THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Turning back the tide of information overload with a digest of the latest developments in news conservatives need to pay attention to:

† Every bubble bursts eventually: According to Nielsen, 37.8 million television viewers watched the last State of the Union address in President Barack Hussein Obama’s only term in office™ Tuesday night – down from 42.8 million last year, 48 million in 2010, and 52.3 million for the president’s address to Congress during his first year in office in 2009, The New York Times reports.

† Finally, a language even liberals can understand: An analysis by the University of Minnesota of President Barack Hussein Obama's 2012 State of the Union address finds that it was written at an 8th grade comprehension level on the Flesch-Kincaid readability test – the third lowest score of any State of the Union address since 1934, Politico reports:

President Obama's three addresses have the lowest grade average of any modern president. "Obama's average grade-level score of 8.4 is more than two grades lower than the 10.7 grade average for the other 67 addresses written by his 12 predecessors," they conclude.

† Shoe suit shooed: Christian Louboutin took the next step in trying to claim red-soled shoes as his trademark by asking the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan to reverse a lower-court ruling that denied Louboutin's lawsuit seeking an injunction to prevent Yves Saint Laurent from selling a line of shoes with red soles, The Wall Street Journal reports:  

In front of a large and conspicuously well-dressed audience – more than a few women present wore red-soled shoes— lawyers for both sides made their arguments.

"Christian Louboutin has created one of the more iconic trademarks of the 21st century," argued attorney Harley Lewin, before a three-judge panel. "Louboutin turned a pedestrian item into a thing of beauty." …

"Artists of this type need the full palette of colors available. In order to compete and compete fairly, we need red," said Mr. Bernstein. "We don't want to find out that we can make green, blue, purple shoes ... but we are enjoined from making red."

† The TSA emperor wears no clothes: Part II: Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) describes being detained by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA)  for refusing to be groped at a security checkpoint after an alarm went off when he walked through the scanner (related article, fourth item on the page), which caused him to miss a flight to Washington, D.C., where he had been scheduled to deliver a speech to participants in the March for Life:

I showed them the potentially offending part of my body, my leg. They were not interested. They wanted to touch me and to pat me down. I requested to be rescanned. They refused and detained me in a 10-foot-by-10-foot area reserved for potential terrorists.

I told them that I was a frequent flier and that just days ago I was allowed to be rescanned when the scanner made an error. At no time did I ask for special treatment, but I did insist that all travelers be awarded some decency and leniency in accommodating the screening process.

My detention was real and I was repeatedly instructed not to leave the holding area. When I used my phone to inform my office that I would miss my flight, and thus miss my speech to the March for Life, I was told that now I would be subjected to a full body patdown.

I asked if I could simply restart the screening process to show that the machine had made an error. I was denied and informed that since I used my phone, to call for help, I must now submit or not fly. …

This blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects Americans against unwarranted search and seizure, has insulted many citizens, and rightfully so. I, along with many other travelers, do not view traveling as a crime that warrants government search and seizure. In fact, I view traveling as a basic right, for Americans are free to travel from state to state as they please.

For its part, the TSA insists they were “holding” and not “detaining” Paul – but the difference (if there is one) is immaterial as he was not allowed to board his scheduled flight. In addition, a police incident report describes Paul as an “irate” passenger but surveillance footage does not back up the police report.

Paul vows to propose legislation to allow adults to be rescreened as an alternative to being manhandled by the TSA.

† When environmental values collide: Heather Patron of Studio City, CA, couldn’t figure out why the side view mirrors on her car and those of the car parked next to hers in the carport of her condo complex were melting – and neither could her dealer. Then she happened to notice a concentrated beam of light reflected from the energy efficient window installed in a neighbor’s condo was shining over the carport, CBSLosAngeles.com reports:

CBS2’s Randy Paige placed a thermometer in the pathway of the beam on a partially cloudy day. The temperature registered over 120 degrees in less than five minutes.

“I’m positive that this window is what is causing the damage to my car,” says Patron.

Patron is not alone. Reports across the country have alleged damages brought on by concentrated sunlight reflected off of energy efficient windows. The National Association of Home Builders is now conducting a study on the matter.

† R-E-S-P-E-C-T: You get as you give (click here and here for related articles): The Christian Science Monitor poses a question that never came up during George W. Bush’s eight years in office: “Can you respect the presidency, but insult the president?” and makes the astonishing claim that compared to the vitriolic treatment his predecessor received right up until his final minutes as president, “Obama – the nation’s first African American president – seems to have endured more of that.”

† Has Obama been humbled?: Bad news for the narcissistic Barack Hussein Obama (and the grandiose Newt Gingrich): Men who are narcissistic are likely to have higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol, a new study finds, according to University of Michigan researchers. CNN reports:

"The more narcissistic, the more cortisol that men have in mundane situations," said author Sara Konrath, who is the director of the Interdisciplinary Program on Empathy and Altruism Research at the University of Michigan.

Narcissism is a trait that exhibits "grandiosity, an inflated sense of self-importance, and over-estimations of uniqueness." If severe, it can also be a personality disorder recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

The trait has some positive qualities, such as abundance of self-esteem and positive sense of self. Narcissistic people characteristically tend to overestimate their intellectual abilities, attractiveness and positive personality traits, wrote Konrath.

But they don't enjoy healthy relationships with others because they're generally low on empathy and high in hostility – especially when their positive self-image is threatened.

The Stiletto has a continuing series devoted to all the presidents to which Obama has been likened, or has compared himself – which Commentary’s Alana Goodman thinks is “a particularly annoying habit” that “coupled with [his] thin resume and lack of substance … played into the narrative that he had an inflated self-image” and became “a running joke with conservatives.” Which brings us back to Gingrich:

[W]hy are Newt Gingrich’s even more outlandish personal assessments – that he’s just like Thomas Edison, the Duke of Wellington, or Henry Clay – not treated as equally ridiculous? …

Gingrich’s capacity for humility is only slightly below Donald Trump’s. But for some reason, that hasn’t seemed to bother conservative voters. Despite all the attacks on Obama’s egotism, they actually seem to like this trait in Newt. It’s not completely incomprehensible – when somebody’s on your side, arguing for the same things you believe in, a little over-confidence doesn’t seem like such a bad thing.

But if we’ve learned anything from the last three years, it’s that delusions of grandeur don’t translate well into governing.

It is doubtful that Gingrich will heed Goodman’s warning that the more he compares himself to great leaders the bigger the risk of diminishing himself, seeing as how he revels in his grandiosity.

† Only the little people pay taxes: According to the Internal Revenue Service, active and retired federal employees and military personnel owed $3.42 billion in unpaid taxes for 2010, an increase of more than 3 percent over the previous year, WTOP.com reports:

As has been the case in past years, the agency with employees who owe the most in unpaid taxes is the U.S. Postal Service, where 25,640 employees owe nearly $270 million. Employees in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives owe more the $10 million. Active duty military owe more than $100 million. …

Currently, only IRS employees can be fired for failing to pay their taxes, however, legislation has been introduced that would require federal agencies to fire employees who are seriously delinquent in their taxes.

† Always remember and don’t ever forget (second item): The French Senate has approved a law that criminalizes Armenian Genocide denial (click here for related article). As is already the case with Holocaust deniers, Genocide deniers could face a fine of €45,000 ($58,995) and a year in jail, The Guardian of London reports:

The vote came after an entire afternoon and evening of debate in the Sénat. Defending the bill, government minister Patrick Ollier told senators that legislation was justified in the "fight against the negationist poison". He added: "This proposed legislation is part of a general movement to repress racist and xenophobic statements." …

President Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to ratify the bill before the presidential elections in April. Turkey has accused Sarkozy of pandering to the estimated 500,000 ethnic Armenians in France to win votes in the presidential vote in April and May, in which he is expected to see re-election.

It should come as no surprise that Turkey became bellicose – rather, more so than usual – over this development, Reuters reports:

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan attacked the French parliament on Tuesday for passing a “discriminatory and racist” bill which makes it illegal to deny that the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century ago was genocide.

However, Erdogan said there was still hope that NATO ally France “would correct its mistake” and that any retaliatory measures would be held back, depending on French actions. …

Some Turkish newspapers listed possible measures that Ankara might take against France.

These included the recall of its ambassador from Paris and telling the French ambassador to go home, reducing diplomatic ties to charge d’affaires level, and closing Turkish airspace and waters to French military aircraft and vessels.

Speaking shortly before Monday’s Senate vote, Erdogan said the issue of future official visits to France would be thrown into uncertainty if it passed the bill.

French firms stand to lose out in bids for defense contracts and other mega-projects such as nuclear power stations.

Turkey could also seek to trumpet allegations that French actions in Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s were also tantamount to a genocide.

† Rearranging the deck chairs: Johnson & Johnson prides itself on its environmental “sustainability” but can’t seem to stop running afoul of regulators over serious quality control issues involving a broad range of its products (related article, penultimate item on the page). Now, “yet another J&J business - at least the seventh - has come under scrutiny, The Associated Press reports:

This time it's the unit that makes insulin pumps for diabetics, Animas Corp., that's being investigated. …

The FDA ordered Animas to explain by Jan. 20 why it kept selling pumps known to fail and also to submit a plan to rectify its failure to promptly report cases where its device might have caused or contributed to death or serious injury.

In a Dec. 27 warning letter posted online by the FDA Tuesday, the agency wrote to Animas and J&J CEO Bill Weldon that inspectors found Animas, based in West Chester, Pa., never reported on one complaint about serious patient injury and delayed reporting on two others. Those patients were hospitalized with dangerously high blood sugar, respiratory failure and coma, and a life-threatening complication called diabetic ketoacidosis caused by lack of insulin to break down blood sugar.

The problems follow a string of nearly 30 product recalls announced by New Brunswick, N.J.-based Johnson & Johnson since September 2009, with the latest just three weeks ago. The recalls have included millions of bottles of Tylenol, Motrin and other nonprescription medicines for children and adults, prescription drugs for seizures and HIV, faulty hip implants and contact lenses that stung the eyes. Reasons ranged from contamination with metal shards and glass particles to nauseating odors and inaccurate levels of active drug ingredients.

As a result of these pervasive and persistent quality control failures, the pharmaceutical and medical device company saw its fourth-quarter profit plummet 89 percent “due to legal settlements and product-liability costs,” reports The Wall Street Journal:

J&J, whose marketing practices and manufacturing-quality lapses have landed it in a thicket of legal woes, recorded pretax charges and special items totaling $3.3 billion for the fourth quarter.

They included $1.1 billion in pretax charges for litigation settlements, primarily related to a government probe of allegations that J&J promoted the antipsychotic Risperdal for unauthorized uses; and about $1.5 billion in product-liability expenses, which include payments for surgeries to repair defective DePuy ASR hip-replacement systems.

THE DAILY BLADE: Listening to what she fervently hopes is the last State of the Union address by President Barack Hussein Obama, The Stiletto was reminded that there is a reason familiarity breeds contempt. This SOTU was recycled from salvaged material; no new ideas were used in the making of this speech.

According to The Washington Post, “[t]he swagger which Obama rode into office with was back in his address.” And so Obama reprised his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004 (“There is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States of America.”) when he said, “What’s at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values, but American values.” 
 

