Except that Charlie Sheen isn’t 74 years old and is not — nor we hope, ever will be — head of state:
A “significant” number of young women prostituted themselves with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, prosecutors investigating him said in a document made public on Monday.
The prosecutors also believe that Berlusconi gave some women free use of a string of apartments in a residential complex near Milan in exchange for sex, according to the document posted on the website of the lower house of parliament.
It details accusations leveled by magistrates, who are probing whether Berlusconi paid to have sex with 17-year old Karima El Mahroug, a nightclub dancer better known under the stage name “Ruby.” . . .
The probe focuses on El Mahroug, who says she received 7,000 euros ($9,318) after attending one of Berlusconi’s parties at his sumptous villa near Milan. Prosecutors allege that she went to Berlusconi’s residence several times between February and May 2010, when she was 17, and that he paid to sleep with her.
You know how liberals are always saying we need to be more enlightened and sophisiticated like the Europeans? This ought to give you a good idea what they mean by that.
In short, for the first time since the Civil War, the United States has a political party that is ideologically cohesive, disciplined, and determined to take power, even at the cost of disrupting the political system. What accounts for this remarkable transformation? And how likely it is that the Republican Party will continue to act this way during the next two years?
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? The Democrats of 2005-2008 weren’t “determined to take power”? Democrats bear no responsibility for “disrupting the political system”?
Judis begins by citing a 1960 political science textbook describing U.S. political parties as “creatures of compromise, coalitions of interest in which principle is muted and often even silenced,” an alleged tradition from which he says the Republicans have departed — a departure he suggests is both unique and unprecedented.
If this is not an altogether false history, it is certainly tendentious and overlooks important context. The book cited by Judis, Clinton Rossiter’s Politics and Parties in America, was published in the final year of the Eisenhower presidency. In the previous 30 years, after the Hoover debacle, the nation had been convulsed by the Great Depression, the New Deal and World War II. During the unprecedented 13-year presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, the GOP had fallen into a state of desperate political decrepitude. Republicans gained a congressional majority in 1946 and elected the war-hero Ike as president in 1952, but lost the House in 1954 and lost the Senate two years later.
The Age of Eisenhower was an era when the GOP drifted into a meaningless me-too moderation, the so-called “Modern Republican” movement that was denounced as ridiculous and unprincipled by William F. Buckley Jr. in his 1959 classic, Up From Liberalism.
In such an era, it was possible for Rossiter to see Americna political parties as “creatures of compromise,” but that tradition — if, indeed, it is historically accurate to describe it as a tradition — was ended by the revolutionary upheavals of the 1960s. And it is interesting that of all historians Judis could have cited, he sided Clinton Rossiter who, according to Wikipedia, committed suicide at age 52 in 1970:
His beloved Cornell was convulsed with racial conflict, including the famous armed occupation of the student union building in April 1969. Rossiter became prominent as a moderate voice among the faculty, urging some understanding of the African-American students’ frustrations. For this he was branded a traitor by hard-line faculty, some of whom (such as Allan Bloom) refused to speak to him again.
Ten years after he published the paean to moderation cited by Judis, then, Rossiter’s idealistic “moderation” was destroyed by an insurent radicalism with which it was incapable of coping.
John B. Judis? He came of age as a 1960s radical at Berkeley, and is busy re-writing history to reflect his own ideology. Those who can’t tell the truth about the past are not to be trusted as analysts of the present, and are poor guides for the future.
Regis Philbin, a star of morning television for a generation, made a surprise announcement at the start of “Live with Regis and Kelly” Tuesday morning, telling viewers that he intends to step down sometime later this year.
The decision will mark the end of one of television’s longest runs on the same show for an individual host — 28 years. Mr. Philbin has shared the show with two chief co-hosts during his run, Kathy Lee Gifford and the current co-host Kelly Ripa. . . .
Mr. Philbin broke into his usual morning banter with Ms. Ripa, to say: “Well, I’ve got one of those announcements to make.” He added that he didn’t “want to alarm anybody” before declaring, referring to his producer Michael Gelman, “It’s going to happen. The station needs to know and Gelman needs to know and we all need to know. But this will be my last year.”
