Libertyblog

Out Where the Buses Don’t Run

Bloggers believe Anthony Weiner was framed. (Via InstaPundit.)

If Investment in French Companies Is Taxed at 75%, Where Will Frenchmen Invest?

New York real estate. (Via InstaPundit.)

Amen, Brother

Students need better educations, not cheaper loans. (Via InstaPundit.)

Dan Quayle

Still right, twenty years later.

Boo Hoo Fucking Hoo

America considers the plight of a downtrodden teen:

Coming in second on “American Idol” may still be a path to superstardom, but it no longer offers guaranteed paychecks worthy of the next pop idol or rock star.

Wednesday night’s runner-up, 16-year-old Jessica Sanchez, doesn’t have a definite shot at producing an album and could be paid as little as $30,000 in advances for recording singles, according to the “Idol” contract she and other Season 11 contestants signed earlier this year.

Keep in mind that she lost, which brings this to mind:

We’re adding a little something to this month’s sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired.

(Via Drudge.)

Chutzpah

This Hot Air post is entitled “Let’s face it: Most forms of entitlement reform are theft.” The post then asserts that any attempt to fix the current mess is stealing from Granny; “government” promised things and “government” must deliver.

Which overlooks the bigger picture: Most so-called entitlements are theft. Granny spent fifty years electing politicians who promised her things she doesn’t deserve—and we can’t afford—by leaving unchanged a system based on birth, death, and income assumptions that no longer applied. Promising yourself a huge cut of someone else’s money is not inherently moral.

Paradox

A new Kansas law limits the influence of foreign law there, prohibiting civil enforcement of contracts based on (among others) sharia law. But the freedom to make contracts on whatever basis suits the parties is a hallmark of American law, so this new measure is foreign in itself.

Clarification

Previous posts at this blog have stated that Obambi smoked pot in his younger days. To be more accurate, Obambi smoked vast quantities of pot in his younger days.

The Butler Did It

No, really:

Pope Benedict’s butler was arrested on Friday in connection with an investigation into leaks of confidential documents, some alleging cronyism and corruption in Vatican contracts, a senior Vatican source said.

(Via Drudge.)

Is There Anything Better Than Women With Low Standards?

Seen at the John Edwards trial:

Since the alternates were identified last Thursday, it has been impossible to ignore the dynamic between Edwards and one of the female alternates, an attractive young woman with jet-black hair, who seems to have been flirting with Edwards for days.

The juror clearly instigated the exchanges. She smiles at him. He smiles at her. She giggles. He blushes.

The flirtation has become so obvious that even Edwards’ attorneys have to work to suppress their laughter at the absurdity of it all.

Yeah, there’s nothing funnier than a guy who cheated on his cancer-riddled wife lining up his next piece of ass. (Via Drudge.)

Will Students Be Encouraged to Smoke Weed and Beat Up Hispanics?

Trayvon Martin Day at DC elementary school. (Via Drudge.)

Suicide Is Unhealthy

Whether you use a gun or not.

San Fran Nan Expands the Middle Class

Well, the definition of it:

We must ask the very wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share.  Democrats believe that tax cuts for those earning over a million dollars a year should expire and that we should use the resulting revenues to pay down the deficit.

Her previous cutoff was $250,000. Smells rather desperate, no?  

Hypocrisy Meter Broken

Dems worship “diversity” and government—and little else—so this will be awful news:

US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has said she was unaware that Harvard Law School had been promoting her purported Native American heritage until she read about it in a newspaper several weeks ago.

But for at least six straight years during Warren’s tenure, Harvard University reported in federally mandated diversity statistics that it had a Native American woman in its senior ranks at the law school. According to both Harvard officials and federal guidelines, those statistics are almost always based on the way employees describe themselves.

Note the curious journalism: The Boston Globe led with Warren’s worthless spin in the first paragraph, not the actual news relegated to the second.

The Harvard document defines Native American as “a person having origins in any of the original peoples of North America and who maintains cultural identification through tribal affiliation or community recognition.” It notes that this definition is consistent with federal regulations.

It is not a definition Warren appears to fit. She has not proven she has a Native American ancestor, instead saying she based her belief on family lore, and she has no official tribal affiliation. The current executive director of Harvard’s Native American program has said she has no memory of Warren participating in any of its activities.  

(Via Drudge.)

Government Motors

The Facebook IPO of bailouts.

The Hooters of Local Coffee Chains

Well, not exactly, but it’s attracted similar idiotic complaints about its hiring practices.

The Ugliest Bicycle in Amsterdam

The winner:

It was a 1,000,000-way tie for second (many of them are abandoned). A sample:

All that bicycling keeps the women in pretty good shape. The guys? I didn’t notice.

Unveiled

The people who support Elizabeth Warren already knew she was a phony, a phony who would give them things they needn’t earn. Their relationship with her has been clarified as being purely transactional.

Sacrificial Lambs

A second university has been forced by the Obambots to drop its student health insurance plan. Ed Morrissey takes us inside the stupid:

The reason that Ave Maria’s health plan was reasonably priced before ObamaCare was because it was tailored to the needs of younger clients.  At that age, people mainly need to indemnify themselves from hospitalization or major medical attention  rather than buy comprehensive plans they won’t use.  Very little in preventive care is necessary for college students, certainly not five hundred dollars a year in such services — plus the extra $150 in deductible.

