LIVE AT FIVE – 08.22.11

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— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Rebels Cheer In Tripoli, But Qaddafi Lingers

Libyans celebrate the arrest of Saif Qaddafi and the capture of Tripoli

Loyalists still hold up to twenty percent of the city; Moammar Qaddafi’s whereabouts unknown

New Wrinkle In Strauss-Kahn Case?
Settlement negotiations going on? The New York DA wants to know


Netanyahu: No Large-Scale Gaza Operation Pending
Current round of rocket and mortar attacks seen as attempts to provoke Israel into doing damage to its diplomatic position



POLITICS
Huntsman V. Perry: Shootout At The GOP Corral

Former ambassador to the PRC speaks with NH voters

Attacks Tea Party favorites as he seeks the middle ground

On Martha’s Vineyard, Obama Monitors News From Libya

Excitement Builds For MLK Memorial Dedication

President Claims US Not Facing Another Recession

Coast Guard Upgrade Goes Slowly

Axelrod: “Pure Politics” May Undermine President’s Stimulus Plans

Is Christine O’Donnell Planning Another Run For Office?



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Nikkei Hits Five-Month Low On US Worries
European Stocks Rebound From Two-Year Low
Gold Nudges Fresh Record In Asian Trading
Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion In Secret Loans From Fed
Recession Called “Unlikely”, But Investors Are Scared
Dollar Thrifty Urges Talks On Merger
Best Buy To Sell TouchPads At Fire Sale Prices
Skype Buys Startup GroupMe
Motorola’s Identity Crisis
Google Maps Taking Armchair Explorers To The Amazon
RIM To Launch BlackBerry Music



SPORTS
Violence At Candlestick Mars 49ers/Raiders Game

Candlestick Park during the 49ers-Raiders game

Two shot, one beaten as fights erupt throughout the stadium

Weaver Signs Extension With Angels, Verlander Going For 20

Braves Stop Snakes At Third, Win 1-0

Brudenell: Like It Or Not, Kyle Busch Is Sprint Cup Favorite

Antron Brown Wins Top Fuel

Legally Speaking: A&M To SEC In Fine-Print Stage

Tigers Hold On For Sweep Of Tribe

Nats Rally Late, Beat Phillies In 10th On Hit Batsman



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Honorary Brit

Rihanna flaunts it at the V Festival

Rihanna’s leather jacket doesn’t stay on long

MDA Telethon Reinstates Jerry Lewis

Bret Michaels, Donald Trump In Talks To Develop New Reality Show

It’s A Girl For Kimberly Stewart

Matt Hardy Arrested For DWI

Demi Lovato Celebrates Her 19th Birthday With Bowling, Red Bull, And Beer

Alli Sims Has A Baby Girl


Bristol Palin Debuts New “T” Tattoo

Sugarland Calls For Moment Of Silence At First Concert Since Indiana Tragedy

Some Attention Whore Gets Married To An Unemployed Athlete



FOREIGNERS
Oil Prices Drop As Rebels Sweep Into Tripoli
Five Rockets Hit Israel After Gaza Factions Agree To Truce
Syrian Leader Defiant Despite Resignation Calls
Fighting Corruption With Kishan On Janmashtmi
King Tries To Unite Shattered Norway At Remembrance
Biden Praises Mongolia’s Democratic Development
Tony Blair Not Buying “Moral Decline” Argument On Rioting



BLOGS & STUFF
Power Line: If I Were A Banker…
Wizbang: Maxine Waters Keeping It Civil
Jihad Watch: PA Tells Israel To Stop “Rogue Behavior” As 20 Rockets Fired From Gaza
Allahpundit: Tom Friedman Thinks It’s Too Early To Tell If Media Overhyped Obama In 2008
Don Surber: Dowd Mentions The Unmentionable
NRO Corner: Koch To Buffett – Screw Your Call For Higher Taxes, The Government Is Incompetent
Tyler Cowen: The Sad Statistic That Trumps The Others
Marginal Revolution: Eurobond Points
Jammie Wearing Fool: Sharpton Explains His Role In Crown Heights Pogrom
Ed Morrissey: What If Obama Quit?
The Lonely Conservative: Pataki Considering Run For President
JustOneMinute: Meanwhile, Back In Iowa…


SOTD: I’m On Fire

To the Reader Who Bought … Wait, What the Heck Is That $224 Gizmo, Anyway?