Mr. Philbin, 79, did not offer any specific reason for his decision other than to say, “There is a time. Everything must come to an end for certain people on camera — for certain old people.”
Certainly after so many years as a national TV star, Regis Philbin ought to have accumulated enough wealth that he can live comfortably the rest of his life, and I certainly wish him a long life.
I’m not anti-geezer. At 51, I’m a good ways down the road to geezerdom myself. But I’ve always thought it was wrong for people to ensconce themselves in a key position and then stay there past the point where they’re doing anything other than going through the motions — and preventing younger people from having an opportunity. There comes a time when a successful person ought to go play golf and write his memoirs.
One of the things that ruined CBS News was that Dan Rather stayed in the “Evening News” anchor chair until he was 75, preventing the organization from revitalizing its on-air personnel.
UPDATE:Democrat Sen. Kent Conrad has decided to retire rather than seek re-election in 2012, but unlike Philbin, it isn’t advanced age that’s driving 62-year-old Conrad out of the Senate. It’s the Big Red Wave, which hit North Dakota hard in the 2010 midterms, as Chris Cilizza of the Washington Post notes, “Former [Democrat] Sen. Byron Dorgan retired in the face of a challenge from popular [Republican] Governor-now-Senator John Hoeven while former Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D) was defeated by [Republican] Rick Berg.”
The most likely cause is Loughner’s daily cannabis-smoking habit. The link between this drug and serious mental illness grows clearer every day. Wickedly, the dope lobby still tries to deny this and seeks to legalise it.
Loughner has been, for much of his short life, a habitual smoker of this so-called ‘soft’ organic drug. This is not in doubt. Police records, the testimony of U.S. army recruiters who rejected him partly on these grounds, and the accounts of several friends confirm that Loughner is a marijuana victim.
Yes, I know. Not all cannabis-smokers lose their minds. And not all cigarette-smokers get cancer.[Oooh! Taking shot at his brother Christopher? — RSM] But in both cases the risk is enough to cause concern.
When police caught him driving a car that stank of marijuana, Loughner was let off,
as he would have been here. So much (as usual) for the non-existent ‘war against drugs’.
Cannabis is now effectively legal in Britain and in several parts of the USA, where this dangerous and unpredictable poison is ironically permitted for ‘medical use’.
Arizona voters, fooled by years of cynical and shameful ‘cannabis is harmless’ propaganda, approved just such a stupid law in November.
The town council of liberal Pima (scene of the murders) last week took the first step towards licensing ‘dispensaries’ for dope.
Arizona has always had plenty of guns. America has always had heated political rhetoric. What is new is that it now has legal dope as well. Those who are seriously interested in public safety should worry less about guns and radio shock jocks, and more about the little packets of madness on sale in every school.
Certainly a controversial opinion, but let me ask you try something. Take five minutes to watch the opening sequence of Zeitgeist and tell me if you don’t see its psychedelic element:
If you have any background in psychology, would you say that young people under the influence of marijuana — or salvia divinorum or cocaine or psilocybin, which were among the drugs Loughner reportedly used — are highly suggestible?
And did you notice what happened in that video from 2:45 to 3:05? A man writes “1+1 = 2.” A Bible is laid down, and a U.S. flag is laid atop it. Then, fading in over the red-and-white stripes of the flag, we see scenes of the jet flying into the World Trade Center on 9/11.
What does it mean? What is being symbolized and suggested by that 20-second sequence? Why do you think the drug-addled Jared Lee Loughner was so obsessed with Zeitgeist? And what ideas did it convey to him?
As other observers have pointed out, [Loughner’s] age when he began gradually to withdraw is consistent with the usual onset of schizophrenia — in the late teens and early twenties. We also know that among those who are genetically inclined towards schizophrenia, the use of marijuana makes it significantly more likely that they will suffer an onset episode. Mercifully, I don’t have to go through a full recitation of the evidence, because Salon . . . has interviewed the psychiatrist author of Surviving Schizophrenia, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, who lays out the case as elegantly as anyone could. . . .
