"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
by Smitty
The strange, creepy relationship between the Administration and unions is something about which Americans need to be reminded frequently. Also, the Administration’s fantasy approach to such matters as budgeting and economics. Some call it ‘unicorn math’. NoSheeplesHere brilliantly merges the two ideas:
Read the whole, detailed, important thing.
Lady, you rock!
‘No Poor Man Ever Gave Me a Job’
A Rasher of Bacon As A Unit Of Measure
Bad to Worse for Libyan Rebels
Sweet, Sweet Quantitative Easing
‘An Aimless and Slovenly Disaster’
Oh Sure, Right After I Got Wrecked Converting The Traditional IRA To A Roth
Fort Sumter 1861: ‘Strike a Blow!’
Rule 5 Monday: Beautiful Together
Smoke, Mirrors, Some Assembly Required
Why It Is Crucial To Own The Definitions
A: Since Most Are Neither Productive, Nor Reproductive, Nor Paying Taxes
Conservatives: Relax About Boehner
It’s a ‘Framework,’ Not a ‘Plan’
It’s Time Everyone Keep Their Naughty Bits Under Control
Sheen: My Show Is So Outstanding, I Should Totally Be President
How Ladd Ehlinger Went Viral And Flu Around The World
Trump Is A Tea Party Favorite?
Rush: ‘Cut To The Chase,’ a Tea Party Rallying Cry
Lawrence O’Donnell May Be A Knob, But That’s Not A Crime On Its Own
‘Avenge the Patriotic Gore That Flecked the Streets of Baltimore’
Guys: Collective Guilt Is Not Sexy
TODAY: Herman Cain in New Hampshire
A History Lesson for Janelle Harris
Allow Me To Disagree With Sen. DeMint
Top linkers for this week:
Thanks to all for their links, which have us on track to reach a quarter-million page views for April! Blogspot bloggers, please send your FMJRA links to me at Wombat-socho.
Jason Write, who co-authored Glenn Beck’s book The Christmas Sweater, explains the less-controversial truth behind the end of Beck’s daily show:
He and his vastly underrated business and creative teams at Mercury Radio Arts have long considered a change when he became, in effect, a free agent. It’s not what his detractors want you to hear, but if Beck and his production company had wanted to keep the daily show, he would have signed a new deal and continued clubbing the competition.
While Beck’s ratings have slipped from the sky highs of the health care debate, he still pulls 2 million viewers for a live broadcast at 5 p.m. EDT. Consider that a moment. He’s capturing those ratings with a show that airs on the East Coast while most are commuting home and at 2 p.m. on the West Coast, when folks are still tied to their cubicles.
Although he airs during Denny’s senior discount hour, he’s still pulverizing the prime time 8, 9 and 10 p.m. shows on the other cable news networks. He has unprecedented numbers for such an early broadcast. Are we really to believe Fox killed a show breaking ratings records in a time slot no one wants? . . .
Beck will continue to appear on Fox as a guest on other programs, he will produce and appear on programming of interest to Fox’s core audience, and he will remain a member of Fox’s extended family. What he won’t have to do is put on makeup and be locked in a studio at 5 p.m. every weekday.
When he was about 30 and teaching high-school band in Georgia in the late 1980s, Robert Hamberg divorced his wife, Jacque, and married 18-year-old Diane, his former student who had once baby-sat his children.
Well, OK. Creepy and unethical, perhaps, but not illegal. However, reasonable people might think that such behavior would have put an end to Hamberg’s teaching career. And reasonable people would be wrong:
Former Gulf Coast [Fla.] High School band director Robert Hamberg had sex with a 15-year-old student at school, at his home and in his car, a Collier County jury decided.
The jury deliberated almost 7 1/2 hours [Thursday] before finding Hamberg, 53, of Bonita Springs guilty on all eight counts of lewd and lascivious battery on the teenager from February to May 2009. . . .
For the girl, now 17, the verdict was affirmation she had been telling the truth about Hamberg, who was very popular at Gulf Coast High, where he developed the school’s successful band program . . .
“This is about justice. The victim was victimized from day one and called a liar. But the six people on the jury believed her,” Assistant State Attorney Mara Marzano said.
During closing arguments, Marzano told the jury Hamberg preyed on the young girl’s affections by telling her she was pretty and complimenting her on the way she played piano.
The girl gave explicit details of her encounters with Hamberg, including oral sex in school dressing rooms and at his house, fondling her genitals and attempted intercourse. . . .
During the trial, the judge allowed testimony that Hamberg married his current wife, who had been his band student at a Georgia high school and baby-sat his children. . . .
The alleged victim, Marzano said, “was a young girl with a school girl crush on her band director.”
Hamberg, said Marzano, exploited her infatuation. . . .
Hamberg “drew her in slowly like he was reeling in a fish,” the prosecutor said.
Hamberg gave her his personal email address and flirted with her on the Internet, Marzano said.
