be embarrassed about. We've done nothing wrong."

The city's bullshit explanation for this?

Councilman Tom Babcock, responding to residents' questions, said at a council meeting Wednesday that Janke was fired because his wife's profession brought an inaccurate image to Fort Myers Beach, according to the News-Press of Fort Myers.

"When you become a public figure you are held to a different level of scrutiny and ethics," Babcock said.

Hey, dumbass, did it occur to you that firing Janke would cause way more scrutiny and disruption for the town than just letting the matter go?

Read the whole thing here. The pic above is the most SFW one I could find of Anabela Mota Janke, aka Jazella Moore, who specializes in "MILF" videos apparently. She's an authentic one too. According to the AP story, she has three teenaged children to support. Won't somebody please think of the children?

Hey, Obama Said It, Not Me ...

After beating up President Obama for bullshitting about his healthcare plan, I should give him props for being honest in some comments he made Monday:

Would health care reform bring "greater inefficiencies" to the country's health care system?

That's exactly what Obama said Monday when he spoke about health care reform at the Childrens National Medical Center in Washington.

"The reforms we seek would bring greater competition, choice, savings and inefficiencies to our health care system," Obama said in remarks after a health care roundtable with physicians, nurses and health care providers. "And greater stability and security to America's families and businesses."(emphasis added)

How refreshing.

Wait, I've just been handed an update by TtP's crack reporting staff. He's backing away from the comment:

The White House quickly recognized the mistake and inserted a "sic" in the remarks sent to reporters on Monday afternoon.

Josh Earnest, a White House deputy press secretary, said Obama "misspoke" in his remarks.

Ah, well. It was nice while it lasted.

Do That Voodoo That You Do So Well

The Problem: The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reports that your health care plan is a budget buster, a massive black hole of red ink that will make health care more expensive, not less, as you have promised.

The Solution: If you are Barack Obama, you just ignore it and tell people to expect bureaucratic miracles:

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said that the proposals fall short of Obama's promise to slow the increase in health-care costs, leading critics to charge that those bills would only add to the nation's large budget deficits.

"That's simply not true," Obama said yesterday.

Reform is expected to cost at least $1 trillion over the next decade, and Obama has pledged to pay for it without adding to the nation's budget deficit.

He says the savings accrued by adjusting health-care incentives will eventually reduce medical costs and help tame the deficit.

"By helping improve quality and efficiency, the reforms we make will help bring our deficits under control in the long term," Obama said yesterday.(emphasis added)

Reason's Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie have dubbed the Obama administration the "magical realism" presidency. It would be funnier if it weren't true.

Media Matters: Even We Don't Believe Our Own Press Releases

There was an amusing mini-scandal in the Washington blogosphere today. The left-wing self-styled watchdog group Media Matters put out a press release trying to slap down Republican Senator Jeff Sessions for his questioning of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. It claimed major media outlets were ignoring 23 year-old allegations that Sessions had been involved in a racially-motivated prosecution.

It was pretty thin stuff as even one of Media Matters' own people pointed out in a draft of the memo. And, as if to prove what a bunch of hacks they are, they accidentally blast emailed the draft version to reporters. National Review's Mark Hemingway had some fun with it:

Media Matters for America just sent out the following press release:

Greetings,

I wanted to make sure you had seen Media Matters’ latest research on the media ignoring allegations that surfaced during Sen. Jeff Sessions’ 1986 nomination to the U.S. district court. As reported by the Associated Press, Sessions’ "nomination originally drew fire from civil rights groups because of his [1985] prosecution ... of three west Alabama civil rights activists on vote fraud charges. The three were acquitted by a federal court jury, prompting civil rights leaders to charge that the prosecution was an attempt to intimidate black voters." Doesn’t the fact that we quote the AP undermine the idea that the media is ignoring the story? Could we say, “research on much of the media ignoring…”

Please feel free to contact me with any questions or if you would like additional information.

Jessica Levin
Press Secretary
Media Matters for America

[Hemingway] My emphasis added — I guess somebody forgot to delete that parenthetical edit. I'd always thought that Media Matters tried in vain to prove conservative media bias, but I didn't expect that the organization itself would confirm my suspicion.