But it’s not the first time Obama has repeated this particular flourish. As The New Yorker’s John Cassidy points out, when Obama said he wanted to “reclaim” these “American values,” the verbiage was “was pretty much a straight lift” from a speech he delivered in Osawatomie, KS, last month (“Those aren’t Democratic or Republican values; 1% values or 99% values. They’re American values, and we have to reclaim them.”).

Ditto the part about wanting an economy where “everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules” – except that this time around Obama ditched the Occupy Wall Street lingo, seeing as how members of the group lobbed a smoke bomb over the White House fence last week to protest his crony capitalism and a man linked to the group shot up the joint in what federal prosecutors describe as an assassination attempt.

Similarly, The Associated Press points out that when he called for an end to oil company subsidies it was “at least Obama's third run at stripping subsidies from the oil industry”:

Back when fellow Democrats formed the House and Senate majorities, he sought $36.5 billion in tax increases on oil and gas companies over the next decade, but Congress largely ignored the request. He called again to end such tax breaks in last year's State of the Union speech. And he's now doing it again, despite facing a wall of opposition from Republicans who want to spur domestic oil and gas production and oppose tax increases generally.

Obama’s justification for the so-called “Buffett rule” that anyone who earns $1 million a year – from any source, including interest and investment income – should pay 30 percent or more in taxes (“[Y]ou can call this class warfare all you want. … Most Americans would call that common sense”) also had a familiar ring. It was an iteration of a line in a deficit reduction speech Obama gave last September (“This is not class warfare. It's math.”).

The Republican National Committee also pulled together these rhetorical retreads (video link): 

2010: "It's time for colleges and universities to get serious about cutting their own costs.

2012: "Colleges and universities have to do their part by working to keep costs down."

2010: "And we should continue the work by fixing our broken immigration system."

2011: "I strongly believe that we should take on, once and for all, the issue of illegal immigration."

2012: "I believe as strongly as ever that we should take on illegal immigration."

2010: "We face a deficit of trust."

2012: "I've talked tonight about the deficit of trust . . ."

2010: "We can't wage a perpetual campaign."

2012: "We need to end the notion that the two parties must be locked in a perpetual campaign."

When Obama wasn’t repeating himself, he was contradicting himself:

† Obama first said, “As long as I’m President, I will work with anyone in this chamber,” but towards the end of his speech he threatened to act “[w]ith or without this Congress.”

† About his job creation record he said “[W]e lost four million before our policies were in full effect. … In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than three million jobs.” The WaPo did the math: 

[I]it took a full nine months to run up 4 million in job losses, some eight months after the stimulus was passed into law … Trying to change the focus from his overall job-creation record, the president focuses on private-sector jobs created since the recession ended. 

So let’s see … 4 million jobs lost + 3 million jobs created = a deficit of 1 million jobs since Obama took office. 

† In one breath, Obama claimed his administration is “making it easier for American businesses to sell products all over the world,” and in the next breath he announced the creation of a Trade Enforcement Unit that “will be charged with investigating unfair trade practices in countries like China” – the opening salvo in a global trade war with the world’s second largest economy.

† After promising to support “the talent and ingenuity of every person in this country … every risk-taker and entrepreneur who aspires to become the next Steve Jobs,” Obama wants to “return to the American values of fair play and shared responsibility” by vilifying people who risked their savings to invest in fledgling companies that become the next Apple, as well as those who inherited stock in such companies as heirs to the founders (“because of loopholes and shelters in the tax code, a quarter of all millionaires pay lower tax rates than millions of middle-class households).”

† Oh, and Obama first claimed that “Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary” and a few minutes later said that it’s common sense to ask “a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes.” Obama clearly doesn’t know the difference between the rate of tax a person pays and the amount. Leaving aside the fact that Buffett’s secretary, Debbie Bosanek, is so well compensated that she is in the top 1 percent of income earners in the U.S., she couldn’t possibly pay as much as her boss does in taxes. Even at the lower tax rate he pays on his investment income (17.4 percent to her 35.8 percent), Buffett paid nearly $7 million to the I.R.S. last year, which is 14 years of income for Bosanek.

† Finally, Obama proposed that “the money we’re no longer spending at war” should be used to “pay down our debt” and “do some nation-building right here at home” – by which he means “clean energy tax credits”; “[h]elp manufacturers eliminate energy waste in their factories and give businesses incentives to upgrade their buildings”; and “repair America’s infrastructure ... crumbling roads and bridges, [the] power grid, [a] high-speed broadband network.” As The WaPo explains: 

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were funded with borrowed money, so what Obama is really asking for is an increase in domestic spending relative to the Pentagon. The United States is still running huge deficits, so none of this imagined savings would “pay down the debt” until the United States once again began running surpluses. Instead, his proposal would continue to add to the debt. 

And when Obama wasn’t busy repeating or contradicting himself, he was making all sorts of factual errors. 

For instance, just as Obama has deliberately misquoted the bible to suit his purposes, he inverted Abraham Lincoln’s thoughts on the role of government. Obama claimed Lincoln said: “Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.” What Lincoln actually said is: “The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and individual capacities.”

That’s not a justification for an overweening Federal government, but an explanation of the limits of Federalism. On the other hand, it only took four years, but Obama finally got the number of states in the union right (“Each time I look at that flag, I’m reminded that our destiny is stitched together like those fifty stars and those thirteen stripes.”).

Yes, it’s been a steep learning curve.

THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Turning back the tide of information overload with a digest of the latest developments in news conservatives need to pay attention to:

† Chevy Volt: An electric Edsel: Some Chevrolet dealers are refusing to accept the number of Volts that General Motors has allocated to them, which will make it even harder for the company to meet its sales target for the plug-in hybrid that consumers have shunned (related article, third article on the page), Automotive News reports: 

For example, consider the New York City market. Last month, GM allocated 104 Volts to 14 dealerships in the area, according to a person familiar with the matter. 

Dealers took just 31 of them, the lowest take rate for any Chevy model in that market last month. That group of dealers ordered more than 90 percent of the other vehicles they were eligible to take, the source said. 

In Clovis, Calif., meanwhile, Brett Hedrick, dealer principal at Hedrick's Chevrolet, sold 10 Volts last year. But in December and January he turned down all six Volts allocated to him under GM's "turn-and-earn" system, which distributes vehicles based on past sales volumes and inventory levels. 

GM's "thinking we need six more Volts is just crazy," Hedrick says. "We've never sold more than two in a month." Hedrick says he usually takes just about every vehicle that GM allocates to him. 

GM spokesman Rob Peterson confirmed that "dealer ordering is down" for the Volt. He said many dealers have been waiting for resolution of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's investigation into the risk of fires in the car's battery pack. Last year three packs caught fire in the days or weeks following government test crashes. 

Editorial Note: In response to a letter from Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Mike Kelly (R-PA), National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator David Strickland denied that the Obama administration pressured the agency to delay informing consumers about the problem with the battery pack fires for several months, The Detroit News reports. 

† Media Irrelevancy – A Self-Inflicted Wound: After reading a significant chunk of his paper’s coverage of Barack Obama from October 2006 through Election Day 2008 (he wasn’t using his middle name back then; only racists were) Washington Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton agrees with his predecessor, Deborah Howell, that “some of the conservatives’ complaints about a liberal tilt [at The Post] are valid”: 

I won’t quibble with her conclusion. I think she was right. … 

I think there was way too little coverage of his record in the Illinois Senate and U.S. Senate, for example, with one or two notably good exceptions. But there were hard-hitting stories too, even a very tough one on Michelle Obama’s job at the University of Chicago Medical Center. 

And that’s what The Post needs to do in covering his reelection campaign this year: be hard-hitting on his record and provide fresh insight and plenty of context to put the past three rough years into perspective. 

Pexton poses 20 questions that his paper should delve into, including: “Has the image of the United States abroad gotten, as Obama promised, better than it was under Bush?”; “Has Iran’s drive for nuclear technologies been blunted at all?”; and “How well or badly have his Cabinet secretaries run the government?”   

In other words, Pexton is urging his clients to do their jobs this time around. 

† Was Steve Jobs A Closet Republican? (related article, third item on the page): A year ago, President Barack Hussein Obama asked Steve Jobs why iPhones were not manufactured in the U.S. This New York Times article answers his question – raises questions about Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum’s plan to revive manufacturing in this country: 

It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products. 

Apple has become one of the best-known, most admired and most imitated companies on earth, in part through an unrelenting mastery of global operations. Last year, it earned over $400,000 in profit per employee, more than Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil or Google. … 

Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight. 

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day. 

“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.” 

[Apple executives] say Apple’s success has benefited the economy by empowering entrepreneurs and creating jobs at companies like cellular providers and businesses shipping Apple products. And, ultimately, they say curing unemployment is not their job. 

“We sell iPhones in over a hundred countries,” a current Apple executive said. “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.” … [emphasis, The Stiletto] 

The pace of innovation, say executives from a variety of industries, has been quickened by businessmen like Mr. Jobs. G.M. went as long as half a decade between major automobile redesigns. Apple, by comparison, has released five iPhones in four years, doubling the devices’ speed and memory while dropping the price that some consumers pay. 

The boldfaced bits also serve as a prebuttal to the final State of the Union address of Obama’s only term in office™: 

If you’re a high-tech manufacturer, we should double the tax deduction you get for making products here. And if you want to relocate in a community that was hit hard when a factory left town, you should get help financing a new plant, equipment, or training for new workers. 

My message is simple. It’s time to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas, and start rewarding companies that create jobs right here in America. 

Apple is not going to move these jobs back to the U.S. just to get a tax deduction. Not when they can avoid union work rules that guarantee inefficiency and instead contract their manufacturing to factory workers in China who are willing to forego a full night's sleep to make their product to their exacting specs.  

† Does the U.S. need an election monitor?: The Obama Justice Department is trying to squelch a SC law requiring a state-issued photo ID in order to vote on the grounds that minority voters theoretically may be disenfranchised (click here for related article), while ignoring actual voter fraud that has occurred in the state. Based on an analysis by the Department of Motor Vehicles that found 953 ballots cast by voters who had been dead from two months and 76, SC Attorney General Alan Wilson has asked the State Law Enforcement Division to investigate, WTOC-TV (Channel 11, Savannah, GA) reports. It is unclear in which election(s) the fraudulent ballots had been cast. 

† Garbage In, Garbage Out: Part II: Teachers in the Palo Alto High School math department doesn’t think it’s their job to teach every public school student in their classes quadratic equations and logarithmic functions, San Jose Mercury News reports: 

Other districts, including San Jose Unified, East Side Union and San Francisco Unified, set A-G as the default curriculum, and in Palo Alto the administration had recommended the district follow suit. The school board is set to take up the issue in the spring. But Palo Alto High's math teachers oppose the recommendation. Yes, bump up the graduation requirement to three years of math, they argue, but don't require students to master Algebra II -- because they say not everyone can. … 

While other districts have Algebra II courses designed for students to master, Palo Alto's standards exceed UC's. 

Palo Alto High math department chair Radu Toma said critics confuse standards with achievement. "They make the assumption just by setting the bar up there, the bar will be reached," he said. "I'm not saying it's impossible; it's a big gamble." 

