The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

I’d Never Heard of Amber Heard …

Posted on | January 17, 2011 | 12 Comments

. . . until this morning, when I got a Tweet from King Shamus telling me she will star in the film adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s novel, The Rum Diary, to be released later this year. Other actresses — including Scarlett Johansson — reportedly shied away from the chance to star opposite Johnny Depp because the part involves nudity.

Lots and lots of nudity.

King Shamus has lots and lots of photos of Amber Heard.

Category: Celebrities, Movies, Rule 5

LIVE AT FIVE – 1.17.11

Posted on | January 17, 2011 | 2 Comments

TOP NEWS
“Baby Doc” Duvalier Returns To Haiti

Jean-Claude Duvalier (1980)

Returns after 25 years of exile to a Haiti in chaos

Tunisian Strongman Toppled By Popular Revolution
First such revolution in the Arab world

Hu Jintao Calls For End To “Zero-Sum Cold War Mentality”
However, appreciation of the yuan ain’t happening

POLITICS
Tucson Remembers Dorwan Stoddard

Mourners comfort each other at Stoddard's memorial service

76-year-old died shielding his wife

Priebus Takes Charge At RNC, Ousts Steele’s Hires

Sargent Shriver Hospitalized

Rep. Giffords Upgraded From Critical To Serious Condition

More Than 200 Attend Third Nightly Vigil For General Vang Pao

THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Shares Mostly Lower, PRC struggles On Tightening Concerns
BP Cuts Stock Deal With Rosneft To Exploit Arctic Oil
Wireless, But Leashed
Wikipedia Celebrates 10th Anniversary

SPORTS
Jets’ Defense Humbles Another Elite Quarterback

QB Mark Sanchez celebrates the Jets' win

Constant defensive shifting brings a 28-21 win over New England

Votto Signs With Reds For Three Years, $38 Million

Griffin, Clippers Run Right Through Lakers In 99-92 Win
Bears Maul Seahawks 35-24

Flyers Defense Crumbles In Third, But Rangers Can’t Close The Deal

FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Teresa Scanlan Of Nebraska Crowned Miss America

Miss Nebraska makes it big

17-year-old is youngest ever to win the tiara

Franco To “Stalk” And Direct

Jesse James: Kat Von D Is My Other Half

Jersey Shore’s Angelina Pivarnick Lands Movie Role

Ozzie Canseco Busted For DUI

Sarah Michelle Gellar Returns To TV With “Ringer”

FOREIGNERS
Tunisian PM To Unveil Unity Government As Unrest Continues
Hezbollah Chief Demands New PM for Lebanon
Victoria Prepares For Flooding As Brisbane Starts Cleanup
Marine Le Pen Succeeds Father As National Front Leader

BLOGS & STUFF
Moe Lane: QOTD, What He Said Edition
Weasel Zippers: House Oversight Panel Wants FOIA Review Documents From DHS
Gateway Pundit: Christie – “I’m Not Arrogant Enough To Think That After One Year As Governor, I’m Ready For The White House” (Video)
Tim Blair: Talk To the Pants

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Category: Live at Five

Rule 5 Sunday: Wait, what?

Posted on | January 16, 2011 | 8 Comments

Good heavens! What’s this here, caught in what is clearly a malfunctioning spam filter? Why, it’s Elizabeth Hurley! And Dorothy Malone!

Wombat-socho bangs harder on the offending software.

My claws and garters! However did Lucy Pinder, Angela Dorian, Petra Verkaik, and these lovely young ladies get trapped in here? To say nothing of Anna Benson, Debra Paget, and, um…this woman. Fortunately, there seems to be a Victoria’s Secret video in here too, so I think we’ll take a couple of minutes to cleanse our palates…

Some time later, Wombat-socho returns with the digital equivalent of a plumber’s snake. Thrashing noises and imprecations ensue.

Jean Jani, Anne Baxter, Laura Lyons, Eve Meyer, and a plethora of scantily clad young women! How did I manage not to notice these before? And this video of Meytal Cohen? Well, I think it’s all cleared out now –

Wombat-socho peers into the spam filter again.

Yes, I think that’s about all the backlog of bodacious babes. Apologies to Proof Positive, Bob Belvedere, and the Mind-Numbed Robot for not spotting this sooner. 🙁

On to the fresh totty, as our English friend Theo Spark would say!