Hemingway went on to make the case that allegations against Sessions were scurrilous. Reason's Michael Moynihan jumped on board, noting the charge that media outlets weren't reporting the allegations was itself bogus, a point also raised by Salon. Media Matters posted a wonderfully pissy response in which they furiously try to spin this as proof of how thorough they are in their reports:

[T]he oversight simply highlights the extent to which Media Matters goes to make factually and logically sound arguments.

Oh, bullshit.

Sudden Putin Death Syndrome

Let's just say I have my theories about this one:

Natalya Estemirova, who won numerous international awards for her work, was bundled into a car as she left her home in Grozny, the Chechen capital. Her body was later found by the side of a road in the neighbouring province of Ingushetia. She had been shot twice in the head at close range.

Mrs Estemirova, a single mother in her early 40s, was the seventh opponent of Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed Chechen president, to have been murdered in the past 10 months.

***

Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, was said to have been "indignant" over the killing but there was no response from Mr Putin, the prime minister, who appointed Mr Kadyrov to restore order in the troubled republic. Mr Putin was criticised in 2006 after he remained silent for three days following the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist who campaigned on injustices in Chechnya.

Mr Kadyrov has denied accusations that he ordered the killing of Mrs Politkovskaya, insisting that he did not "kill women".

In the past 10 months many of his rivals have been found dead after killings in Vienna, Istanbul, Dubai and Moscow.

Although she was not a political rival, Mrs Estemirova was one of the few figures in Russia who dared to expose abuses in Chechnya.

Hours before she died, activists held a press conference that called for Mr Putin's prosecution before an international criminal court.

Putin involved? Nahh, couldn't be. He would be that obvious, would he?

Like MLK, She Too Had A Dream

"All I wanted out of life was a hit record and a great pair of boobs. I woke up one morning and I had both."

-- Katy Perry

Dare to dream, babe. And never let it be said that TtP doesn't give the people what they want.

Hopefully He's More Careful When It's Other People's Money

Meet Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida. He's a member of the House Financial Services Committee, which is busy rewriting all of the rules covering banking, investing and such. So he's on top of those issues right? Hmm, maybe not according to the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call:

Freshman Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) lost $3 million in a stock swindle between 2000 and 2005, a Florida television station reported this week.

According to Orlando’s Local 6, Grayson was an investor in a Ponzi scheme run by the company Derivium Capital. The scheme allowed Grayson and other investors to turn over stock to Derivium in exchange for cash loans and redeem the value later if the stock prices increased.

The station cited court filings indicating that Grayson transferred about $29 million in stock to the fund, taking out about $26 million in cash. A South Carolina court ruled earlier this year that Derivium shareholders were owed about $270 million in lost profits and that Grayson’s share of that would be about $34 million.

Read the rest of the story here.

Of course, when it comes to the federal government, only losing a few million is an accomplishment.

From All of US At TtP To All Of You

Happy Fourth of July!

Dillinger Packed A Big Gun

The new Johnny Depp movie about the notorious 1930's bank robber John Dillinger is as good an excuse as TtP will ever get to post the above classic photo of the late hoodlum experiencing some serious rigor mortis.

Thanks to the website Awkward Boners for the pic. Yes, it is a broad, deep well that TtP takes inspiration from.

By the way, also worth putting on your netflix cue is this earlier version of the Dillinger story.

Vladimir Putin Gets Some New Homeboyz

A friend alerted me to this BBC story, which only sounds like a Dave Chappelle skit:

Russia's energy giant Gazprom has signed a $2.5bn (£1.53bn) deal with Nigeria's state operated NNPC, to invest in a new joint venture.

The new firm, to be called Nigaz, is set to build refineries, pipelines and gas power stations in Nigeria. (emphasis added.)

Analysts say the move could further strengthen Russia's role in supplying natural gas to Europe.

The agreement comes during a four-day African tour by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

As well as forming Nigaz, Russia is keen on developing a trans-African pipeline to transport Nigerian gas to Europe.

Read the whole BBC article here, which has a few more mentions of the company's name.

Mark Sanford, Digging That Hole Just A Little Deeper

I don't have much else to add to the saga of Mark Sanford except to say that Argentina is a hell of a long way to go for a booty call. Well, that and it is yet another defeat for the small government movement since Sanford was one of the few governors to voice any opposition to Obama's runaway deficit spending.