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I keep calling attention to people who shop our Amazon Associates links to buy stuff I didn’t even know Amazon sold until I saw the sales report informing that I’d earned a 4% commission on it.

But a couple of days ago, one of our readers purchased something that I don’t even know what it is.

Perhaps some tech-savvy reader can explain what you do with a “IOGEAR 4-Port HDMI Multimedia KVM Switch with Audio, USB 2.0 Hub and HDMI KVM Cables” — It slices! It dices! It makes cole slaw! Julienne fries! — but all I know is that one of our readers paid $223.69 for it, which provided me with a commission of $8.95.

Every purchase made through the Amazon links here, no matter how large or small, provides a 4% commission. Some reader purchased a book I’ve often recommended — Thomas Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy — for $12.24, which meant a 49-cent commission for me.

Lots of small commissions add up, but lately I’ve been trying to push the high-dollar items. We haven’t yet sold that $120,000 7-carat diamond ring but, for example, did you know you can get a casino-style roulette table for a mere $659.23 at Amazon? And then you can invite me over to your house, where I’ll stay until dawn or until I’m flat broke, whichever comes first (usually the latter).

But seriously, folks, it doesn’t matter what products are advertised: Click any Amazon link on this site, browse through their vast selection and anything you buy during that visit will kick me a 4% commission — which is substantially less than the house “take” on a roulette table, I hasten to add.

UPDATE: Just noticed that the roulette table says “wheel not included,” so you’d need to buy a wheel: a deluxe professional 19.5″ model is $299.99, but you could go top-of-the-line and get the 30-inch mahogany-and-maple wheel for $5,477.77. I’m just sayin’ . . .

PREVIOUSLY:

FMJRA 2.0: Let’s Dance To Joy Division

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— compiled by Wombat-socho


Tim Pawlenty Quits!

Marcus Bachmann and the Dangerous Modern Myth of ‘Sexual Orientation’

Blogging About Pathetic Perverts and Also Andrew Sullivan’s Sarah Palin Toe Fetish

Scapegoater-in-Chief: President Obama Blames Tea Party for High Unemployment

Britain’s Skanky Future: Former Pre-Teen Bikini Model Now Pregnant at Age 15 and Her Welfare Mother Says She’s ‘Excited’

Attention, ‘Young Hotties’ Who Have Had Sex With a Certain Texas Governor

Rule 5 Sunday: She’s The One

LIVE AT FIVE – 08.16.11

The Pappas-Palin Drama

Maybe The Answer Is ‘We Obsess Too Much About Crotches’

Santorum: ‘We Feel Very Good’

Michele Bachmann and the Media Scrum

Harry Reid Blows Past Merely Insulting, Explores New Territory Somewhere Very Close To Laughable

LIVE AT FIVE – 08.15.11

Michele Bachmann to Begin Three-Day South Carolina Bus Tour Tuesday

Unlike a Wall Street CEO, Blogger Can’t Afford Mistresses in Three Countries

Two Words: ‘Surgical Sterilization’

The Seasteading Concept Is All Fun And Games Until Reality Intrudes

Michelle Goldberg and ‘The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Evangelicalism’

LIVE AT FIVE – 08.17.11

‘Firebagger Lefty Blogosphere’

Glenn Reynolds Is Wrong

LIVE AT FIVE – 08.18.11

WaPoo Goober Who Was Unsure Of Constitution’s Age, Real Sure NYT-noid Story Slamming Tea Party Is, Like, Kosher

Bikini + NASCAR = Traffic Gold!