Fishersville Mike wonders about the Middle Ages, or at least about Clarice Foy. The ever-reliable Soylent Green submits a link for Nurse Myra’s Corset Friday, some parts of which may be closer to R than PG-13. You is been warned.

Not to be outdone, Left Coast Rebel links a topless Natalie Portman ad for…for…I dunno, hot grits. Does it matter? There are also some Kristin Bell pix with that, I guess.

Troglopundit refers us to a Danica Patrick commercial, and the previously-neglected Proof Positive brings back pleasant childhood memories with this link to Julie London. For those not into torch singers or nurses, he adds Nigella Lawson.

At The Camp of the Saints, undeterred by previous link attempt failures, we see Paget Brewster, Sharon Cintron and Dolores Donlon; Dustbury opts for quality over quantity and restricts himself to Amanda Peet.

We welcome Maggie’s Notebook to the Rule 5 linkagery! Maggie starts well with Kellie Pickler; let us see how she continues. Meanwhile, fellow newcomer Gahrie wishes a happy birthday to Yvonne Zima.  Three Beers Later alerts us to the presence of Morena Baccarin on Twitter with a lush display of her visual charms.

And we close out this week’s Rule 5 roundup with Kim Kardashian, courtesy of Confessions of a Culture Warrior. Thanks to all for their links, and don’t forget to mail links for next week’s Rule 5 Sunday to me at Rule 5 Wombat.

Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: This Space Intentionally Left Blank

Posted on | January 16, 2011 | 4 Comments

Well, so much for getting this done yesterday. 🙁

‘That Little Faggot With the Earring and the Makeup’? He’s Now Banned in Canada

Obligatory: Video in Which Tucson Killer Jabbers About ‘Illegal Wars’ Like Your Average DKos Diarist or Cindy Sheehan

Mission Accomplished, Markos Moulitsas

Zeitgeist: Watch the Conspiracy Movie That Had a ‘Profound Impact’ on Tucson Mass Murder Suspect Jared Loughner

A Thought Concerning The False Lefty Propaganda

Speculation Is Not Reporting

Text of Memo From the Department of Homeland Security on Arizona Shooting

The South Rises Again (in Sudan)

‘Unbalanced People … Respond to the Vitriol That Comes Out of Certain Mouths’

FMJRA 2.0: Not Now John

Rule 5 Sunday: Once More, With Feeling!

A Very Special Comment

Can ‘Vitriol’ Be Cured by ‘Civility’? And What Does It Have to Do With Tucson?

The Suspect and the ‘Usual Suspects’

MSNBC’s Non Sequitur Marathon

Miley Cyrus: Healing America

They Only Have to Be Right Once

Ignoring Public Outcry for ‘Civility,’ Britney Spears Releases New Single

Poll Shows MSM Spin on Tucson Shooting Rejected by Stupid American Majority

When Did Sarah Palin Say ‘Put Him Against the Wall and Shoot Him’?

Vitriolic Rhetoric, Anyone?

When in Doubt, Blame Palin!

News From the Department of Obvious: Jared Loughner ‘Was Sick in the Head’

It’s Almost Enough to Make You Think They Don’t Want to Enforce the Law

‘Vain in Their Imaginations’
God-Haters and the Tucson Massacre

The Cover-Up in Pima County

Salvia, Zeitgeist and the Tucson Shooter

‘The Most Bald-Faced Lie I Have Ever Read in the New York Times’

LIVE AT FIVE – 1.14.11

An Important Anniversary

‘Somebody Has to Stand Up’

How to Talk to a Follower of
the Zeitgeist Cult (If You Must)

Priebus Elected RNC Chair on 7th Ballot

Don’t Tell My Wife

Herman Cain: ‘A Good Solid Conservative Who Can Get the Base Excited’

Tucson, Zeitgeist and Madness: The Obsolete Politics of Jared Loughner UPDATE: Another E-Mail From a Zeitgeist Follower; Movement Leader Issues ‘Message to Members’

Christiane Amanpour and ABC News Bring Healing to Tucson … Uh, Wait …

Category: FMJRA Award

Jared Loughner’s Zeitgeist Obsession:
‘He Wanted to Watch It All the Time’