The news did spur me to read a March profile of Sanford that had run in the American Conservative. The issue had been lying around my office and I had never bothered to pick it up before. It's a decent piece and fairly flattering towards Sanford, though the author obviously had no inkling of Sanford's indiscretions.

Amusingly the magazine is now trying to distance themselves from the governor. In the print edition the profile is titled "Plain Right: Can South Carolina's Governor Save the GOP?" The online version has been retitled "The Strange Case of Mark Sanford."

Anyhow, the one bit from the article that really does fascinate is this nugget about a different scandal involving Sanford:

During Sanford’s first gubernatorial campaign in 2002, an 8-year-old African-American girl wandered onto a Sanford family property on Lady’s Island and drowned. A source close to the governor said she fell into a “retaining pond.” Her family’s lawyer, Manning Smith, called it a “pit.” Other sources claim that Sanford, who owned a hydraulic excavator at the time, digs holes on his property to unwind. According to a source involved in the settlement, the governor’s insurance company paid the girl’s family “around $300,000.”

He digs enormous holes in the backyard to unwind? Umm, okay ...

What Happens In Bahrain ... Angers Allah

Bahrain is among the few places in the Middle East -- Israel being the main exception -- where they don't live under the puritanical Sharia law. Well, looks like the parties ain't gonna rock like they used to, according to the Wall Street Journal:

With few other attractions, Bahrain's booming tourism industry thrives on the island's reputation as a freewheeling oasis just a short drive from major Saudi cities. Bahrain has little oil of its own; tourism, mostly by the four million Saudis who cross the causeway each year, accounts for a tenth of its economy.

All of this is endangered, as Bahraini legislators press to scrap the country's drinking laws -- currently the most liberal in the Persian Gulf -- and to impose near-total prohibition.

"I'm sorry to say, but Bahrain has become the brothel of the Gulf, and our people are very upset about it," says parliamentarian Adel Maawdah, one of the promoters of the new legislation. "It's not only the drinking that we oppose, but also what it drags with it: prostitution, corruption, drugs and people-trafficking."

The Parliament's elected lower chamber unanimously approved a motion last month to prohibit alcohol in hotels, restaurants, duty-free shops and aboard Gulf Air, the national airline. Lawmakers acted amid outrage over a widely circulated men's Web-site article placing Bahraini capital Manama in the world's "top 10 cities to pursue vice and debauchery."

The article goes on to say that sheiks who run the country hope to turn it into a family-style resort destination. I dunno if that'll help. Seriously, if there is one place where people really, really need to blow off some steam with a few stiff vodka tonics rather than blowing the holy fuck outta things it is the Middle East. I mean, you never saw Dean Martin strap on a dynamite belt, did you?

Bonus Borat-of-Arabia quote:

"Do you think the tourists come here to Bahrain to see my face? There are tourist places in Saudi Arabia that are one hundred times better than in Bahrain," exclaimed Ahmed Sanad, president of the Bahraini Society of Hotel and Restaurant Owners. "They only come here to drink, and to have happy time with a Chinese or Thai girl."

The pic is from a Newsweek story about booze in Iraq. Yay freedom.

Blue Light Specials In Red Light District

The recession is hurting Amsterdam's prostitutes so bady that they have been forced to discount themselves like they were mini Wal-Marts:

Eva, a 25-year-old prostitute in Amsterdam's red-light district, gestures angrily in the direction of a rival who has slashed her rates as the economic crisis emboldens sex tourists to haggle.

"People like her make it very difficult for the rest of us," scowled the tall, blonde Estonian in skimpy black-and-white lingerie as she dragged on a cigarette while posing for men passing the window in which she offers herself.

"Some of the girls are now doing it for 30 euros (A$70). My price is still 50 euros, but the men are playing us off against each other. Some want to pay only 20 euros," she said.

Eva is not the only one complaining.

As the credit crunch keeps away sightseers and business travellers, owners of brothels, escort agencies and sex shops grumble that visitors who still do indulge in the pleasures of the flesh are increasingly tight-fisted.

They haven't been helped by the fact that Amsterdam has been busily trying to destroy its own tourism industry:

Last December, Amsterdam's city officials announced plans to halve the total 482 prostitutes' windows in the centre in a multi-million-euro revamp that would also involve shuttering many cannabis-vending coffee shops, another tourist drawcard.