Obama’s Basic Problem: They Don’t Teach Economics at Harvard Law School

So Young, Yet Already A Troubled Youth

The Uninformed Rick Perry

I Would Very Much Like to Say That Janeane Garofalo Has Lost Her Mind …

Fear and Loathing in the Airport Lounge: The Final Wisdom of My Iowa Journey

LIVE AT FIVE – 08.19.11

Thousands Flock to Georgia ‘Job Fair’ While Obama Goes on Vacation

Teen Model’s Parents File $28 Million Lawsuit Over ‘Salacious’ Crotch Photo

1 In 5 U.S. Web Sites Are Powered By WordPress

If Sarah Palin Isn’t Running for President, Why Is She Releasing This Iowa Video?

Chris Matthews: Exceptionally Idiotic

GOP Presidential Primary Apocalypse

The Perry-Palin Litmus Test

Herman Cain: ‘Still in It to Win It’

Top linkers this week:

  1. The Pro From Poca (12)
  2. Daily Pundit (7)
  3. (tie) The Camp Of The Saints, The Lonely Conservative and The POH Diaries (5)

Deadline for next week’s links is Friday, August 26; please include “FMJRA” or “Shameless Blogwhoring” in the subject line.

 

Weird News: Nephew of Joe Lieberman Accused of Massive Online Art Fraud

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Chad Love-Lieberman, 34, reputed nephew of Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, has been accused of copyright infringement and fraud.

Love-Lieberman’s alleged fraud was exposed after an online publication Campus Socialite picked up a story from the South Florida Chronicle about Love-Lieberman’s self-proclaimed success as a “multimedia pop artist.” Campus Socialite further asserted that Love-Lieberman had taken out a $1.4 million insurance policy on his own testicles.

This publicity proved Love-Lieberman’s undoing: Several artists have now claimed that supposedly “original” art that Love-Lieberman sold via the Web sites Art4Love and MarkYourSpot — both now offline — was actually pirated from their work which the artists had posted at the Deviant Art site. Love-Lieberman reportedly sold the fraudulent copies for hundreds of dollars each, and is now the intended target of a planned class-action lawsuit organized by one of the artists claiming infringement, on behalf of more than 100 other of Love-Lieberman’s alleged victims.

SOURCES:

The Infinite Viciousness of the Online Left

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Donald Douglas at American Power today reprints the e-mail that Karl Salnonen sent to a number of college officials as part of Salonen’s smear-campaign effort to get Professor Douglas fired.

This is the latest permutation of a blogwar dating back months, if not years, of which I first became aware when “Advice Goddess” Amy Alkon discussed being smeared by the Left as a racist transsexual. Alkon had identified Salonen and the notorious troll Loretta Serrano as part of a smear campaign to hurt sales of Alkon’s book, I See Rude People. At some point, Professor Douglas also clashed with Salonen so that Douglas has likewise become targeted for defamation.

Three months ago, Salonen made the empty threat of a libel suit against Douglas — lying lefties always make such threats, but never actually sue — and so now, unable to bluff Douglas into silence, Salonen tries to get him fired. And in the process, Salonen dares to invoke my name:

Dr. Douglas has decided to share his information with his compatriots and fellow right-wing bloggers (see the PDF from Stacy McCain’s site entitled “Carl Salonen & The Left Wing Trolls…”)

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Does Salonen sincerely believe that Professor Douglas’s supervisors will fire him because of something I wrote? Surely there is no need for Salonen to provide a PDF of a post which is still online, and which I would be be more than happy for any college president to read, as it says in part:

That the Left’s cultural ambitions now extend so far that Carl Salonen and his merry band of online character assassins would attempt the destruction of Amy Alkon — a mere syndicated advice columnist, who writes about etiquette and relationships, etc. — demonstrates the enduring totalitarian spirit of the Left.
You had better speak out against the Left’s thuggery now, because if hatemongers like Carl Salonen and Loretta Serrano ever get their way, you won’t be able to speak out in the future.

I stand by every word of that, and defy Salonen to disprove the assertions of objective fact, that he is a character assassin and a hatemonger engaged in online thuggery.

As for the rest of it, go to American Power and read the whole thing.