Then the relationship grew from hugs to kisses to repeated sex acts in school rooms, his home and in his car, Marzano said.
So the taxpayers of Collier County, Fla., basically provided Robert Hamberg with this opportunity to seek out a teenage victim, after he had already demonstrated an unethical sexual interest in his students by his actions in Georgia more than 20 years ago. And I guarantee you that nobody at Gulf Coast High informed parents that Hamberg’s wife was his former student.
Most people have no idea how much of this stuff goes on in schools because — despite federal mandatory-disclosure laws that require officials to report suspected abuse — public school administrators have a vested interest in keeping scandals like this quiet. Continue reading Public Education: Making It Easy for Sexual Predators to Find Their Prey →
From Human Events.
Well, well, well — what have we here?
The Rev. Jesse Jackson is vehemently denying allegations from a member of President Obama’s gay rights issues panel, who claims he was fired from the civil rights leader’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition because he is openly gay.
Tommy Bennett, who worked for the organization for more than two years as the national director of community affairs, filed a complaint last year with Chicago’s Commission on Human Relations accusing Jackson of discrimination, harassment and even asking him to perform oral sex on him.
Thanks to commenter Pagan Temple for calling my attention to this story. Now, let’s read more of the juicy details startling accusations:
In his complaint, Bennett says when he assumed duties as Jackson’s travel assistant, he was required to perform “humiliating” tasks for the former presidential candidate, including escorting women to his room and cleaning up after his tryst was done. Bennett says he believes he was forced to do these tasks because he is gay.
He also claimed that he was once summoned to take notes in Jackson’s hotel room, where he found Jackson “dressed only in his underwear (briefs) and a v-neck t-shirt.” Bennett claims that Jackson, whom he had given Cialis to earlier, was sexually aroused and breathing fast.
Jackson told him a story about his gay high school teacher who became a mentor and provided Jackson with a good grade, pocket change and oral sex. Bennett interpreted that as a sign that Jackson wanted oral sex from him, but he says he left the room.
Two possibilities suggest themselves here: (a) Tommy Bennett is telling the truth, or (b) he plagiarized the “Canteen Boy” sketch from SNL.
UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!
A soi-dissant philanthropist is exposed as a liar:
Some of the most inspiring and dramatic stories in the best-selling book, “Three Cups of Tea,” by Greg Mortenson, are not true, multiple sources tell “60 Minutes” . . .
The stories in “Three Cups of Tea” have become the source of inspirational speeches Mortenson is paid to make and the partial basis for donations of nearly $60 million to the charity he founded. . . . Mortenson’s charity, Central Asia Institute, has spent more money in the U.S. talking about education in Pakistan and Afghanistan than actually building and supporting schools there . . .
The heart of Mortenson’s “Three Cups of Tea” is the story of a failed attempt in 1993 to climb the world’s second-highest peak, K2.
On the way down, Mortenson says, he got lost and stumbled, alone and exhausted, into a remote mountain village in Pakistan named Korphe.
According to the book’s narrative, the villagers cared for him and he promised to return to build a school there. In a remote village in Pakistan, “60 Minutes” found Mortenson’s porters on that failed expedition. They say Mortenson didn’t get lost and stumble into Korphe on his way down from K2. He visited the village a year later.
That’s what famous author and mountaineer Jon Krakauer, a former donor to Mortenson’s charity, says he found out, too. “It’s a beautiful story. And it’s a lie,” says Krakauer. “I have spoken to one of his [Mortenson’s] companions, a close friend, who hiked out from K2 with him and this companion said, ‘Greg never heard of Korphe until a year later,'” Krakauer tells Kroft.
Read the whole thing. After 9/11, Mortenson shared his “philanthropic” opinion of the War on Terror:
“I’ve learned that terror doesn’t happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens because children aren’t being offered a bright enough future that they had a reason to choose life over death.”
Which is utterly misguided: Osama bin Laden is from one of the richest non-royal families in Saudi Arabia. Mohammed Atta was from an affluent Egyptian family and had a college degree in architecture. But one finds this Mortenson quote all over the Internet, because liberals desperately want to believe that poverty causes terrorism. If this were true, supposedly, we could “fight terrorism” by sending money and Peace Corps volunteers to the Third World, just as liberals believe we can “fight crime” at home with welfare, summer jobs programs, etc.
The moral of the story, of course: If it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably not true. But there’s always someone clever enough to cash in by telling liberals what they want to hear.
Which brings us to the Question of the Day: “Liberals pride themselves on being tolerant. Are they really just suckers?” I think we all know the answer to that question, but the liberal author, Sally Kohn, goes on to make reference to the “pathetic self-loathing” of liberals.
Really, did she have to remind us of “Conscious Men“?
by Smitty
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This is precisely what it appears to be, a blatant attempt at blogwhoring. You will likely never see me mention the dude on the right again. I thought the height of his acting career was getting his chops busted by Colin Firth in Bridget Jones’s Diary