Posted on | January 16, 2011 | 34 Comments

Kudos to the Arizona Republic for this follow-up reporting:

Loughner began fixating on a documentary: “Zeitgeist: The Movie.”
The movie is a bramble of conspiracy theories involving Sept. 11, the international monetary system, and Christianity.
“There are people guiding your life and you don’t even know it,” the trailer for the movie intones.
“He wanted to watch it all the time,” Osler said. “It was cool at first. But then it got weird. It was all he wanted to do.”
Loughner developed a seeming obsession with currency, grammar and literacy rates. They were becoming the objects of his rants and screeds. Those around him didn’t understand.

OK, so on Wednesday, ABC News was first to report on Loughner’s obsession with this conspiracy-theory cult flick:

“I really think that this Zeitgeist documentary had a profound impact upon Jared Loughner’s mindset and how he views the world that he lives in.”
– Zach Osler, friend of Tucson gunman

Four days later, the Arizona Republic finally follows up on this angle and we learn how intensely involved with this movie the killer became. Loughner already had serious problems — drugs, alchohol, dropping out of high school — but it seems to have been the “profound impact” of Zeitgeist that signaled his descent into deadly schizophrenic madness.

In their haste to shift blame onto Sarah Palin, Fox News, talk radio and the Tea Party movement, the elite media have overlooked what appears to be a major clue to the motive of the Tucson massacre.

As of noon Sunday, there were 39 search results on Google News for “Loughner+Zeitgeist.” Most of those were passing mentions. Meanwhile, a Google News search for “Loughner+Palin” returned 10,395 results. There were 595 results for “Loughner+Limbaugh.” Read more

Category: ABC, Arizona, Conspiracy Theories, Crime, New York Times, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Tea Party, Zeitgeist

Liberals Cheer as Lawyers Attempt to Destroy the Housing Market in Maryland

Posted on | January 16, 2011 | 35 Comments

David Dayen at Firedoglake is doing cartwheels:

In a major ruling Friday, a coalition of nonprofit defense lawyers and consumer protection advocates in Maryland successfully got over 10,000 foreclosure cases managed by GMAC Mortgage tossed out, because affidavits in the cases were signed by Jeffrey Stephan, the infamous GMAC “robo-signer” who attested to the authenticity of foreclosure documents without any knowledge about them, as well as signing other false statements.
The University of Maryland Consumer Protection Clinic and Civil Justice, Inc., a nonprofit, filed the class action lawsuit, arguing that any case using Jeffrey Stephan as a signer was illegitimate and must be dismissed. In court Friday, GMAC agreed to dismiss every case in Maryland relying on a Stephan affidavit. They can refile foreclosure actions on the close to 10,000 homes, but only at their own expense, and subject to new Maryland regulations which require mandatory mediation between borrower and lender before moving to foreclosure.

I’ll let the lawyers argue the law. I’m here to tell you the economic fact that this action could have a catastrophic impact on home values and mortgage lending. This class action suit has thrown 10,000 foreclosed home into legal limbo in a single state and, if replicated in other states, this could prevent lenders from recovering asset value through re-sale and thereby performing the market-clearing function that is absolutely essential to economic recovery.

Deadbeat borrowers have already imposed massive losses on the mortgage industry. American lenders have on their books hundreds of thousands of delinquent mortgages. Payments are months in arrears, and the only way to fix the problem is to foreclose the loans, evict the deadbeats, and re-sell the homes (likely at a substantial loss) to people who can afford the payments.

If that process of foreclosure and resale doesn’t occur —  equivalent to hitting “reset” on the pricing system for housing — the real-estate market will collapse entirely in many communities, because nobody can know the actual value of a home.

Ask yourself this: Who is going to buy a home in a neighborhood in Prince George’s County, Maryland, where there a already a half-dozen vacant homes for sale and perhaps another half-dozen where the occupants are in default and subject to foreclosure? Within the next year, any of those homes is likely to sell for a far lower price than the price offered to today’s buyer. Because housing values are determined by comparison to similar homes in the same community, the guy who borrows $150,000 today to buy a $180,000 home is going to be automatically “underwater” on his loan if, in the coming months, similar homes nearby begin to sell for less than $150,000.

