Jobs Saved or Created?

Just randomly checking the news headlines when I saw this at Fox News:

Use of Surrogate Sex Partners
Rising Among Women

Ummm. OK. Let’s see what this is about:

“More and more women are now claiming their birth right to either have an orgasm, or healthy relationship or have sexual satisfaction,” said Shai Rotem, a surrogate partner who is based in Los Angeles but practices internationally.
In his 14 years as a surrogate partner, Rotem has worked with women who have a condition called vaginismus, which makes sex painful, women in their 40s or 50s who are virgins and women who have experienced sexual trauma. . . .
Surrogate partners work with their patients to build their communication skills and self-confidence, and help them become more comfortable with physical and emotional intimacy. Rotem said sessions are well-planned and less anxiety-provoking for patients than real-world sexual encounters, where anything can happen. “[This] is way safer than meeting strange men in a bar,” he said.

Is this sort of employment going to be increased as a result of Obama’s jobs program? Will surrogate therapy be covered by ObamaCare?

Because if this blogging gig doesn’t work out . . .

Arguably The Best Thing Written On The Subject Of 9/11

by Smitty

MAZAR-E-SHARIF, AFGHANISTAN — This is track five on Satriani’s 2006 Super Colossal release. It’s called “Ten Words,” though he never gets around to explaining what those words are. In the CD booklet, he noted that he composed this on piano on 12 September 2001, and then let it sit for a few years before recording it:

Inspired by Satriani’s work (the subject of this post), I composed a hymn Continue reading Arguably The Best Thing Written On The Subject Of 9/11 →

On September 10th

Front page, The Washington Times, Sept. 12, 2001

Ten years ago, I covered a press conference in D.C. and wrote an article that appeared in The Washington Times:

Coalition watches
war on drugs for
rights violations

Letter calls for grilling Bush nominee

By Robert Stacy McCain
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
A broad coalition of conservative and civil liberties groups wants assurances that the Bush administration’s war on drugs will respect constitutional rights and the privacy of citizens.
Bringing together such diverse groups as the American Civil Liberties Union and the social conservative Eagle Forum, the ad-hoc Coalition for Constitutional Liberties has asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to question President Bush’s top drug-policy nominee on issues of electronic surveillance and other law-enforcement tactics that they say violate citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights.
In a letter to the committee, the coalition led by the Free Congress Foundation asks that John Walters — nominated as director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy by Mr. Bush — be questioned during confirmation hearings today about his views on how “drug policy drives government surveillance and invasion of privacy.”
“As a taxpayers’ group, we don’t like the idea of paying the government to abuse our rights,” Robert Fike of Americans for Tax Reform said at a press conference yesterday announcing the coalition . . .

The story went on from there, but I don’t know whatever happened to the Coalition for Constitutional Liberties and I frankly doubt anyone paid any attention to that article because it was published on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

That morning, I was awakened by my wife, handing me the phone. It was my brother Kirby calling from Georgia. “Turn on Fox News,” he said. “A plane just hit the World Trade Center. It’s a terrorist attack.”

Still half-asleep — my workday didn’t usually start until noon — I stumbled into the living room and stared at the TV showing smoke pouring out of the WTC tower, but I couldn’t believe terrorists were responsible. Maybe, I told my brother on the phone, it was some kind of accident. “No, Stacy, it’s terrorism,” Kirby insisted.

I hung up the phone still unconvinced, and was thinking about going back to bed when the second plane hit. Obviously, this was no accident, so I decided to get ready for work. While I was still in the shower, one of the WTC towers fell, and then the second, and in the meantime we learned that a third plane had hit the Pentagon.

By the time I got to the office, they were already putting the finishing touches on a special early edition of the paper and the rest of the day was lost in a blur of work. What I do remember, however, is when the TV news that night showed crowds of Muslims dancing jubilantly in the streets, celebrating this attack on America.

Those ugly little scenes are seldom mentioned nowadays, but are burned into my memory. Say what you will, I know who the enemy is.

Not so with Georgetown Law professor David Cole, who apparently decided to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9-11 by demanding that Obama pursue war-crimes charges against Bush administration officials. Donald Douglas at American Power writes:

Behold the mind of the progressive left on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the attacks. For radical progressives, it’s America that’s the problem, not the fanatical killers who continue to wage war against us.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Linked by Melissa Clouthier and by Duane Lester at All American Blogger — thanks! — and welcome, Instapundit readers!

Meanwhile, I just printed my boarding pass to fly to Tampa. Flying on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 doesn’t exactly thrill me.

I’m sure all those terrorism concerns are just phantoms conjured up by worry-warts and over-excited bureaucrats. But I spent Saturday night watching 9/11 documentaries and so it’s kinda creepy to think about boarding a plane in a few hours.

Nevertheless, there’s a CNN/Tea Party Express debate Monday night in Tampa, and I’m flying down Sunday to cover it.

And there’s absolutely nothing to worry about, right? Right?


Advice to Selena: Never Trust a Canadian

Oh, yeah, we know he acts all sweet and innocent and romantic, but it’s time to wake up and smell the juvenile womanizer:

Canadian heartthrob Justin Bieber has announced he’d like to make one lucky gal his wife in the near future.
“By 25 or 26 [years old], I want to see myself, like, married or start looking for a family,” the 17-year-old singer told Women’s Wear Daily in New York City on Thursday, when the fashion publication asked where he sees himself five years from now. . . .
“I want to be a young dad,” he said. “I want to be able to have done what I wanted to do — to be successful, to do a movie or whatever. But if the time is right, I definitely want to be married by 25.”
However, the superstar was quick to admit that although former Disney darling Selena Gomez is currently his “girlfriend right now,” marriage is not in their immediate future.
“One thing — I’m not looking to get married now,” he added.

He’s not taking you seriously, Selena. You’re his “girlfriend right now,” but he’s talking marriage and babies in the distant future, when he’s 25.

Trust me on this one, girl: Bieber’s just stringing you along. He’s a user. He’s exploiting your naïve “true love” infatuation and then, a year or two from now — after he’s taken all he wants to take — he’s gonna discard you like a used Kleenex.

Typical Canadian. They’re all like that.

Is BHO Crazy Like A Fox?

by Smitty

Looking at the “Lincoln founded the GOP” kerfuffle, one is tempted to wonder if the verbal gaffes aren’t intended as a distraction.

Gunwalker and Solyndra really should be even bigger deals than they are; nothing short of a thorough investigation is enough for these scandals.

And, sure, the Lincoln gaffe is another brick in the wall of the Mainstream Media Mausoleum. After the Sarah Palin/Paul Revere history lesson, we’re reminding ourselves that, sure enough propaganda reigns in the Lefty mind, both when attempting to shred good people and cover for those who may not be so good. 

In the final analysis, it is irrelevant whether the guy who won’t release his college transcripts is a dunce, or playing one at taxpayer’s expense.  It doesn’t matter if this is some effort to distract attention from the real problems of how we

  • de-scope the federal government,
  • re-invigorate the private sector economy, and
  • articulate to the American people that entitlements are a mirage from which we all need to divorce ourselves as gracefully as possible.

That’s just the beginnings of the list of things that demand our attention. BHO’s non-grasp of history? Worth noting in passing, maybe.

Wow! Amazon Sells a 250-Gigabyte Compact Desktop Computer for $309.99?

It’s amazing the stuff I discover while checking the Amazon Associates sales report. Somebody bought the Acer AspireRevo AR3700 compact desktop computer for $309.99 — providing a 4% commission of $12.40 for me — and it’s a pretty cool setup at a bargain price. Of course, that price doesn’t include a monitor, but maybe the buyer plans to use the AR3700 to run videogames via their HDTV, which is one of the recommended uses. But you can get an Acer 19-inch widescreen LCD monitor for just $94 at Amazon.

We also recently sold an MSI notebook computer for $739. The product description reads, “MSI FX620DX-256US Notebook Intel Core i5 2410M(2.30GHz) 15.6-inch 6GB Memory 640GB HDD DVD Super Multi NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M.” I don’t know what all that means, but I do know that my commission was $25, which means Mrs. Other McCain will be $25 happier when the Amazon Associates check arrives next month.

Keeping Mrs. Other McCain happy is, of course, essential to the continuation of my blogging career and not just because, as I have previously remarked, she’s got a kitchen drawer full of knives and I’ve got to sleep sometime. The business of monetizing Web traffic — i.e., getting the occasional check in the mail — is the difference between me flying off to Iowa and taking a train to New Hampshire to cover the presidential campaign and me going down to the temporary agency to apply for a job as a forklift driver. So when you see me promoting Amazon sales here from time to time, you understand what it’s all about: If blogging is more than a hobby, the bills have to be paid.

When I first started blogging, I thought of Amazon as just an online bookstore. I didn’t realize that (a) once readers click through one of the Amazon Associates links, they can browse around and buy anything and I still get the 4% commission, and (b) they sell everything at Amazon. So when I started seeing on the sales report that people were buying all kinds of stuff — including jewelry, computers and big-screen TVs — that I’d never even realized they could buy at Amazon, it was like one of those cartoon scenes with the lightbulb over my head. “Ohhhhhh!”

You want a 26-inch riding lawnmower for $799.99? You got it — and free Super Saver shipping, too! You want to buy your kid a $349.99 mini-bike for Christmas? You got it! And if you want to surprise your wife with a Mikasa 45-piece china service for $169.99, why shop anywhere else?

See, I understand that many of our readers have wives or husbands who might get peeved if you were to hit the tip jar for $20.





“Giving money to a blogger? Are you nuts?” But your spouse won’t have any cause to complain when you get a great bargain on a useful household item — or a thoughtful gift — from Amazon.

Of course, we haven’t sold that 7-carat diamond ring for $120,000 yet, but I’m still hoping. Because if I can just sell one . . .

UPDATE: Got a question on Twitter from Debbie, who was concerned that I might know who buys what on Amazon. Rest assured that, while the Amazon sales report tells me what items we’ve sold, it does not identify the buyers. And so your privacy is guaranteed. Continue reading Wow! Amazon Sells a 250-Gigabyte Compact Desktop Computer for $309.99? →

Madison Rising: ‘Soldiers of America’

We picked up a new advertiser yesterday, a rock band called Madison Rising that was recently written up at Big Hollywood and in the New York Post. Their first single is “Soldiers of America”:

They come from the bright light cities.
They come from a one-horse town.
But if they’re coming for you, boy,
You better know they ain’t messin’ around.

Pretty cool, if you think of it this way: They’re singing about Smitty!

Madison Rising an album coming out at the end of the month, but you can buy an MP3 download of their first single for 99 cents at Amazon.