Unfortunately, Ave Maria can no longer offer coverage tailored to the actual needs of its students.  Why? Because bureaucrats in the HHS decided that adults of all ages need to buy comprehensive plans that cost younnger adults far more than the value they will ever extract.  And the reason for that is that HHS wants healthy young adults to subsidize coverage for older and less healthy adults.  This is a demonstration of the perverse redistribution of wealth from younger adults to middle-aged adults, which was the only way that ObamaCare could even pretend to be cost-neutral.

Depend on the Obambots to say only that this university, like Franciscan University before it, is a Catholic college and therefore hates women. Meanwhile, no non-Catholic university will dare depart from the lefty consensus and behave in an economically rational manner, let alone say a peep about this.

Let’s Take Him Up On It

Romney promises six percent unemployment by end of his first term.

Taking “Do As I Say” to a New Level

The One is giving ’murrican yutes financial advice including: “You should avoid using credit cards to buy things you can’t afford to pay for with cash.” Seriously.

Will the Man Who Claims Bravery for Snuffing Osama bin Laden ...

... have the guts to kill the men who imprison the actually brave doctor who enabled the mission?

GOP Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, expressed concern Wednesday about the extent of the Obama administration’s efforts to protect the Pakistan doctor who was sent to prison in Pakistan for treason after helping to find Usama bin Laden.

“This has been handled very poorly right from the time of the raid,” King told FoxNews.com.

Dr. Shakil Afridi ran a vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA and verify bin Laden’s presence at the compound in the town of Abbottabad where U.S. commandos killed the Al Qaeda chief  in a May 2011 raid.

The operation outraged Pakistani officials, who portrayed it as an act of treachery by a supposed ally.

King, R-N.Y., said administration officials talked about the doctor and his DNA sampling.

“They put him out there,” said King, who made clear he didn’t know the exact details about what, if anything, the administration may have done to get the doctor out of Pakistan or otherwise protect him. “I’m focused on that they disclosed his identity.”

The doctor was sentenced to 33 years in prison on Wednesday for conspiring against the state -- a verdict officials said is likely to further strain the country’s relationship with Washington.

The Bill Comes Due

Obambi promised to make electricity prices “skyrocket,” got elected anyway. Time to pay up. Thanks, shitheads. (Via InstaPundit.)

Defending Obambi

Given his track record of breaking promises and changing positions, people who selected “Uncommitted” in the Kentucky primary may well have thought it was a nickname for the incumbent.

The Burning Question

By claiming to be an Injun, Elizabeth Warren took the heat off Harvard Law School, which previously had no minority women professors, and made it less likely that the next minority woman applicant got hired, deservedly or not. Is there a pissed-off black chick out there?

Mark Steyn wonders too.

Man Whines About Staying in Five-Star Hotel at Government Expense

No need to ask who it was.

There’s No Point to Creating a “Hostage Video” ...

... if you admit it’s a hostage video.

Now Here’s a Story

Accusation:

Cincinnati Red Aroldis Chapman is having a really tough week.

On top of being arrested for speeding, the major league pitcher who defected from Cuba has been sued for $18 million by a Cuban-American man who blames the player for his imprisonment on the communist island.

The lawsuit was filed last week in Miami federal court claims that Chapman falsely accused Danilo Curbelo Garcia of involvement in human trafficking, leading to his 2008 arrest and conviction in Cuba. Curbelo Garcia is serving a 10-year sentence.

Chapman defected in 2009 in the Netherlands and was signed a year later by the Reds to a six-year, $30.25 million contract. The lawsuit claims Chapman accused Curbelo Garcia to win favor with the Cuban government so he could rejoin its national baseball team and eventually travel overseas to stage his escape. Chapman had been suspended from the team for a previous attempt to flee Cuba.

“His decision to leave the country led to his methodical subterfuge, which centered on demonstrating his loyalty to the state, which he accomplished by becoming an informant ... and falsely reporting and testifying against Curbelo Garcia,” the lawsuit says.

It isn’t clear from the story what the “human trafficking” conviction was based on, but if it’s simply helping people escape from Cuba, that’s no crime. If Chapman ratted out a real attempt to free him, he should be banned from baseball. If Chapman fabricated the story entirely he should be returned to Cuba or hanged.

Prescient Paddy Chayefsky

His screenplay for 1976’s Network imagined a major media company hiring terrorists. Well, here ya go:

A devout Muslim who has praised Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and publicly branded all non-believers as mentally ill “animals” was recently hired to serve as the Huffington Post’s political director in the U.K.

Mehdi Hasan, a controversial British media figure whom insiders have billed as a mouthpiece for the Iranian regime, recently left his job at the left-wing New Statesman magazine to join the Huffington Post as a senior staffer, according to reports in the British press.

The Huffington Post merged with Internet giant AOL in February 2011 to form the Huffington Post media group.

Hasan formerly served as political editor of the New Statesman, which is affiliated with a socialist political party and has faced criticism for publishing articles that many observers have deemed anti-Semitic. In one instance, the New Statesman published an article titled “A Kosher Conspiracy” that purported to expose the great power of Britain’s “pro-Israel lobby.” The cover of that issue featured a Star of David piercing a Union Jack.

Hasan can be seen on tape delivering multiple religious screeds in which he accuses non-Muslims of being animals and mentally inferior.

(Via Drudge.)