Toma said that while students elsewhere may pass Algebra II, 45 percent of CSU and UC students must take remedial math. That doesn't happen with Palo Alto graduates, he said. "When our kids finish with Algebra II, we are not pretending they completed Algebra II." 

† SOTU = Stuff Our Taxes Underwrite: Rep. Cliff Stearns R-FL), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee investigations panel is outraged over footage shot by CBS 5 (San Francisco) showing Solyndra employees trashing solar panel parts – which U.S. taxpayers bought and paid for through the Department of Energy’s failed green energy investment program (related article, second item on the page). The Washington Times reports: 

"First we learn of the ridiculous request for $500,000 in Solyndra bonuses. Now we find out that these employees are apparently destroying millions of dollars worth of equipment," [Stearns said]. 

The [CBS] report cited court documents saying the company had gotten permission to abandon high grade glass because the cost of storing it exceeded its value. 

The report also said an employee from Heritage Global Partners, which is in charge of selling some of the company's assets, told CBS 5 that nobody wanted to buy the equipment, despite an exhaustive search. 

† Can The Nutrition Police Lay Off Coffee, Already?: Epidemiologic studies have suggested a correlation between drinking four or more cups of coffee and reduced risk of developing type 2 (adult onset) diabetes. Chinese researchers have now identified compounds in coffee that inhibit hIAPP (human islet amyloid polypeptide), a substance linked to diabetes. Their study, which was published in Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, found that caffeic acid and caffeine inhibited hIAPP significantly, Los Angeles Times reports: 

Scientists looking for ways to prevent diabetes have been investigating ways to block hIAPP, which is present in high levels in the pancreases of those with the disease. … 

"A beneficial effect may thus be expected in regular coffee drinkers," [the study authors concluded]. 

A growing body of research suggests that coffee is good for just about everything that ails you (related article, fourth item on the page). 

† Is This One Of Those Jobs That “Americans Won’t Do?”: Averting its gaze from the thousands of tons of trash that an estimated 500 thousand illegals a year leave behind in the Sonoran Desert as they make the trek from Mexico to AZ, The New York Times instead chooses to focus on the trash generated by tourists to Tombstone: 

Tombstone started paying Waste Management, a private hauler, to collect its trash and expand its recycling program. The city still will collect money from each household for trash collection, but will turn it over to Waste Management instead of keeping it. 

The company will buy the city’s two trucks, one of which is for backup, enabling the city to retire its $180,000 in debt on them. The city will no longer have to worry about fixing trucks or buying garbage cans, and the wooden barrels that doubled as garbage cans on historic Allen Street will be replaced with solar-powered compactors that will wirelessly alert the city when they are full. 

But Tombstone, with a population of 1,500, is unusual because it creates a disproportionate amount of trash. The city welcomes at least 200,000 tourists a year.  …

Nancy Sosa, the city archivist, recalled that when she was a child growing up in this high desert 35 miles from the Mexican border, city workers picked up trash by hand and used a pickup truck to supplement the garbage truck. 

NOT THE SHARPEST KNIVES IN THE DRAWER: Frank Boemmels, 25, and Lorraine Apuzzo, 19, set up a drug buy via text to move some Percoset (oxycodone and acetaminophen) but when they showed up to complete the transaction, they found the police waiting for them, CBS Connecticut.com reports:

Officers received a text from an unknown sender, offering black market sale of Percoset tablets …  

Police say the two people who showed up to sell the drugs grew suspicious, separated and tried to run, but police were able to take both into custody and seized 100 Percoset tablets. …

Both face charges of criminal attempt to sell narcotics and conspiracy, and Apuzzo also faces charges involving her attempt to escape.

This is not the first time police received a wayward text message from a drug dealer.

IF THE SHOE FITS: Insomnia keeping you awake?

- HealthDay News, January 9, 2012

PENETRATING INSIGHTS: Much depends on the economy

- The New York Times, January 18, 2012

WHAT A HEEL: British barrister Francis Bridgeman has been sentenced to 12 months in prison for perverting the course of justice by claiming he had been kidnapped to avoid being arrested for drink-driving, Legal Week reports:

Bridgeman crashed -- and abandoned -- his car in April 2010 while over the limit but told police he had been kidnapped by armed men and driven off at knifepoint with a bag over his head in another vehicle before being dumped in a wood.

His version of events could not be substantiated, with CCTV footage showing him walking drunkenly in London, while the presence of his DNA on the car's airbag showed he must have been driving the car when it crashed.

Bridgeman was also ordered to pay £4,200 ($6,539) in costs and is not allowed to get behind the wheel for 18 months.

Cathy Cleaver Ruse, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council, explains why she won’t be buying Girl Scout cookies:

When our sweet little neighbor in her brown camp uniform came knocking on our door this year, we had to say no. I told her mother that I didn't want to hurt Katie's feelings, but I couldn't support the Girl Scout cookie sale anymore because I'd learned too much about the organizers' agenda, primarily their support for abortion and partnership with Planned Parenthood. …

[At] the Girl Scouts' "no adults allowed" workshop at the United Nations - the workshop in which the Planned Parenthood sex brochure "Healthy, Happy, and Hot" was offered …

The Girl Scouts have been "pro-choice" for years, but now they've been caught supporting promiscuous sex for girls. The Planned Parenthood sex guide … offered this advice on Page 11: "Some people have sex when they have been drinking alcohol or using drugs. This is your choice. ... If you want to have sex and think you might get drunk or high, plan ahead by bringing condoms and lube or putting them close to where you usually have sex."

Heard enough? There's a lot more at 100questionsforthegirlscouts.org.

Earlier this month, a young Girl Scout employee, Renise Rodriguez, made the mistake of stopping by the office to do extra work on her own time in a T-shirt bearing the words: "Pray to End Abortion." A supervisor ordered her to turn the shirt inside out or leave the office. She left, for good.

So should we all.

THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Turning back the tide of information overload with a digest of the latest developments in news conservatives need to pay attention to:

† “Sudden Jihad Syndrome”: A study by researchers at the Parnassia Psychiatric Institute in The Hague published in the December issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry may provide the scientific underpinnings for Daniel Pipes' “Sudden jihad syndrome” theory. Reviewing psychiatric records on patients between the ages of 15 to 54, researchers determined that there is an inverse relationship between the incidence of psychotic disorders and a person’s age when (s)he immigrated to Holland, The New York Times reports:

In four ethnic groups — people from Suriname, the Netherlands Antilles, Turkey and Morocco — the risk of psychosis was most elevated among those who immigrated before age 4. There was no association of psychosis with age among immigrants from Western countries.

There are nearly one million Muslims in the Netherlands. The largest group is from Turkey (358,000, or 40.5 percent), the second largest is from Morocco (315,000, or 35.6 percent) and the third largest is from Suriname (70,000, or 7.9 percent). FYI, Suriname's population is 20 percent Muslim, the highest percentage of Muslims of any country in the Western hemisphere.

This study raises the possibility that immigration at a young age from a Muslim-majority country or province may be a factor in developing a mental illness that raises the risk of sudden jihad syndrome or susceptibility to radicalization, and homegrown terror experts in Western countries should examine whether there is a correlation.   

† Multiculturalism: Jihad By Other Means: The U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court injunction prohibiting enforcement of State Question 755, an OK ballot initiative that would have amended the state Constitution to banned the incorporation of Sharia and other international law into court proceedings in the state (related article, penultimate item on the page).  The initiative, which was supported by 70 percent of voters in the state, was challenged by Muneer Awad, executive director of the OK chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on the grounds that it violated his rights under the establishment and free-exercise clauses of the First Amendment, The National Law Journal reports:

Specifically, Awad complained that enforcement of State Question 755 would result in his being stigmatized for his faith; would inhibit his ability to practice Islam; and would limit his access to Oklahoma courts, particularly regarding enforcement of his last will and testament. …

"Appellants argue that the balance weighs in their favor because Oklahoma voters have a strong interest in having their politically expressed will enacted, a will manifested by a large margin at the polls," Judge Scott Matheson wrote. "But when the law that voters wish to enact is likely unconstitutional, their interests do not outweigh Mr. Awad's in having his constitutional rights protected."

Oklahoma Attorney General E. Scott Pruitt, who argued that Oklahoma had a "compelling interest" in deciding what law is applied in Oklahoma courts, issued a statement soon following the ruling suggesting that the state would not seek a rehearing.

"With the decision by the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold a temporary stay of State Question 755, the case will return to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma to determine its constitutionality," he said. "My office will continue to defend the state in this matter and proceed with the merits of the case."

The appeal court did not address the merits of Awad's constitutional challenge.

Commenting on the unfortunate ruling, The Washington Times notes that specifically mentioning Sharia law “gave Muslim activists a wedge to take the case to court, claiming they were being unfairly discriminated against”:

The amendment then fell under strict scrutiny standards that it could have avoided had it not singled out Islam. True, there is no pressing movement to read Catholic canon law into the American legal corpus or to insist that all readings of the law be "Mosaic compliant," but focusing on Islam was a tactical error, calling attention to the obvious.

The appeals court addressed this matter as an establishment clause case. The decision notes that Mr. Awad had standing to sue because he "suffers a form of 'personal and unwelcome contact' with an amendment to the Oklahoma Constitution that would target his religion for disfavored treatment." This is ironic because proponents of basing American legal decisions on the Koran seek a form of favorable bias that the Oklahoma amendment sought to forestall. Mixed-up thinking on this issue was on display in September 2010 when Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer mused on "Good Morning America" that the fact that mobs of foreign extremists riot over people burning the Koran should force American jurists to consider limits on free expression in the United States [emphasis, The Stiletto].

† When environmental values collide: Back in the 1970s, the tiny snail darter held up construction of a dam for six years. Now, the Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service is considering issuing a “take” permit to West Butte Wind Power LLC. The permit would allow up to three protected golden eagles to be hacked to pieces by the blades of wind turbines over a five-year period as long as the wind farm developer contributes to a breed program to keep their population stable, MSNBC.com reports:

It’s the first eagle “take permit” application to be received and acted on by U.S. Fish and Wildlife under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. (“Take” means to kill, harass or disturb the birds, their nests or their eggs.)

The legislation, enacted in 1940, prohibits anyone from killing or disturbing any bald or golden eagles without a permit from the Interior Department.

Regulations adopted in 2009 enabled the agency to authorize, for the first time, the “take” of eagles for activities that are otherwise lawful but that result in either disturbance or death. …

“This is a type of project where it’s appropriate for them to issue this kind of permit,” said Liz Nysson, energy policy coordinator with the Oregon Natural Desert Association She noted that only a small number of golden eagles are believed to be in and around the area where the wind turbines will be built.

Hydroelectric energy is not politically correct, so it took an act of Congress to exempt the Tellico Dam from the Endangered Species Act. But environmental groups are fine with blowing off golden eagles for wind power.

† So Easy, A Conservative Can Do It: Part III: Washington Post pundit Chris Cillizza reports that “a new Pew Research Center poll suggests that most voters have little idea about even the most basic facts regarding the backgrounds of the men seeking the Republican presidential nomination this year.” But that’s not the whole story. Republicans were better informed than Democrats:

Pew asked registered voters four questions: 1) “Which candidate served as the speaker of the House” 2) “Mitt Romney was the governor of ___” 3) “After Iowa and New Hampshire, the next primary is in ____” 4) “Which GOP candidate opposes U.S. involvement in Afghanistan” …

Just 43 percent of all registered voters — these people are actually registered to vote — got at least three of those questions right. Forty eight percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters got three right — not surprising given that the questions were GOP-focused — while 41 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaning independents knew the answers to at least three questions. …

The average voter is a low-information decider, making his or her choices about candidates based on often times incomplete or just plain wrong facts.

The analysis of political races — from the presidential race on down — often assumes a level of involvement and information that the average voter simply lacks.

The Stiletto does not agree with Cillizza that “the questions were GOP-focused”:

‡ The Speaker of the House is a position of national prominence and the partisan affiliation of the person holding that office should not matter, given how often his or her name is in the news;

‡ IA, NH and SC traditionally hold the first three nominating contests for both parties, so it should not matter that Dems don’t have to participate in caucuses or primaries this time around; and

‡ Since a plethora of articles and broadcast news reports on ObamaCare have likened it to then-MA Gov. Mitt Romney’s universal healthcare plan, Dems should have known the answer to that question as well.

On the other hand, seeing as how few people pay much attention to Ron Paul, only that last question qualifies as a stumper.

Thus, Cillizza’s conclusion holds true for Dems more so than for Repubs (related article, second item on the page). In The Stiletto’s experience, voters who were allowed to submit questions for the candidates to answer at the Republican debates were very informed and asked incisive questions (second item on the page).

† TSA (Thieving Security Agent): Former John F. Kennedy Airport –based Transportation Security Administration agents Coumar Persad and Davon Webb have been sentenced to six months jail and five years' probation after pleading guiltyto grand larceny, obstructing governmental administration and official misconduct for stealing $40,000 in cash from a checked bag, The Daily Mail (London) reports:

Prosecutors said Persad X-rayed a piece of baggage on January 30 last year and noticed money inside. He then phoned Webb, who was in a baggage belt area, to tell him about the discovery.

Authorities said Webb showed up and marked the bag with tape. Persad then intercepted it in another handling area, and removed cash from the bag.

The pair later met in the bathroom to divide the money and hide it in their clothing.

† Not your father's (or your) sex education: Pauline Davis, 45, is suing her former employer, J&J Snack Foods plant in Moosic, PA, for firing her after she wore a prosthetic penis to work as part of her preparation for gender re-assignment surgery, Philadelphia Daily News reports:

She confided in several co-workers about the device, and someone told management, according to the complaint.

She subsequently was fired from her job as a packer/line inspector. Her termination, she claims, was discriminatory because a male co-worker who wore female clothing and prostheses and took hormone treatments was not fired nor disciplined.

Further, argued her Bucks County-based attorney, Lalena J. Turchi, her fake penis was concealed and "in no way interfered with her ability to do her job."

Davis wants back pay, damages for suffering and humiliation and punitive damages.

† John Edwards: The King Of Heels now and forever: Back when he was John Kerry’s running mate, John Edwards was derided as the “Breck Girl” because of his perfectly – and expensively – coiffed locks. Now, Time magazine is likening him to rotting animal flesh:

John Edwards is the putrefied meat of the American political system – literally, as far as your brain is concerned. Think about Edwards for a moment – the perfect hair, the honey voice, the oleaginous smile. Your lip curled ever so slightly, didn't it? A teensy bit of bile may have risen in your throat. The lip curl is a threat display, the bile is an attempt to purge a toxin. Both were triggered at least partly by your prefrontal cortex and your temporal lobes – and both would have also occurred if you'd smelled a piece of food gone bad.

Edwards, the one-time North Carolina senator and serial presidential candidate, was back in the news last week, as he motioned for another postponement of his campaign finance trial, set to begin Jan. 30 on charges that he illegally used campaign donations to cover up his affair with a staffer – with whom he later had a child. While his wife was dying of cancer. …

There are a lot of things that make the ex-senator the pariah he is, and the brain is indeed one of biggest players. It was only in the last decade or so, with the widespread use of functional magnetic imaging (fMRI), that neurologists discovered the overlapping circuitry that governs morality and disgust. …

"There is literal disgust and moral disgust, and the two overlap," says Jonathan Haidt, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. "Betrayal, hypocrisy, certain kinds of baseness trigger the brain's moral response."

Editorial Note: We now know that the reason Edwards wants a delay in his trial is because his cardiologist says he has a life-threatening heart condition that will require surgery next month.

IF THE SHOE FITS: If your spouse is gay, you are not alone

- The Huffington Post, via OpinionJournal, January 11, 2012

PENETRATING INSIGHTS: Conservatives torn over defending, opposing Romney

- The Associated Press, January 13, 2012

Joan Barnett, 58, a parent coordinator at NYC’s High School of Hospitality and Management, forged a death certificate for her daughter and faxed it to her boss so she could extend her trip to Costa Rica, according to a report on the incident by the Commissioner of Investigation. The Associated Press reports:

[S]omeone who said she was Barnett's daughter called the school on March 19, 2010, and said her sister in Costa Rica was very sick.

Later that day, the report said, another supposed daughter of Barnett's called and said her sister had suffered a heart attack and died. She said relatives were gathering in Costa Rica.

Barnett faxed the school a death certificate April 8, the report said.

School officials were suspicious because it had different, misaligned fonts. A Costa Rican government official later confirmed the document was a fake, noting that the death certificate had been issued in 2005.

In addition to being fired, Barnett was sentenced to 10 days' community service after she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor forgery charge.

As Barnett refused to speak to investigators, they have no idea whether the “dead daughter”  really existed.

IN MY SHOES: Jackie Gingrich Cushman discusses her stint as a teenage janitor at the First Baptist Church in Carrollton, GA with Washington Post political writer Melinda Henneberger – who, as it happens, had herself done janitorial work as a teen:

“I had so much satisfaction when I went in on Sunday mornings and the bathrooms were clean,’’ she said. “There was a lot of satisfaction in seeing a bathroom I’d cleaned with by [sic] own hands; who wants to walk into a dirty bathroom?’’ Cushman, who was paid by the hour, said she also enjoyed using the money “for clothes and eight-track tapes.’’

For her part, Henneberger writes that her job entailed “mowing, painting, and yes, scrubbing bathrooms, in an elementary school,” and that she had "no complaints.”

It’s disturbing that FOX News analyst Juan Williams thinks that doing an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay at a job requiring unskilled labor is demeaning. Somebody’s got to do these jobs, and it’s better that they are young or poor Americans who could use the money and will spend it in our economy rather than illegals who send their earnings to their families back home while making ends meet with taxpayer-funded food and housing assistance.

THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Turning back the tide of information overload with a digest of the latest developments in news conservatives need to pay attention to:

† Look before you leap: Part II (second item): The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a law Gov. Rick Perry (TX) signed last May that requires women seeking an abortion to have an ultrasound scan and to listen to a physician's detailed description of the fetus (related article, third item on page), The Wall Street Journal reports:

In a constitutional challenge to the law, U.S. District judge Sam Sparks of Austin ruled in August that it violates physicians' free-speech rights by compelling them to "advance an ideological agenda with which they may not agree, regardless of any medical necessity, and irrespective of whether the pregnant women wish to listen."

A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit reversed Judge Sparks, concluding that the law merely requires physicians to provide "truthful, non-misleading information" and therefore doesn't violate their free-speech rights. The Fifth Circuit ruling clears the way for Texas to enforce the sonogram law, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said in a statement.

"The Texas sonogram law falls well within the State's authority to regulate abortions and require informed consent from patients before they undergo an abortion procedure," Mr. Abbott said. …

North Carolina and Oklahoma have similar laws, Ms. Northup said, but courts there have blocked the laws on free-speech grounds.

The TX law was one of a record 92 abortion restrictions passed by state legislators in 2011, The Washington Times reports:

[The restrictions] rang[ed] from bans on most abortions after 20 weeks of gestation to changes in rules governing abortion clinics, the Guttmacher Institute said Friday.

"In 2011, nearly three times as many abortion restrictions were enacted, compared with any other previous year," said Elizabeth Nash, manager of Guttmacher Institute's team that tracks state issues. …

[L]awmakers introduced more than 1,100 provisions in 2011 – a sharp increase over the 950 introduced in 2010, Guttmacher said in its new report. The institute counts each discrete element of a law as a provision, since laws typically have multiple sections.

† Is Hillary Clinton campaigning for president?: Former Sen. Arlen Specter (D-R-D) sees Bill Keller's bet that dumping Joe Biden for Hillary Clinton will be the winning ticket (related article, eighth item on the page) and ups the ante to Hillary Clinton replacing Barack Hussein Obama on the ticket, The Washington Times reports:

Asked during an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board Tuesday whether Mrs. Clinton should replace Mr. Biden, Mr. Specter replied, "That's the second-best alternative. A better alternative is to make Hillary the [presidential] nominee. As long as we're talking about dumping, let's go to the core problem."

† Chevy Volt: An electric Edsel: Thanks to government fuel economy regulations, automakers are featuring newhybrid and electric cars at the Detroit auto show. “If only buyers were arriving as fast as the cars,” The New York Times reports:

Hybrid sales waned as gasoline prices ebbed in 2011, declining to 2.2 percent of the market from 2.4 percent a year earlier, according to the research firm LMC Automotive. Meanwhile, sales of the Nissan Leaf electric car and the Chevrolet Volt plug-in each fell short of expectations.

Analysts do not expect the segment to grow significantly this year: the combination of gas prices below $4 a gallon and higher upfront costs for the cars is not attracting consumers. …

“The market is going in one direction and fuel-economy regulations are going the other direction,” said Jeremy Anwyl, vice chairman of the automotive information Web site Edmunds.com. “Just because people start building more of something doesn’t mean the segment grows.”

Regardless, the automakers have little choice but to develop and try to push more hybrids as they prepare for fuel-efficiency requirements that call for significant increases later this decade.

† Living in these mad, mad, Madoff times: IL’s so-called "roadkill bill" allows anyone with a state furbearer license “to salvage pelts or even food from the unfortunate fauna that prove no match for steel-belted radials,” USA Today reports:

Despite snickering from some lawmakers, the bill sailed through the General Assembly – twice, because lawmakers overrode a veto by Gov. Pat Quinn, who worried that motorists might suffer the same fate as the critters. …

Joking aside, at least 14 states have laws related to roadkill, including those that let motorists' keep animals they hit, though some pertain only to deer or bears, according to an informal survey for The Associated Press by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Idaho soon may join the list, after a three-year push by one legislator to allow roadside salvage of game animals. The state's fish and game agency, which once objected to the idea, is awaiting legislative review of a rule that would allow it "under some circumstances."

"You shouldn't let that stuff go to waste," said Rep. Richard Harwood, an Idaho Republican who said he took up the cause after a game warden threatened a neighbor with a $350 fine if he messed with a run-over bobcat near his home for a hide that could net $200. "To be able not to grab it was kind of stupid. Why let it go to waste?"

† Fed up with farmers: Center for Immigration Studies details how farmers “lose money” when they are forced to curtail the number of illegal crop pickers they hire or to pay their employees the prevailing minimum wage (which removes much of the incentive to hire illegals) or provide housing for them:

You can legitimately call it a $10 million loss if the farmers invested, say, $60 million in the crop and received $50 for their produce. You could, with a little less honesty, say that you expected the harvest to be worth $60 million, but you got only $50 million, and then not discuss how much was invested in the crop.

