"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
OK, so you get hired to do a job and, when the job’s over, you try to hustle a buck by stabbing your former employer in the back.
Explain to me why anyone should ever trust you. Or better yet, explain to me why anyone should ever do anything except spit on the ground when your name is mentioned.
Must be nice to get your book proposal promoted by Politico, you worthless two-faced backstabbing crapweasel.
Alyssa Milano is going to be a mom!
The actress, 38, and her husband Dave Bugliari, 32, are expecting their first child, Milano’s rep confirms to PEOPLE exclusively.
“They’re just over the moon,” says a friend of the “Who’s The Boss” and “Charmed” alum, who’s due in early fall. “They are so excited.”
She Tweeted me in late September and, five months later, announces she’s pregnant. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.
UPDATE: The official confirmation Tweet:
UPDATE II: Trust me, this is way more important than Moammar Qaddafi. Washington Post, CBS News, New York Daily News, New York Post, ABC News — all the really important news outlets are covering this story.
“There’s a reason why we want to own these guns. . . . The vast majority of these guns are owned by people who live in safe parts of town, or mostly in suburbs and rural areas, places where there are very few murders. . . . Why do you have a gun? What are you afraid of? . . . That imaginary person who’s going to break into your home and kill you — who’s that person going to look like? It’s not freckle-faced Jimmy down the street, is it, really? . . . We never really want to talk about the racial or class part of this, in terms of how it’s the poor or people of color that we imagine, we’re afraid of. . . . We also need to address the larger issue of, why are we such a violent people? And not just personal, domestic violence, but a nation that invades other countries, that has such a huge weapons budget, that just seems so intent on violence being the answer.”
— Michael Moore on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” MSNBC
Jehuda the Rhetorican called my attention to that claim made, in a letter to the president of the Newspaper Guild, by the senior vice president of public relations for Huffington Post, Mario Ruiz:
We couldn’t agree more with your goal of ensuring journalists are paid for their work. It’s why HuffPost has 143 editors, writers, and reporters on our edit team. But we feel there’s a critical distinction between our editors and reporters and the people who contribute to our group blog. While we pay our editors and reporters, we don’t pay for the opinion pieces submitted by our thousands of bloggers. The vast majority of our bloggers understand the value of having a platform that reaches a very large audience. People blog on HuffPost for free for the same reason they go on cable TV shows every night for free — because they are passionate about their ideas, want them to be heard by the largest possible audience, and understand the value that that kind of visibility can bring (the visibility of being on HuffPost has led to our bloggers being invited on TV to discuss their posts, to paid speeches, to book deals, to a TV show — Greg Gutfeld claims he was offered his Fox show because of his writing on HuffPost). Our bloggers can choose to write for HuffPost — or not write for HuffPost.
They can write as often as like they like or as little as they like. It’s both wrong and offensive to insist that HuffPost is exploiting journalists.
I suppose we’ll hear more about this from Greg “I Would Be Nobody Without HuffPo” Gutfeld. But I ask you to pay attention to how HuffPo itself distinguishes among its contributors: If you write a free blog for them, you are by definition not a journalist.
Because if you were a journalist, they’d have to pay you. As it is, you’re writing for free because you’re “passionate about [your] ideas,” as opposed to Arianna Huffington, who’s passionate about her $18 million lump-sum payment and her $4 million annual salary.
Also, if you blog for HuffPo and don’t have your own cable-TV show yet, it’s because you suck.
That’s Allahpundit’s prognosis for the outcome of the “investigation” of University of Wisconsin doctors writing bogus excuses for protesters in Madison:
This involves a few individuals out of the nearly 1,300 physicians at UW Health.
These UW Health physicians were acting on their own and without the knowledge or approval of UW Health. These charges are very serious and in response, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation, the UW Health entities that employ the physicians, have immediately launched an investigation of the reported behavior.
The investigation will identify which UW Health physicians were involved and whether their behavior constituted violations of medical ethics or University of Wisconsin and UW Health policies and work rules.
The situation in Madison illustrates what happens when “medical ethics” meets “social justice”:
Although this might seem an outrageous breach of professional ethics, it is actually entirely consistent with the new brand of “progressive” medical ethics currently taught to medical students. . . .