Dan delves into the difficulty of decoding the typical “word salad” gibberish of the schizophrenic:
Jared Loughner’s ideolect is inflected with bits and pieces of deconstructive linguistic theory. The basic idea is that words only refer to other words, in a closed system of signification. . . . There is no “objective” (at least human) “reality” apart from the signification conferred on it by language. It depends on the definition of what “is” is. . . .
“I have used that very word, crap, to describe what appears on Fox News. . . . [T]he conspiracies that Glenn Beck promotes create this notion we’re about to fall off of the abyss, that helps to create a zeitgeist where nuts are empowered.”
Yeah, dopeheads are giving me hell in the comments on that blog post. This suggests to me that long-term marijuana usage makes people hypersensitive to criticism. I’m thinking about reporting their ISP addresses to the DEA and the FBI just to see the headlines: “ONLINE DRUG RING BUSTED.” Then the SWAT squad will kick in their doors, and Radley Balko will have another one of his cops-run-amok stories.
Crazy? Yeah. But wouldn’t it be fun?
It’s important to play on the paranoid fears of these drug-crazed hippies. Make ’em sweat, see? Every time they see a clean-cut, thick-necked guy in a dark sedan, they need to be thinking it’s a plainclothes narc doing surveillance, ready to serve an arrest warrant. And, hey, stoner — you see that van parked across the street? How do you know it’s not full of M-16-wielding SWAT cops getting ready to raid your house because they noticed your electric bill’s gone up since you put all those grow-lamps in your basement?
They’re coming to get you, dopehead scum!
You’d better flush your stash down the toilet now, before it’s too late, or else you’ll be handcuffed, locked up and sent to the state penitentiary.
From there, Scarborough pivots to indict 2012 Republican presidential candidates:
We know Palin won’t call out irresponsible language or lead the discussion back to civility, but who will?
Where was former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who covets the moral authority to lead his party in 2012? Is there anything — anything at all — a member of his own party can say that offends this man?
Or former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who refused to call out his state’s best-known congresswoman, Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann, for saying that the best way to oppose energy legislation is to be “armed and dangerous.”
Or former House Speaker Newt Gingrich? Oh, wait. Never mind.
From their defensive crouch, these candidates are clearly scared to do the right thing by calling out reckless rhetoric. . . .
It’s time to grow up, act responsibly and start planning for the 2012 election.
Very easy to say, I suppose, from the studios at 30 Rock.
Robert Downey Jr. – “Aside from the fact that it’s been hugely mean-spirited with mildly sinister undertones, I’d say the vibe of the show’s pretty good so far, wouldn’t you?”
“‘The keepers of the faith won’t enter into debate with [critics],’ the narrator [of Zeitgeist] says. ‘They ignore them or denounce them as blasphemers.’
“At that moment, Zeitgeist turns to — of all people — Washington pundit Tucker Carlson to pivot from the Christianity myth to the Sept. 11 myth. Interviewing a 9/11 skeptic on MSNBC in 2006, Carlson said, ‘It is wrong, blasphemous, and sinful for you to suggest, imply, or help other people come to the conclusion that the U.S. government killed 3,000 of its own citizens.’
“To the makers of Zeitgeist, that is an ‘Aha!’ moment: a skeptic being literally denounced as a blasphemer. From there, the movie recounts standard 9/11 truther stuff, like claiming plane crashes alone could not have brought down the World Trade Center towers.”
— Byron York, “Tucson shooter obsessed with bizarre Internet movie,” Washington Examiner
Criminal Elements within the US Government
staged a “False Flag” Terror Attack on its own
citizens, in order to manipulate public
perception into supporting its agenda.
They have been doing this for years.
911 was an Inside Job.
Click here to see the video (this part comes at 1:47 of the clip). And this is what gets me about fact-challenged dishonest dilberts like David Dayen: They can’t be bothered to do any actual reporting or research.
[T]he rhetoric on the far, far right played a role in amping up the paranoia of a mentally unbalanced man. In fact, one of the shooter’s friends focused on a movie that echoes many of the themes on the fringe right as extremely important to shaping Loughner’s worldview. . . .
Except that Charlie Sheen isn’t 74 years old and is not — nor we hope, ever will be — head of state:
