While We Have Not Yet Sold Any $120,000 7-Carat Diamond Rings …

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. . . I was very pleased to see on the Amazon Associates sales report that one of our readers bought a Motorola Xoom Android Tablet for $499.00, thus earning me a sweet 4% commission of $19.96.

Another reader bought a Nikon CoolPix camera for $109 — a $4.36 commission for me. Ka-ching! And then a reader bought a $119.99 Cuisinart food processor — a $4.80 commission. Ka-ching!

Lots of other readers bought lots of other stuff I didn’t even know you could buy from Amazon. For example, somebody bought a box of Crest 3D Whitestrips for $27.73 and somebody else bought 10 wide-angle LED flood lights for $19.99 each.

Ka-ching! Ka-ching! These commissions can really add up, if you’ll just shop the Amazon Associates links here.

It doesn’t matter what you buy: Just click on one of the links, then shop around through Amazon’s huge selection and anything you buy during that visit from our links — ka-ching! — they pay me a 4% commission.

Now, some readers were understandably puzzled last night when I offered, among other selections for the rock-and-roll lifestyle, a 7-carat diamond ring for $118,195.37.

“Oh, come on, McCain — that’s crazy! How many people are going to be shopping around on Amazon and buy a diamond ring for nearly $120,000?”

Yeah, I know it seems crazy, and there probably aren’t a lot of people buying such big-ticket items from blog links. But if I can just sell one . . .

PREVIOUSLY:

It’s Not News, But Why Miss a Chance to Use ‘Palin’ in a Deceptive Headline?

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Today’s news from the Department of Deceptive Headlines:

Bristol Palin To Star In A Reality Show
With Disney Channel’s Kyle Massey

Checking my calendar — yep, it’s July 18 — I point out this headline from a press release issued on May 9:

BIO CHANNEL GREENLIGHTS UNTITLED
BRISTOL PALIN, CHRISTOPHER MASSEY
AND KYLE MASSEY DOCU-SERIES

Permit me further to share this tip about the practice of journalism: Never report old news as if you were breaking an exclusive.

A fact that was first announced in a press release 10 weeks ago is not news, and trying to pretend that it is news only makes you look stupid. A more accurate headline would have been:

MEDIAITE.COM HAS VIDEO OF
BRISTOL PALIN ON FOX NEWS

Which isn’t how they headlined it, because that wouldn’t permit Mediaite.com to pretend they’d scored The Big Scoop, when all they did was write a story about a cable TV interview and put their own logo on a video that has been on FoxNews.com since yesterday afternoon:

This cheap stunt would be too trivial to mention, had I not seen the Mediaite story as a Memeorandum thread, suggesting that some bloggers had not previously been aware of this 10-week-old news, even though I’d reprinted nearly the entire May 9 press release in a May 27 item at The American Spectator with the title, “The Palin Principle of Liberal Media Ethics.” I then linked that item here with the headline, “Media Ignores Black Woman Who Calls Palin ‘Funny, Nice and Genuinely Warm’.”

What I did not do on May 27 was to pretend that the (then) two-week-old announcement of Bristol’s reality-show deal was news. And yet you may rest assured that Mediaite.com’s deceptively-headlined story will be linked at various conservative blogs because it evidently never occurs to anyone to check the facts.

It is at times like this that I recall the famous words of P.J. O’Rourke: “What the fuck? What the fucking fuck, huh?“

Krikorian on Cain, Islam and Immigration

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Mark Krikorian semi-disagrees with Herman Cain:

If a large and growing Muslim population represents a threat to liberty — and I believe, with Cain, that it does — then that’s yet another reason to reduce future immigration. But once you admit people, we’re bound to judge them individually, by the same yardstick we use for everyone else.

Fair criticism, I suppose. Yet Krikorian ought to acknowledge what few have noted about the 2012 GOP primary field: Herman Cain has the strongest conservative stance on immigration. I would ask Krikorian to talk to the candidate and see if he doesn’t agree that Herman Cain is closer to Tom Tancredo’s get-tough stance than anyone else in the Republican presidential campaign.