In 2002, the American College of Physicians proposed a charter in which the three guiding ethical principles for physicians would be: patient welfare, patient autonomy, and “social justice.” In 2007, the AMA ITME (American Medical Association Initiative to Transform Medical Education) reported on the importance of training medical students to be better advocates for “social justice,” and proposed changes in the medical school admissions criteria and curriculum to address this perceived inadequacy.
And let’s face it: Once doctors are taught that abortion is a “right,” any traditional concept of “medical ethics” becomes invalid. Whence did such value-judgments (e.g., that the “right” to abortion trumps the physician’s interest in preserving life, or that the “right” of protesting budget cuts justifies a bogus medical excuse) arrive in our institutions of higher learning? How did these ideas entrench themselves so deeply in academia? Continue reading ‘Wrist Slaps for Everyone’ →
I’m suffering with a head cold today, but it could be worse. At least I’m not Moammar Qaddafi:
Influential Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi has issued a fatwa that any Libyan soldier who can shoot dead embattled leader Muammar Gaddafi should do so ‘to rid Libya of him.’
One thing that always annoyed me about this guy is that nobody could ever agree on how to spell his name. Also, he’s a murderous dictator:
The bodies of protesters shot to death by forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi were left on the streets of a restive district in the Libyan capital Tuesday, an opposition activist and a resident said, while the longtime leader defiantly went on state TV to show he was still in charge.
The eruption of turmoil in the capital after a week of protests and bloody clashes in Libya’s eastern cities has sharply escalated the challenge to Gadhafi. His security forces have unleashed the bloodiest crackdown of any Arab country against the wave of protests sweeping the region, which toppled leaders of Egypt and Tunisia.
So he’s killing innocent civilians and nobody can decide whether he’s “Muammar Gaddafi” or “Moammar Gadhafi.” That’s two strikes against him. The New York Times has yet another spelling of his name:
Libya appeared to slip further from the grip of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi on Tuesday, as opposition forces in eastern Libya moved to consolidate control of the region, arming themselves with weapons taken from security warehouses, and fighting continued in Tripoli, witnesses said.
In Tripoli, the capital, the government was striking back at protesters challenging Colonel Qaddafi’s 40-year rule. Security forces and militiamen backed by helicopters and warplanes besieged parts of the city overnight, according to witnesses and news reports from Tripoli.
That’s the biggest puzzle about Qaddafi: If you’re the dictator, why are you still only a colonel? Couldn’t you promote yourself to general? Heck, why not go for field marshall while you’re at it.
All these news accounts, by the way, were filed from Cairo, Egypt, probably because the reporters were afraid that if they went to Libya, they’d be arrested for misspelling the dictator’s name. Here’s some video:
Lots of commentary on the Libyan situation at Memeorandum. I’ll refrain from offering any opinion, because obviously if I can’t even spell the dictator’s name — and all I’ve got to go on is second-hand accounts filed from Cairo — I lack enough facts to form an opinion worth sharing. Allahpundit did a good round-up yesterday of what we actually know about Libya, which is to say, “Not a heckuva lot.”
Join the online grassroots army at Citizens for Cain.
UPDATE: Sen. John Thune announces he won’t run in 2012, because he knows he can’t beat Cain. He doesn’t actually say that, but we know how to read between the lines.
Christchurch, New Zealand, a popular tourist destination, reportedly “resembled a war zone” today:
A devastating 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck the New Zealand city of Christchurch on Tuesday, killing at least 65 people and collapsing buildings onto victims, some of whom used their cellphones to frantically call for help, officials said.
Rescuers dug through the rubble overnight amid reports that many people were still trapped and the toll could rise much higher.
A statement posted on the website of the Christchurch Police Department said the fatalities included “two buses crushed by falling buildings.” It said that “the central city is currently being evacuated, as reports are received of widespread damage to buildings and infrastructure. Multiple fatalities have been reported at several locations.”
Hours after the earthquake struck at 12:51 p.m., the tourist center of 400,000 residents resembled a war zone, a city without electricity or running water in many areas.