In such a disastrous market — which already exists in many communities, and which this Maryland class-action lawsuit can only help perpetuate — prospective buyers have a disincentive to close the deal, and lenders are discouraged from offering mortgages except to the most affluent and credit-worthy buyers.

And please spare me any moralistic lectures about sympathy for the poor. The only condition under which any lender would make a mortgage loan to a poor person is with the ironclad assurance that  the home can be foreclosed and resold should the loan lapse into default (i.e., the borrower falls four months behind on his payments.) Government regulations to “help” the poor by interfering in that process, such as this blunderheaded new “mandatory mediation” law in Maryland, actually hurt the poor by providing disincentives for lenders to give them a mortgage in the first place.

Furthermore — and this is what really breaks my heart — by preventing the “reset” of the housing market after the collapse of the bubble, these anti-market measures prevent young people from scooping up the real-estate bargains that ought to be available now.

How many times have liberals lectured us about the need for “affordable housing”? And what else could make housing more affordable than the foreclosure and resale of hundreds of thousands homes currently occupied by deadbeats who took on mortgages they couldn’t afford during the bubble?

Like I said, I’ll let lawyers argue the legal aspects of these “robo-signer” cases. If lenders violated the law by trying to shortcut the foreclosure process, then they will be held legally accountable. But excuse me for thinking that this looks a lot like the kind of “social justice” litigation that has already had such harmful effects on our economy.

Prediction: The housing market will now enter another long, steady downhill slide. “Unexpectedly!”


Category: Economics, Liberals, Maryland

Join the Marines!

Posted on | January 16, 2011 | 22 Comments

Glenn Reynolds has been warning for months about the “higher education bubble.” Too many kids are going to college with the idea that it will automatically lead to higher incomes. Tuition has ballooned, increasing much faster than the overall inflation rate.

A major part of the problem is that many students are taking on massive loans to fund their education, an ill-advised course of action actually encouraged by federal policy, because no one in Congress wants to be accused of being “anti-education.”

As the professor says, “Things that can’t go on forever, won’t.” The hardships of the current economy are forcing a lot of people to reconsider their options, and sooner or later they will realize that graduating with a B.A. and a mountain of debt isn’t a good career plan and it sure as hell isn’t a good bargain. This bubble must eventually collapse.

Join the Marines. That’s the career advice I’ve given my sons for years. My wife’s younger brother was a skinny, happy-go-lucky kid. And then he joined the U.S. Marine Corps. When he got out of boot camp, he came to visit us and the transformation was remarkable. He had added at least 15 pounds of lean muscle and, what’s more, his attitude was focused and disciplined. Send a boy to boot camp, and they’ll send him home a man.

And you young guys, listen up: We took my wife’s brother to church with us. When he walked into that church in his dress-blue uniform, heads turned. The ladies love a Marine.

The Corps offers many benefits to its members. As the Marines like to say, you get to travel to foreign countries, meet interesting people, and kill them.

Finish high school, then do a three-year hitch in the Corps, and you’ll qualify for free education under the Montgomery G.I. Bill. And whatever you do after that, you can always take pride in being an alumnus of the most elite school in the world: The University of Parris Island.

Category: Education, Military

Teasing 2.0

Posted on | January 16, 2011 | 14 Comments

The innocence of youth:

Two Florida girls are facing cyberstalking charges for allegedly creating a fake Facebook profile in the name of a fellow high school student and placing obscene photos on the page . . .
[O]ne of the suspects, Taylor Wynn, 16 . . . admitted creating two fake Facebook pages “as a joke because she thought it would be funny.” Wynn said she was once friends with the unnamed victim, “but they do not like each other now.”
Wynn told probers that a second girl, McKenzie Barker, 15, created the image showing the victim’s head atop the naked body. Wynn reportedly copped to placing a photo of an adult male’s erect penis “by the victim’s face” . . .
[T]he victim . . . told a deputy that she had been subjected to “numerous incidents of teasing and ridicule” as a result of the Facebook hoax. One of the fake pages . . . included an assortment of disparaging comments, including an “About Me” claim that, “As you may know, I am a huge whore. I love dick so much.”

We know who to blame: Al Gore, who invented the Internet.

Category: Crime
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