See? B.S.!

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Ed Morrissey does an excellent evisceration of a blatantly deceptive CBS News poll:

Have Democrats leaped to an eleven-point registration advantage in the last five weeks?  In early June, a CBS News poll showed a D/R/I sample of 30/30/40, which undersampled both parties slightly in favor of independents, even weighting it to slightly favor Republicans. In their latest poll today on the debt ceiling debate, CBS offers one of its most egregious poll samples in recent memory to pursue the “public blames the GOP” meme . . .

Read the whole thing. I will add only two points that I’ve made before about how polling data is often misinterpreted:

  1. “Random adults” don’t matter in politics. Any poll on a political topic that surveys mere “adults” — as opposed to registered voters or, preferably, well-screened likely voters — is utterly worthless. People who don’t vote, don’t matter. Any poll that doesn’t make some attempt to screen out non-voters tells you nothing useful about the political landscape. And also, non-voters are more liberal than average.
  2. Early polling is always deceptive. Public opinion of political issues in July of an off-year is a poor measure of where voter sentiment will be 16 months from now on Election Day 2012.

In the most recent election eight months ago, Republicans won a historic landslide and there is no reason to believe now, in mid-July, that Americans have suddenly shifted toward the Democrats. What CBS News did with that poll is as big a lie as RatherGate, and they should be ashamed of themselves for promoting dishonest propaganda while pretending to report the news.

Afghan Task Of Turning The U.S. Into Land Of Corrupt Warlords: Fruitful

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by Smitty

The more you read about Fast and Furious, the more you wonder if the U.S. involvment in Afghanistan is about coaxing Afghanistan to be more like the U.S., or the reverse.
We’re past the benefit-of-the-doubt stage. This is about the integrity of the borders, the U.S. government, and the future of the country. Allen West speaks for me: we need a special prosector.

From ‘Not Not Running’, To ‘Not Running Traditional Campaign’, To ‘Not Letting Americans Off The Hook’: Go, Palin!

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by Smitty

WAYTOOHOTABAD, KUWAIT. A few hours sleep, a bit of bandwidth, and a real sense that my R&R leave and meeting the World’s Youngest Blogger may not be the most important things going on, at least outside my immediate family.
Via Instapundit, there is the Yahoo article about The Undefeated opening in some red meat districts, and doing some brisk business.
I very badly need to see this film. This means that people in markets where it opened on the 15th of July need to go see it. It’s about market signaling, people.
The Progressive project is predicated upon the notion that the American people are sheep. The American people have behaved sheepishly; let’s be honest. And here is a leader theatening the Progressive wolves with some honest shepherdly behavior. The river of dishonest bile from the usual liars is all you need to know.
This movie constitutes a 2012 straw poll. If you ever want to see a politician exhibit courage, Sarah Palin or otherwise, go see this flick. It may have strong associations with her, but, if this thing dies on the vine, you may as well plan to vote for a tool of the Romney ilk. Because that’s all that will be left. Or, WTF, just vote for BHO: as the ship sinks, you’ll have the satisfaction of noting that, by God, you were part owner of the capsizing.
Oh, look: a Twitter feed! A blog! A picture of our Ruling Class Overlords reacting!
I don’t care if movie theaters are not your thing. You can put off your cigarette long enough to sit through this flick. And then get on social media and get others to see it.
This is a deal of nearly Biden-esque proportions.

It Depends on How You Define ‘Success’

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“According to Jim Messina, his campaign manager, through the second quarter of 2011, President Obama now has 552,000 contributors to his 2012 re-election campaign. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that during the same two quarters, the U.S. economy generated 260,000 jobs. In other words, Obama attracted twice as many campaign donors as his economic policies created new jobs.”
— Mark Tapscott, Washington Examiner