Or you could define what you invested in such a way as to inflate the cost numbers. You could, for instance, say that the value of an acre of land was $400 an acre a year (a made- up number) when it really was $200 an acre a year – and who would know the difference? …

There are many reasons why a crop can spoil that have nothing to do with workers. The crop may be so harmed by droughts or pests that the farmer decides not to harvest it, on the grounds that he will lose money – and then put the blame for the rotting produce on the lack of workers. …

The most basic part of the labor supply/demand equation is the imbalance between the wage levels that growers have traditionally paid, and the slightly higher levels that would attract the workers they need. This is never discussed. …

The media always presents – unchallenged – the numbers, the concepts, and the arguments of the growers. No one asks why a significant part of the American economy, labor-intensive agriculture, should be given a free pass for their extensive employment of illegal workers.

† State Department employee in child porn sting: In a plea deal with federal prosecutors State Department security officer James Cafferty has pleaded guilty to a single felony count, transporting child porn, The Smoking Gun reports:

Cafferty …  faces a mandatory minimum prison term of five years (though a judge could sentence him to up to 20 years in custody). …

In a plea agreement filed in U.S. District Court in Tampa, Cafferty admitted that when he returned to the U.S. from England in August, he carried three hard drives containing up to 15,000 child porn images (both photos and videos). Digital storage media found in Cafferty’s Largo, Florida home during a law enforcement search contained more than 30,000 child porn images.

During questioning by federal agents, Cafferty “admitted ‘photo-shopping’ himself into scenes constituting child pornography.”

† Obama to offer jobless a pocketful of miracles -- but no wages: President Barack Hussein Obama’s summer-jobs initiative that will create 180,000 “work opportunities” in the private sector in 2012, of which 110,000 will be mentoring and unpaid internships, The Hill reports:

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said the “opportunities” are all new and were not jobs that would have existed anyway. …

She noted that the unemployment level among those aged 16 to 24 is 16 percent, far higher than the 10.7 percent in 2007 before the recession began.

Yeah, and jobs without paychecks is just what they need. 

† 10 reasons Michelle Obama should be proud – really proud – of America: This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series (previous article, last item on the page) meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on Rory O'Conner, who was fishing in a kayak half a mile off the coast of Sarasota, FL, when he spotted a dog swimming up to his small craft, Geekosystem.com reports: 

[He] quickly reeled in his fishing line once he saw the dog … and pulled Barney into his kayak. He dried the dog off and headed for shore, and during this time, Barney was perched on the back of kayak, a very small space, too afraid to move, clearly traumatized in some way. … It turned out Barney was involved in a deadly DUI crash; he was out for a jog with his owner, and a drunk driver struck and killed her not too long before the dog fled to sea. … 

[O'Conner] brought barney to a vet, and the dog only sustained a few minor injuries. Using a tracking implant, the vet discovered that Barney belonged to Donna L. Chen, which is what led to the discovery of the crash and Donna’s unfortunate fate.

Barney was returned to Chen’s family. The driver who killed her, Blake Talman, 22, had left the scene of an earlier crash and is facing charges that include DUI manslaughter and DUI property damage.

NOT THE SHARPEST KNIFE IN THE DRAWER: On his campaign website, Republican gubernatorial candidate Dave Spence, says he "earned a degree in Economics" from the University of Missouri which is true, but in a “kinda, sorta” sorta way. You see, his degree is in home economics, St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:

Spence said Monday that, while at Mizzou, his grades did not meet the threshold to enter the Business School. So he chose a different academic path that would allow him to graduate on time.

"I was not the greatest student in the world," Spence said. "I'll make fun of myself: I was a 60-watt bulb in a 100-watt society."

Mizzou's home economics program, which has been around for over a century, became its own college in 1973. In 1988, the name was changed to the College of Human Environmental Sciences.

Spence has made jobs and the economy a key part of his bid to be the state's top elected official.

Fudging his credentials was a real dumb thing to do. But as it turns out, his degree and intellectual wattage were good enough for him to realize that there was a great future for him in plastics. He bought Alpha Packaging with a small business loan in 1985 at the age of 26 and sold the company 25 years for a reported $260 million.

PENETRATING INSIGHTS: Driving test repeat candidates more likely to fail

- Daily Telegraph (London) via OpinionJournal, January 3, 2012

WHAT A HEEL: CA State Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi (D-Hayward) has pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge stemming from an October shoplifting incident at a Neiman Marcus store in San Francisco. defense attorney Douglas Rappaport claimed Hayashi stole $2,445 worth of merchandise because of a “benign brain tumor that may have impacted her decision-making abilities,” CBSSanFrancisco.com reports:

Judge Gerardo Sandoval immediately sentenced Hayashi to three years of unsupervised court probation and ordered her to stay 50 feet away from the Neiman Marcus store. She was also ordered to pay $180 in fines and fees, which she promptly did after leaving court.

Hayashi, who was wearing a pair of cheetah-print high heels, a green jacket and black slacks and had a black Chanel purse slung over her shoulder, declined to speak to reporters following the hearing.

Hayashi, who had initially pleaded not guilty to a felony grand theft charge, changed her plea when the charges were knocked down to a misdemeanor. Oh, and after receiving treatment, her tumor “is no longer affecting her concentration or her judgment,” according to Rappaport.

IN MY SHOES: Sara Sklaroff, a former editor of American Diabetes Association magazine Diabetes Forecast, describes what it is like to have diabetes in this Washington Post op-ed:

The panic always takes me by surprise. It creeps in, a gathering fog of unease. Then I find myself unable to carry on a conversation. Or I start arguing, mindlessly. My scope of vision narrows, and my heart thumps like Bugs Bunny in love – except I’m not enraptured; I’m sick. I have been through this again and again, and still it takes me a few minutes to realize that I urgently need something to eat.

But this is no ordinary hunger. This is my brain on low glucose, also known as hypoglycemia. My blood sugar has plummeted, and if I don’t get enough glucose into my body quickly, I could pass out. This is what I live with after a decade with Type 2 diabetes. …

I stick lancets and needles into my skin about a dozen times a day. Because I use insulin and aim for near normal glucose, I’ll have occasional episodes of low blood glucose, some of which are downright scary. It also means extra finger sticks, because I test just about every time I get behind the wheel of the car, get into the swimming pool or do anything that could conceivably put me or others in danger.

Before each meal, I count the carbohydrates to figure out how much insulin to inject, and I try to inject it 15 minutes before my first bite so that the insulin kicks in at about the same time the glucose does. (Imagine doing this in a restaurant, where you usually have no idea what the carb count is and no way to know when the food will arrive at your table.)

If I miscalculate and don’t take enough insulin, my glucose might skyrocket. If I take too much insulin, my glucose might plummet, and then it’s back to the panic fog. I almost never leave the house without a blood glucose meter, test strips, lancing device, insulin pen, insulin needles, emergency glucose, phone and driver’s license in case I have a low, become unconscious and need to be identified.

THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Turning back the tide of information overload with a digest of the latest developments in news conservatives need to pay attention to:

† What Freedom Of Speech Means To Muslims (The U.S. Edition): Jessica Felber and another student sued the University of California-Berkeley for not doing enough to prevent Jewish students from being verbally harassed – and in her case physically assaulted by being rammed with a shopping cart – during a 2010 anti-Israel “Apartheid Week” protest by the Muslim Student Association and Students for Justice in Palestine. The protest included checkpoints set up by the Muslim students all over campus at which their classmates were asked if they were Jewish. U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg ruled that “the harassment, even if true, constituted protected political speech and dismissed the case against the university,” Greely Gazette (Greely, CO) reports: 

Seeborg said the university did not have any obligation to intervene in any dispute where a private individual on campus was allegedly interfering with another’s constitutional rights. He instead appeared to indicate that the incident was an outcome of Felber’s counter protest.

“The incident in which Felber was assaulted with a shopping cart, for example, did not occur in the context of her educational pursuit,” Seeborg wrote. "Rather, that event occurred when she, as one person attempting to exercise free speech rights in a public forum, was allegedly attacked by another person who likewise was participating in a public protest in a public forum."

Robert Spencer, founder of Jihad Watch, characterizes the judge’s decision as defining assault as protected speech. But only when a Muslim is assaulting an Infidel (that is to say, Christians and Jews). The other way around, as we all know, is a hate crime.

† Skeletal pundit Alan Colmes is just another liberal ghoul: The Daily Caller's Jim Treacher writes that Alan Colmes hit the nail on the head when he disagreed with Rich Lowry’s prediction that “I think even some of the dastardly characters we have in the mainstream media are not gonna go as low as you just have” after Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson made nearly identical remarks in an interview with Rachel Maddow:

[Santorum]‘s not a little weird, he’s really weird. Some of the positions he’s taken are just so weird that I think some Republicans are gonna be off-put. Not everybody is going to be down, for example, with the story of how he and his wife handled the stillborn child whose body they took home to kind of sleep with and introduce to the rest of the family. It’s very weird story… Let’s repeat that, every time we talk about Rick Santorum, let’s be clear: This a guy who should never become president, in my view. [Emphasis, The Stiletto.]

Whether intentionally or not, Robinson let the cat out of the bag: Dems will try to undermine Santorum’s presidential campaign with dead baby jokes. As Treacher puts it: “You’re on notice, Republicans: If your child dies and you ever want to run for president, you’d better check with the liberal left to make sure you’re mourning correctly.”

A new fad amongst new mothers is to ingest their placenta. This is no weirder – OK, it is way, way weirder – than allowing family members to cuddle a stillborn or dead neonate before burying it, as some experts recommend.

† There’s No Such Thing As Free Healthcare: President Barack Hussein Obama famously asserted that doctors unnecessarily perform surgery just to keep their bottom lines healthy. The truth is that doctors – from family practitioners to cancer specialists – are quietly going under, thanks to insurance companies and the federal government putting the squeeze on how much they can charge for their services, regulations and paperwork and rising drug costs, CNNMoney reports:

Dr. Neil Barth … has been in the top 10% of oncologists in his region, according to U.S. News Top Doctors' ranking. Still, he is contemplating personal bankruptcy.

That move could shutter his 31-year-old clinical practice and force 6,000 cancer patients to look for a new doctor.

Changes in drug reimbursements have hurt him badly. Until the mid-2000's, drugs sales were big profit generators for oncologists.

In oncology, doctors were allowed to profit from drug sales. So doctors would buy expensive cancer drugs at bulk prices from drugmakers and then sell them at much higher prices to their patients.

"I grew up in that system. I was spending $1.5 million a month on buying treatment drugs," he said. In 2005, Medicare revised the reimbursement guidelines for cancer drugs, which effectively made reimbursements for many expensive cancer drugs fall to less than the actual cost of the drugs. …

"I was $3.2 million in debt by mid 2010," said Barth. "It was a sickening feeling. I could no longer care for patients with catastrophic illnesses without scrutinizing every penny first." …

"I recently got a call from a divorced woman with two kids who is unemployed, house in foreclosure with advanced breast cancer," he said. "The moment has come to this that you now say, 'sorry, we don't have the capacity to care for you.' "

Half of all doctors in the U.S. are in private practice. There has been a systematic effort to destroy the private practice healthcare delivery model that predates Obama but certainly intensified in his tenure. Soon a doctor have no choice but to become salaried employees -- first for a medical institution like Cleveland Clinic or Mayo Clinic, later as a government employee. Given the huge investment in schooling and huge medical school debt how soon before people do the math and decide an MBA is better than an MD? Then the government will start paying medical school tuition – as has already been proposed in MA – and events will spool out just as Reagan predicted in this 1961 speech warning of the perils of socialized medicine.