Officials claim the two vices, in themselves not illegal, attract elements of organised crime. But observers have pointed to a growing Dutch conservatism.

People Are Impatient In Beijing

I really have nothing to add to this story.

Beijing -- Chen Fuchao was heavily in debt and had been on a bridge in southern China for hours, contemplating suicide, when a man came up to him, shook his hand -- and then pushed him off.

Chen fell 26 feet onto a partially inflated emergency air cushion laid out by authorities. He suffered injuries to his spine and elbow, but survived, the official New China News Agency said Saturday.

It quoted the passer-by, Lai Jiansheng, 66, as saying he was fed up with Chen's "selfish activity." Traffic around the Haizhu bridge, in Guangzhou, had been backed up for five hours and police had cordoned off the area.

Eleven people have attempted suicide at the bridge since April, news reports said.

"I pushed him off because jumpers like Chen are very selfish. Their action violates a lot of public interest," Lai was quoted as saying. "They do not really dare to kill themselves. Instead, they just want to raise the relevant government authorities' attention to their appeals."

Hardcore. The photo above is an action shot of Chen falling after being pushed. Read the whole thing here.

You Can't Get Ahead Even When You're Giving Head

Every so often I hear libertarians make the argument that we should legalize something so it can taxed and become a great source of revenue. Actually it's more of a liberal argument than a libertarian one, but I hear libertarians make it often enough.

Personally, I don't get it. Taxation and regulation can be just as onerous, burdensome and flat-out unfair as keeping it illegal. And since when should classical liberals be encouraging any new taxes?

Here's a case in point of why the legalize-it-to-tax-it argument is so rotten:

Tax authorities in Germany are poised to claim 50 per cent of the money that a teenage student earned for 'auctioning' her virginity because they claim it was 'tantamount to prostitution'.

Romanian-born Alina Percea [pictured left], who is a student in Germany, was paid £8,800 in cash for a weekend of sex with the Italian businessman after she auctioned her virginity online.

But tax officials in Berlin regard the 18-year-old's act as 'nothing more than prostitution'.

Prostitution is legal in Germany - but it is heavily taxed.

'It is not a moral standpoint but a fiscal one,' an official said. 'Prostitution is not an illegal act in Germany, but not paying tax on earned money is.

'Consequently we are assessing her case and it looks likely she will have to pay around half of the sum she gained.'

Wait, it gets better:

It also emerged that, because Alina earned so much in such a short time, she may even be liable for a hefty VAT bill too.

VAT in Germany works out to 19 per cent, meaning the sale of her virginity could land her with just over £3,000 in the end.

So, in other words, of the £8,800 she earned for selling her body, the government may claim £5,800. Read the whole story here.

Happy Memorial Day Folks

Enjoy the weekend!

Why The GOP Cannot Get Its Shit Together

For far too many people it's just a racket to be exploited, not a cause they believe passionately in. Case in point: Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele. The Moonie Times has the inside dirt:

When Michael S. Steele took over as chairman of the Republican National Committee earlier this year, he brought along longtime personal assistant Belinda Cook and gave her a salary nearly three times what her predecessor made.

Mrs. Cook's son, Lee, also landed an RNC job.

Mr. Steele hired another family friend, Angela Sailor, to be the party's outreach director at a salary of $180,000, more than double her predecessor's compensation, though new responsibilities have been added to the job, according to a high-ranking RNC official and Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.

Mr. Steele's early record and personnel decisions figure to be hot topics at a special meeting of Republican state party chairmen Tuesday and Wednesday at National Harbor in Washington's Maryland suburbs. His hiring of friends and the salaries he is paying them already helped to instigate a struggle over who controls the party's purse strings, one that forced the new party chairman to relinquish some control to elected RNC members.

It sort of makes sense then that Steele has had such a hard time staying on message. Maybe he just doesn't have one. Maybe he is just in it because it looked like a good opportunity to introduce Michael Steele to some high-powered donors.

The right has been infected with this kind of institutional rot for years. Unless some people on the inside get serious about cleaning house and standing for something, they run the risk of going the way of the Whig Party.

Who are the Whigs? My point exactly.