Qaddafi Cornered as Rebels Attack Tripoli

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More than five months after the launch of Operation Odyssey Dawn — which was supposed to have toppled Moammar Qaddafi’s regime in a matter of days — Libyan rebels say they’re finally on the verge of victory:

Euphoric Libyan rebels have pushed to the western outskirts of Tripoli without meeting any resistance after they overran a major military base that defends the capital.
Associated Press reporters with the rebels said they reached the Tripoli suburb of Janzour around nightfall Sunday. They were greeted by civilians lining the streets and waving rebel flags.
Hours earlier, the same rebel force of hundreds drove out elite forces led by Muammar al-Qaddafi’s son in a brief gunbattle. The fighters hauled off truckloads of weapons and advanced full speed toward the capital. . . .
An Associated Press reporter with the rebels saw them take over the base of the Khamis Brigade, 16 miles west of the capital, on Sunday. The base has been defending Qaddafi’s stronghold of Tripoli. After a brief gunbattle, Qaddafi’s forces fled.
Qaddafi’s 27-year-old son Khamis commands the 32nd Brigade, also known simply as the Khamis Brigade, one of the best trained and equipped units in the Libyan military. . . .

Qaddafi’s “days are numbered,” the White House says again for the umpteenth time. From Day One of this operation, Obama, Hillary and other administration figures have repeatedly declared that Qaddafi’s “days are numbered,” but they didn’t tell us the number was “at least 150,” and even now we don’t know how many of those numbered days still remain.

As long as Qaddafi is killed or captured before Nov. 6, 2012, the White House will proclaim it a triumphant vindication of the president’s policy.

‘Fight’ Whom, Congressman?

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Excuse my visceral reaction to this story:

Cummings: Black community
wants Obama to ‘fight harder’
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said Sunday that African-Americans want President Obama to “fight harder” to create jobs in the struggling U.S. economy.
Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, Cummings said the black community is very protective of Obama and is upset by attacks coming from Republicans on the president. But the lawmaker, ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said African-Americans want Obama to not concede to Republican demands.
“Almost every African-American person I have talked to has said they want him to fight, and fight harder,” Cummings said. “If the Republicans are not going to work with us, we just have to go it alone. Stand it up to them. Don’t back down. Period. They’re [not] going to give you anything anyway.”

According to Congressman Cummings, then, it is Republicans who are somehow preventing Obama from exercising his job-creation magic.

If we are to take his word for it, “almost every African-American person” shares this bizarre belief. And what will happen if the promised magic fails? Who will get the blame for the lack of job-creation? Will they blame Republicans? Blame the Tea Party? Blame “corporate America”?

Or will they just blame whitey?

It ain’t just liberals who can spot a demagogue blowing a “dog whistle,” you know. Appealing to the credulous resentments of ignorant mobs has long been a political speciality of the Democratic Party, which habitually excites the fears and hatreds of its constituencies, even as it exploits their foolish hopes. (By the way, whatever happened to Peggy Joseph?)

Democrats exercise power through such cynical manipulation of their supporters’ dreams and nightmares. The Democrats grow rich while the people who elect them grow poor and yet always — always — the blame for their failures is externalized onto those hated Emmanuel Goldstein scapegoats, the Republicans.

What’s for supper, Congressman Cummings? “Barbecued unicorn ribs!”

In a democracy, you get the government you deserve. And the fools who vote for Democrats certainly deserve no better than what they’ve gotten from Obama: Absolutely nothing.

UPDATE: Evidently, Congressman Cummings was reading from the White House/DNC/Axelrod/OFA talking-points memo:

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) came out swinging against Republicans in Congress on Saturday as she addressed the unemployed during a forum in Inglewood. . . .
Waters vowed to push Congress to focus on creating more jobs. “I’m not afraid of anybody,” said Waters. “This is a tough game. You can’t be intimidated. You can’t be frightened. And as far as I’m concerned, the ‘tea party’ can go straight to hell.”

So this is now the Axelrod-approved Democrat message: Republicans are to blame for unemployment, and anyone who doesn’t blame Republicans is a cowardly scaredy-cat. And there’s also this:

In China, Biden blames GOP for
holding up stronger debt deal

You’re probably saying to yourself, “Why is Biden demagoguing against Republicans in China?”

But hey, what’s a little Logan Act violation among friends? It’s not like Eric Holder would prosecute the Democrats for obtaining illegal foreign contributions to Obama’s re-election campaign, right?