BTW, back then the American Medical Association opposed socialized medicine and distributed copies of Reagan’s speech. Today the AHA has thrown its support behind Obamacare, which will lead inexorably to socialized medicine.

† Why Shouldn’t Illegals Get Government Healthcare?: Marco Antonio Fuentes has spent 374 days at Community Regional Medical Center – longer than any other patient the staff at the Fresno acute-care hospital can remember. Fuentes was admitted to the hospital Dec. 26, 2010 with necrotizing pancreatitis, a complication of untreated gallstones that had progressed to an acute infection that had eaten gaping holes in his intestines. Pancreatitis typically requires a hospital stay of between 45 to 65 days, but in Fuentes’ case, “The holes in his intestines allowed bile and feces to escape into his abdomen – and he had blood infections and blood clots in his lungs that were life-threatening” and had to take nutrition and hydration via IV for more than 11 months, The Fresno Bee reports. It took 12 surgeries to patch Fuentes up so he could go home.

Here’s the kicker. “Home” is Mexico. The Bee did not inform readers that Fuentes was an uninsured illegal from Mexico until 17 paragraphs and 440 words into the 860-word article (related article, fifth item on the page):

[F]amily, including a brother, uncle and cousins, came from as far away as South Carolina to visit, staying at Terry's House across the street from the hospital, said Denise Goodman, the hospital hospitality house manager. …

In August, his eighth month hospitalized, his mother, Estella Castillo, came from Mexico. She had been ill, and Fuentes realized his condition worried her. "I had a lot of emotions," he said. "I was sad. I didn't want her to see me that way."

The Bee didn’t try very hard to find out and report how much his care cost and where the money comes from for the $100 million in charity care that the hospital provides to patients like Fuentes every year (Hint: Ask yourself, why a bottle of Tylenol costs a few bucks when you buy it at your local drugstore, but $100 per pill when a nurse places it on your bed tray in a little paper cup):

On Tuesday, the final cost of Fuentes' care was not available. Much of it will be taken on by the hospital as charity care. …

Fuentes began to rally after a final surgery on Nov. 11.

Over nine hours, surgeons were able to rebuild his gastrointestinal tract.

And three weeks ago, he had his first hospital food. …

On Dec. 20, hospital staff threw him a Christmas party. For that occasion, he had homemade enchiladas. They were "really, really" good, he said. …

After a couple of weeks convalescing at an uncle's home in Red Bluff, Fuentes will go to Mexico to live with his parents and work at their small, tortilla-making business.

The Stiletto knows that had she been treated at a hospital without insurance and no means to pay for the services and facilities she was using, no one would have made her a special meal at Christmas. Only in CA.

† Chevy Volt: An electric Edsel: General Motors is recalling asking customers to return 8,000 Volts sold in the U.S. in the past two years to fix a defect that caused the plug-in car’s lithium ion battery to ignite after routine crash testing by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (related article, second item on the page). The Associated Press reports:

The fixes are similar to a recall [but] GM's move is considered a step below a recall, which would be issued by a car company and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. …

The Volt has a T-shaped, 400-pound (181-kilogram) battery pack that can power the car for about 35 miles (56 kilometers). After that, a small gasoline generator kicks in to run the electric motor.

NHTSA has been investigating the batteries after a Volt caught fire in June at a crash test facility in Wisconsin. The fire broke out three weeks after a side-impact crash test. …

GM has said that the liquid solution used to cool the Volt's battery leaked and crystallized, causing an electrical short that touched off the fire.

The company now sends out a team to drain the batteries after being notified of a crash by GM's OnStar safety system.

† The Right To Bear Arms Belongs To Us All: Part II: Anyone who’s bummed out over having to tell Aunt Martha how yummy her fruitcake was or let down by getting socks and PJs – again—consider Sarah McKinley’s holiday season. The 18-year old lost her husband Kenneth to lung cancer Christmas Day, and then on New Year’s Eve was faced with two men wanting his pain meds trying to break into her mobile home, People magazine reports:

"I walked over and got the 12 gauge, went in the bedroom and got the pistol, put the bottle in [my son's] mouth, then I called 911,” McKinley tells Eyewitness News 5, explaining she wanted the baby to remain quiet so the intruders would not know where she was standing as they charged through the door.

As she laid out the situation to dispatcher Diane Graham, McKinley said, "I've got two guns in my hand. Is it OK to shoot him if he comes in my door?"

Graham responded: "You do whatever you have to do to protect your baby."

Justin Shane Martin, 24, died clutching a knife in his gloved left hand, says a police affidavit.

His alleged accomplice, Dustin Louis Stewart, 29, who turned himself in to police, has been charged with murder. The sheriff says the charge is appropriate when a felony leads to someone being killed, whereas McKinley did not violate the law in any way.

Note that neither intruder wrested her weapons from her hands and used them on her, and that McKinley shot the intruder she was aiming at rather than herself or her three-month old son – two scenarios liberals always cite when explaining why people should not have guns for their own protection.

† Every Bubble Bursts Eventually: Shortly after Barack Hussein Obama was elected -- but not yet inaugurated -- schools were being named after him, supposedly at the behest of students (related article, fourth item on the page) who thought he was the coolest dude ever. Now, students at Shaker Heights High School in Shaker Heights, OH are laughing at him, reports RealClearPolitics:

"I want you to know you're the reason that I ran for this office in the first place. You remind me what we are still fighting for," Obama said to tepid cheers.

"You inspire me," Obama said to an audience that laughed at him.

† 10 reasons Michelle Obama should be proud – really proud – of America: This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series (previous article, last item on the page) meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on Michael Dodd, owner of Applied Orthotics and Prosthetics in San Jose, who came to the rescue when Amber Stime, who lost her hands when she picked up a landmine in her native Ethiopia as a toddler, needed replacements for her worn-out prosthetic hands. Palo Alto Daily News reports:

Dodd … outfit[ed] Stime with a brand-new set of prosthetics.

The mocha-colored hands took about a week to fabricate and if billed through insurance would have cost about $40,000, Dodd said as he used a sewing machine to finish piecing together a harness. He did most of the work over the holidays.

Dodd said it's been a goal of his to build the prosthetics for Stime since meeting her in 2009, when she connected him with an Ethiopian girl who needed artificial limbs following a car wreck.

Over the past five or six years, Applied Orthotics and Prosthetics has taken on a handful of such pro bono cases. …

Dodd said her reaction was payment enough.

"I'm just happy for her," he remarked when Stime posed for a photograph with her new hands outside his office. "Just look at her smiling face. That's what it's all about. It's all for her."

Editorial Note: Since Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated, The Stiletto Blog has run more than 100 posts about extraordinary Americans. The Stiletto would have liked to say that she accomplished her goat with her ongoing series, but this New York Times profile of the FLOTUS excerpted from Jodi Kantor's new book, "The Obamas," suggests that Obama just doesn't like her fellow citizens – and is anything but “post racial”:

Mrs. Obama is a supportive but often anxious spouse, suspicious of conventional political thinking, a groundbreaking figure who has acutely felt the pressures and possibilities of being the first African-American in her position and a first lady who has worked to make her role more meaningful. ...

A Harvard-trained lawyer, she had given up her career for what initially seemed to her a shapeless post, and she tried to wriggle out of some ceremonial events that she saw as not having much purpose, including the annual luncheon for Congressional spouses held by the first lady since 1912. She tried to limit her public exposure, saying she would work only two days a week; inside the White House, the difficulty of getting Mrs. Obama to agree to doing an event became a running joke. ...

Mrs. Obama often found herself caught in an internal debate about how the Obamas should look and live, travel and entertain. As the first African-American first lady, she wanted everything to be flawless and sophisticated; she felt “everyone was waiting for a black woman to make a mistake,” a former aide said.

And as with other behind-the-scenes peeks at the Obama White House, Kantor's book depicts an administration in complete disarray:

Several West Wing aides … wondered: was the president using his wife to convey what he felt?

In September 2010, after a summer of infighting throughout the West Wing, things finally exploded.

Early on Sept. 16, Robert Gibbs was scanning the news when a story stopped him short: according to a new French book, Michelle Obama had told Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the French first lady, that living in the White House was “hell.” It was a potential disaster — the equivalent of the $400 haircut, Mr. Gibbs feared, coming just weeks before election day and on the heels of a vacation in Spain that had drawn accusations of lavish spending.

Mr. Gibbs asked her aides to find out if she had said anything even close (no, the answer came back), and then fought the story back for hours, having the book translated and convincing the Élysée Palace to issue a denial. By noon the potential crisis had been averted.

But at Mr. Emanuel’s 7:30 a.m. staff meeting the next day, Ms. Jarrett announced that the first lady had concerns about the White House’s response to the book, according to several people present. All eyes turned to Mr. Gibbs, who started to steam.

“Don’t go there, Robert, don’t do it,” Mr. Emanuel warned.

“That’s not right, I’ve been killing myself on this, where’s this coming from?” Mr. Gibbs yelled, adding expletives. He interrogated Ms. Jarrett, whose calm only seemed to frustrate him more. The two went back and forth, Ms. Jarrett unruffled, Mr. Gibbs shaking with rage. Finally, several staff members said, Mr. Gibbs cursed the first lady – colleagues stared down at the table, shocked – and stormed out.

NOT THE SHARPEST KNIFE IN THE DRAWER: When confronted by police about the $600 worth of merchandize she had (allegedly) stolen from a J.C. Penny store in Provo on New Year's Eve, Leah Efay Davis told them she had played Rudy Huxtable on The Cosby Show, and that she really wasn't stealing because she owned the mall. The trouble is, Davis (left) looks nothing like Keshia Knight Pulliam (right), and the authorities already knew who Davis was, The Daily Mail of London reports:

She was arrested twice last year for numerous charges that including shoplifting and trespassing.

She had been banned from the Provo Towne Centre Mall due as a result of her previous run-ins with the law. 

 

The officers brought Davis back into the store and allegedly found the stolen items in a shopping bag, which included purses and four pairs of pajamas. …

Davis, charged with retail theft and criminal trespass, was booked into the Utah County Jail and held on $5,000 bail.

IF THE SHOE FITS: Burned out at work?

- HealthDay News, December 28, 2011

PENETRATING INSIGHTS: Carter's advice to Obama: Don't alienate voters

- The Associated Press, January 3, 2012

WHAT HEELS: Two lawyers are suing the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey revoked their lifetime free passes for bridge and tunnel tollways in violation of union contracts that they worked under as police officers before retiring from the agency, The Star-Ledger (Newark) reports:

"When I came on the job in 1971, we were told that you get a certain amount of tickets per year — and they were tickets back then, not E-ZPass — and it was a lifetime benefit," said one of the lawyers, Thomas Westfield, who retired as a Port Authority detective sergeant in 1998. …

Westfield filed his suit Dec. 22 in Superior Court in Morris County on behalf of himself and more than 400 fellow Port Authority retirees who had filed notices threatening to sue the agency. …

Michael Shuhala, who retired as a Port Authority detective in 2003 and is now a lawyer and municipal court judge in Cliffside Park, filed his suit Friday in Bergen County.

"There was a violation of due process of law," said Shuhala, who is not seeking class-action status in his suit. …

Port Authority commissioners voted in November 2010 to revoke free toll privileges in response to a call by Gov. Chris Christie to end toll payer-funded perks. The revocation applied to the commissioners themselves, retirees and off-duty non-union employees hired after Sept. 11, 2001. …

Bobby Egbert, a spokesman for the Port Authority Police Benevolent Association, the department’s biggest union, said the Port Authority’s entire unionized work force had filed grievances over the issue, not merely the police.

The union perk covered tolls for the George Washington Bridge, the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, the Bayonne Bridge, the Goethals Bridge, and the Outerbridge Crossing, plus parking at John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty Airports.

THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Turning back the tide of information overload with a digest of the latest developments in news conservatives need to pay attention to:

† The Keystone Kops Are Enforcing U.S. Immigration Laws: High-level political appointees in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service are pressuring underlings to rubber-stamp immigrants’ visa applications, in some cases “overlooking concerns about fraud, eligibility or security.” According to an unreleased draft 40-page report by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General, one-quarter of the 254 officers surveyed said they have been pressured to approve questionable cases, sometimes “against their will,” The Daily reports:

The report does not call out any particular officials and indicates that the agency has had a problem with valuing quantity over quality since at least the 1980s.

But high-ranking USCIS officials said the pressure has heightened after the Obama administration appointed Alejandro Mayorkas as director in August 2009 during an effort to pass comprehensive immigration reform, bringing with him a mantra of “get to yes.”

Internal communications provided to The Daily indicate that the new leadership seemed to fundamentally clash with career agency employees over when to afford the benefit of the doubt, culminating in a whistle-blower investigation into a senior appointee and, ultimately, the agency-wide inspector general inquiry that produced the report. …

At least five agency veterans seen as being too tough on applicants were either demoted, or given the choice between a demotion or a relocation from Southern California – where their families were – to San Francisco and Nebraska, according to sources and letters of reassignment provided to The Daily.

Those kind of threats have caused lower-level employees to fall in line, sources said.

“People are afraid,” said one longtime manager, who requested anonymity for fear of being fired. “Integrity only carries people so far because they’ve got to pay the rent.” …

These employees’ claims are reflected in the inspector general report, which found that 14 percent of respondents had “serious concerns” that employees who focused on fraud or ineligibility were evaluated unfairly. The report also found that supervisors sometimes take cases away from an unwilling officer and assign them to someone else, against agency rules.

† College Diploma Not Worth The Paper It's Written On: Over the past decade, tuition rates have skyrocketed 72 percent, and “if the current trajectory continues, getting a college degree could soon become cost-prohibitive for average Americans,” notes The Washington Times (related article, fifth item on the page):

As tuition costs skyrocket and graduates walk away saddled with ever-rising amounts of debt, American colleges now face a choice: Remain a part of the problem, or begin contributing to a solution. …

The rethinking process has already begun at several institutions. Several years ago, Colorado Mesa University eliminated all of its deans, saving more than $500,000 each year. …

Indiana's Grace College and Seminary now offers a three-year degree program, which requires more classes per semester for students, but can cut 25 percent off post-college debt. …

Dozens of public universities have embarked on "course redesigns," overhauling the structure of many classes to reduce costs. Missouri State University, for example, plans to dramatically alter its psychology classes. By using more undergraduate assistants, digital learning, online textbooks with built-in assessments for individual students and other measures, the changes are expected to cut the university's average cost per student from $73 to $60 when the updated course is rolled out next fall.

One university that is not rethinking the cost or value of its course offerings is Columbia University, which plans to offer an Occupy Wall Street class that will require upperclassmen and grad students to go out “into the field” students to become involved with the Occupy movement and will be taught by Dr. Hannah Appel, “a veteran of the Occupy movement,” CBS Radio reports:

The course will be called “Occupy the Field: Global Finance, Inequality, Social Movement” it will be run by the anthropology department.

Appel is a staunch defender of the Occupy movement, in her blog she said that, ““it is important to push back against the rhetoric of ‘disorganization’ or ‘a movement without a message’ coming from left, right and center.”

And when they have their degree, the students taking this class can take their place in the unemployment line along with grads with bachelor’s degrees in the arts, humanities and architecture. A study by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce based on 2009 and 2010 data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey finds that recent college graduates with the highest rates of unemployment had undergraduate degrees in architecture (13.9 percent), the arts (11.1 percent) and the humanities (9.4 percent), The Washington Post reports:

The recent college graduates with the lowest rates of unemployment had degrees in health (5.4 percent), education (5.4 percent), and agriculture and natural resources (7 percent.) Those with business and engineering degrees also fared relatively well.

“People keep telling kids to study what they love – but some loves are worth more than others,” said Anthony P. Carnevale, one of the study’s authors. “When people talk about college, there are all these high-minded ideas about it making people better citizens and participating fully in the life of their times. All that’s true, but go talk to the unemployed about that.” …

Carnevale and his team have also quantified the value of various majors in terms of wages. Over a lifetime, the earnings of workers who have majored in engineering, computer science or business were as much as 50 percent higher than the earnings of those who majored in the humanities, the arts, education and psychology.

† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: According to an analysis of data from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey by Sentier Research the “recovery” has actually been harder on most Americans than the recession, The Weekly Standard reports:

[M]edian American household income has actually fallen during the “recovery.” Not only that, but it has fallen even more than it did during the recession. Gordon Green, former chief of the Governments Division at the U.S. Census Bureau and co-author of the report (with fellow Census veteran John Coder), says, “Real income fell by 3.2 percent during [the recession]. And during the recovery it went down by 6.7 percent.” So “income [has] declined twice as much in the recovery as in the recession itself.”

[I]n early 2000, Americans’ median annual household income was $55,836, in real (inflation-adjusted, June 2011) dollars. By the start of the recession (in December 2007), Americans’ real incomes had fallen 0.9 percent, to $55,309 – a decline of $527. During the recession (which ended in June 2009), their incomes fell an additional 3.2 percent, to $53,518 – a decline of another $1,791. During the first two years of the “recovery” (from June 2009 to June 2011), they fell an additional 6.7 percent, to $49,909 – a decline of another $3,609.

So, from the start of 2000 to mid-2011, the typical American household’s real income dropped nearly $6,000 – and more than 60 percent of that drop (over $3,600) came after the start of the “recovery” and thus squarely on Obama’s watch.

† The right to bear arms belongs to us all: Part II: Six years after attorneys for D.C. resident Dick Heller won a landmark Second Amendment decision, they are finally getting paid (click here for related article). U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington awarded Heller’s attorneys, led by Alan Gura $1.1 million – they had requested $3.1 million, but the District of Columbia wanted to pay them $840,000 – The BLT: Blog of Legal Times reports: 

Sullivan noted in his 65-page ruling that lawyers for the city had claimed Gura’s team shouldn’t be allowed to “enrich themselves at the expense of the taxpayers” in a time of financial crisis. The judge made it known that he, too, was cognizant of the issue.

“Sensitive to the fact that the fees in this case will be paid by the taxpayers, this Court is left with the difficult task of closely scrutinizing plaintiff’s fee petition to determine what is fair, reasonable, and just compensation for the legal services of plaintiff’s attorneys,” Sullivan wrote. …

Both sides argued to Sullivan that various matrixes and formulas should be used to determine the correct hourly rate. The plaintiffs’ team concluded that the rates should be $589 per hour for all of the attorneys except Huff, who had less experience. They argued Huff should be compensated at a rate of $361 per hour. …

Regarding number of hours worked, the plaintiff’s attorneys claimed they worked 3,270 hours over six years. Criticizing three of the attorneys – Neily, Levy and Healy – for “unacceptable” timekeeping practices, among other reasons, Sullivan found that only 2,877 hours had been “properly billed” to defendants.

Finally, Sullivan concluded that no fee enhancement would be warranted, despite the attorneys’ assertions that they had provided “superior” legal performance, and that the awards had been delayed.

† Why Shouldn’t Illegals Get Government Healthcare?: Public hospitals in NYC have been millions of dollars in unreimbursed expenses annually warehousing hundreds of “permanent patients” for years because they are illegal immigrants or lack sufficient insurance or appropriate housing (related article, seventh item on the page). “[P]atients, trapped in bureaucratic limbo, are sometimes deprived of services that could be provided elsewhere at a small fraction of the cost,” The New York Times reports:

“Many of those individuals no longer need that care, but because they have no resources and many have no family here, we, unfortunately, are caring for them in a much more expensive setting than necessary based on their clinical need,” said LaRay Brown, a senior vice president for the city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation. Under state law, public hospitals are not allowed to discharge patients to shelters or to the street.

Medicaid often pays for emergency care for illegal immigrants, but not for continuing care, and many hospitals in places with large concentrations of illegal immigrants, like Texas, California and Florida, face the quandary of where to send patients well enough to leave. Officials in New York City say they have many such patients who are draining money from the health system as the cost of keeping people in acute-care hospitals continues to escalate.

But even if Medicaid pays for some care, taxpayer dollars are ultimately being consumed by patients who could be cared for in nursing homes or other health facilities, and even at home if supportive services were available. Care for a patient languishing in a hospital can cost more than $100,000 a year, while care in a nursing home can cost $20,000 or less.

Patients fit to be discharged from hospitals but having no place to go typically remain more than five years, Ms. Brown said. She estimated that there were about 300 patients in such a predicament throughout the city, most in public hospitals or higher-priced skilled public nursing homes, though a smattering were in private hospitals.

† Art Does Not Imitate Life: The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that will strike terror in the hearts of millions of NYC renters (related article, fifth item on the page). In a Wall Street Journal op-ed New York University Law School professor Richard Epstein reports that James and Jeanne Harmon – owners of a town house on West 76^th occupied by tenants on the upper floors “who are entrenched under New York's rent-stabilization law, paying rents at only a fraction of the value of their units” – have launched “a serious constitutional challenge to rent-control and stabilization laws”:

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals blew off his suit in March, but Mr. Harmon has filed petition for certiorari in the Supreme Court, and, miracles of miracles, the high court has asked New York City and the tenants to respond. …

In broad and emphatic language, the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution provides that "no person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." Rent control collides with the last prohibition, the "takings clause."

All versions of rent-control laws share a single dominant characteristic: They allow a tenant to remain in possession of property after the expiration of a lease at below-market rents. New York even gives the tenant a statutory right to pass on the right to occupy the premises at a controlled rent to family members who have lived with them for two or more years. The tenants in Mr. Harmon's complaint pay rent equal to about 60% of market value.

Epstein notes that people nationwide were outraged over Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) taking advantage of rent stabilization by paying a total of $3,894 a month for four luxury apartments in Harlem, about half the market rent. What they were outraged over was that he hogged four affordable apartments that less wealthy NYers could have lived in. Epstein makes some very good points about the unconstitutionality of rent abatement laws, but market rates in all the boroughs of NYC would consume the entire paychecks of most of the city’s middle class families.

† All The News That’s Fart To Print: Kimberly-Clark wants to make TP sexy, and has commissioned designer Jonathan Adler to create three limited-edition toilet roll covers using bright, geometric patterns to promote a new formulation of its Cottonelle toilet paper that it says is 30 percent stronger, The Associated Press reports:

Allen Adamson, managing director of global branding firm Landor in New York, said Target Corp. has successfully brought design to a lot of consumer product categories with such lines as the housewares rethought by renowned industrial designer Michael Graves.

But it's new for toilet paper.

"It's just surprising when design finally meets toilet paper - that's sort of the final frontier," Adamson said.

Throughout the month of January, you can visit the Cottonelle Website to get the cover for a shipping charge of $1.99 plus an offer code from a package of Cottonelle toilet paper. Or you can order them for $3.99, including shipping.

NOT THE SHARPEST KNIVES IN THE DRAWER: A Wells Fargo Bank in Natomas, CA, that closed for business on Saturday was left unlocked for 48 hours until a customer noticed it and called police, CBS Sacramento reports:

Banks are known for their security. After all, they do have hundreds of thousands of dollars coming and going. Who would ever think they’d leave their doors unlocked? Apparently not even the bad guys. It didn’t look like anything inside was missing.

Neither the branch manager nor a corporate spokesperson have thus far commented on the security breach.

IF THE SHOE FITS: Learning to eat with dentures

- HealthDay News, December 26, 2011

PENETRATING INSIGHTS: Humble people are more helpful

- LiveScience.com, January 2, 2012

WHAT A HEEL: In an interview on FOX News on Monday liberal commentator Alan Colmes, who – thankfully – has never procreated, ridiculed how Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum and his wife, Karen, dealt with the 1996 death of their newborn son Gabriel, who lived for only two hours. From The Hollywood Reporter:  

“Once (voters) get a load of some of the crazy things he’s said and done, like taking his two-hour-old baby who died right after childbirth home and played with it for a couple of hours so his other children would know that the child was real…” Colmes said before he was interrupted by National Review editor Rich Lowry.

“That’s a cheap shot, Alan,” an incensed Lowry said. “To say it’s ‘crazy,' something that’s that personal and harmful as losing a child, and to mock it, to mock him like that, is really beyond the pale and beneath you.”

During the interview, Colmes – leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms – seemed perturbed that Lowry had the nerve to interrupt him.

“I’m interrupting because what you’re saying is contemptible,” Lowry said. “They lost a child, Alan. That’s very serious, and it’s not something you should be mocking on national TV.”

“I’m not mocking the losing of the child,” Colmes fires back, “but what I’m saying is I think it shows a certain unusual attitude to take a two-hour baby home that died to play with his other children.” …

While Colmes never backed off his remarks during the Fox News segment, he apparently had a change of heart later, and tweeted, “Just spoke to @ricksantorum. He and Karen graciously accepted my apology for a hurtful comment.”

Choking back tears, during an interview on "Hannity," Santorum explained that he and his wife introduced Gabriel, who died two hours after he was born in 1996, to their other children before burying him because as a neonatal intensive care nurse for nine years, Karen “taught me, and what she learned from that experience, was that you have to affirm the life of your child. You have to affirm that memory for your children and for you.” His wife was unable to hold back her tears when she was asked about Colmes’ reprehensible remarks at a campaign stop on Monday.

You’ll recall that in 2008, Colmes suggested in a post on his blog, Liberaland, that Trig Palin’s Down syndrome was caused by Sarah Palin not going to a hospital immediately when her water broke so she could fly home from TX to have her baby in AK. The Santorums’ youngest daughter, Isabella Maria, was born with the genetic disorder Trisomy 18. Half of all children with the chromosomal defect are stillborn, and only 10 percent of those who survive will get to their first birthday. Bella has beaten those grim odds and is now three years old. The condition is associated with several congenital heart defects as well as microcephaly and intellectual deficits so Colmes will no doubt find something about her or her parents worthy of his scorn.

IN MY SHOES: Here’s a snippet of an excerpt of the newly published book, "Confessions of a Surgeon" by Paul A. Ruggieri, M.D. published by The Wall Street Journal:

Surgeons are control freaks. We have to be. And when things don't go our way in the operating room, we can have outbursts. Some of us curse, some throw instruments, others have tantrums. These explosions are a go-to reaction when we're confronted with the ghosts of prior complications. …

When the [defective colon stapling device] hit the wall, I had been in the operating room for more than four hours, struggling to remove a diseased segment of colon from someone I'll call Mr. Baker, a 330-pound middle-aged man. Trying to keep his fat out of my way during the operation had been a continuous battle. The pain in my upper back reminded me that I was losing the fight.

Obese patients create more physical work for a surgeon during any type of procedure. The operations take longer, tie our upper body in knots and leave us with fatigue and frustration. Obese patients also automatically face an increased risk of complications like infection, pneumonia and blood clots during recovery. …

Why does this guy have to bleed like this? As if it were his fault. Here I was blaming him, even though I was the one causing the bleeding. But in surgery, it always has to be someone else's fault. It's never the surgeon's fault. …

Like poker players and their cards, surgeons are sometimes only as good as the patients they are dealt. Obesity, excessive scar tissue from a previous surgery in the same area, disease that is more advanced than anticipated – any one of these physiological conditions creates more work and a more difficult environment for the surgeon.

THE DAILY BLADE: IA Republicans should check where the candidates stand on the issues most important to them before they caucus tomorrow, with this handy cheat sheet from Tea Party Nation based on a survey of members:

1. Repeal Obamacare
   1. Bachmann Yes. Source
   2. Gingrich Yes. Would repeal on day one. Source
   3. Huntsman Yes. Source
   4. Paul Yes. Source
   5. Perry Yes. Source
   6. Romney Says he would repeal on day one but has taken conflicting positions on repeal. Source
   7. Santorum Yes. Source

2. Secure the border
   1. Bachmann Yes. Signed Americans for Secure Borders pledge. Source
   2. Gingrich Yes. Signed Americans for Secure Borders pledge but also believes “it is neither optimal nor feasible nor humane to deport every single illegal immigrant”. Source
   3. Huntsman Yes. Source
   4. Paul No. Believes a fence could be used to keep Americans in. Source
   5. Perry Supports strategically placed fencing, but also supported in-state college tuition for some undocumented immigrants in Texas. Source
   6. Romney Yes. Source
   7. Santorum Yes. Source

3. Reduce Government waste, fraud and abuse
   1. Bachmann Mixed. Has won recognition in Congress for trying to reduce waste and got perfect score from Club for Growth in 2010 but also sought stimulus money for projects. Source
   2. Gingrich Yes. Adopt Lean Sigma Six strategies to eliminate waste. Source
   3. Huntsman Mixed. Huntsman states he supports cutting waste but independent analyses by the Club for Growth and the Cato Institute say his performance in Utah on reducing spending was ineffective. Source
   4. Paul Mixed record. Supports “a 10% reduction in the federal workforce, slashing congressional pay and perks, and curbing excessive federal travel” but also sought stimulus money for Texas projects. Source
   5. Perry Yes. Source
   6. Romney Yes. Source
   7. Santorum Yes. Source

4. Abolish the Department of Education
   1. Bachmann Yes. Source
   2. Gingrich Would shrink Education Department into a research center. Source
   3. Huntsman No, but would eliminate no Child Left Behind. Source
   4. Paul Yes. Source
   5. Perry Yes. Source
   6. Romney Supported abolishing it in the 1990s, but now wants a limited federal role in education. Source
   7. Santorum Would shrink but not eliminate it. Source

5. Balanced budget amendment
   1. Bachmann Voted for balanced budget amendment source
   2. Gingrich Yes. Source
   3. Huntsman Yes. Source
   4. Paul Yes. Source
   5. Perry Yes. Source
   6. Romney Yes. Supports cut, cap and balance. Source
   7. Santorum Yes. Source

New Year, New Laws

The National Conference of State Legislatures issued Monday its annual list of laws set to take effect in 2012. Of the roughly 40,000 state laws that took effect on January 1^st, quite a number were passed by legislators in CA. For example, CA & OR have banned the sale, trade, or distribution of shark fins, as well as beer laced with caffeine.

CA has also banned the use of E-Verify by employers to check the immigration status of prospective employees. San Francisco has raised its minimum wage to $10.24 per hour nearly $3 above the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.

State residents are now required to obtain a prescription to buy any drug containing dextromethorphan, which is found in many OTC cough suppressants, including Robitussin, NyQuil and Dimetapp.

Another new law requires public schools in CA to teach students about the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans. But the state’s legislators do have their priorities and have now banned teens from using indoor tanning beds.

Elsewhere around the country:

† AL, GA, LA, SC and TN require use of E-Verify.

† AR requires facilities that perform 10 or more nonsurgical abortions a month to be inspected and licensed by the state Health Department.

† AZ, CO, FL, MT, OH, OR, VT and WA have all raised the minimum wage.

† CO coaches are now required to bench players if a concussion is suspected, and they will need medical clearance to return to play.

† In IL, students 18 and under to ride taxis to school-related functions must wear seatbelts.

† KS, TN, TX, RI and SC passed voter ID laws, but the Justice Department overturned SC’s.

† In ND and NV you can no longer text and drive, while in OR a law banning the foolhardy practice was relaxed for drivers of tow trucks, roadside-assistance vehicles and utility vehicles.

† OR raised its penalties for illegally killing certain game animals, but increased access to public lands for hunting.

Shoes To Kill For

Fist fights and riots that had to be controlled with the use of pepper spray broke out at malls nationwide just before Christmas when Nike released the Air Jordan 11 Retro Concords as a limited edition, reports MyDesert.com: 

The mayhem stretched from Washington state to Georgia and was reminiscent of the violence that broke out 20 years ago in many cities as the shoes became popular targets for thieves. It also had a decidedly Black Friday feel as huge crowds of shoppers overwhelmed stores for a must-have item.

Inevitably, shoppers who were able to get their hands on the coveted shoe were robbed by covetous have nots:

A 19-year-old Houston-area man says he was beaten and a friend was slashed in the face as a group of men robbed him of his new pair of expensive Air Jordan shoes.

Efrain Espinoza says the men first tried to steal his cell phone, followed him from a party Monday to his home near Pearland and then swiped the $180 shoes during a fight.

Nike’s marketing department planned the mayhem as part of its roll-out strategy, The Wall Street Journal reports:

Nike Inc.'s Jordan line of sneakers is drawing iPhone-like lines of buyers despite iPhone-like prices.

The phenomenon underscores the strength of a brand that brings the company about $1 billion a year in sales. But it also reflects a strategic choice by Nike and its major retail outlets like Foot Locker Inc.: keep supplies of hot models limited and time releases for when target customers are in the best position to buy. …

Ken Hicks, chief executive of Foot Locker, said his company works closely with Nike to time releases of new shoes. "This is choreographed months in advance," he added. 
 

 

"Sneakerheads," as they are referred to in the industry, tend to be young, male and live from paycheck to paycheck, Mr. Hicks said. As a result, he said, many launches are scheduled for the second Friday of the month or the end of the month, when they tend to have the most cash. 
 

Friday's release of the Concord came just before the holiday, when potential buyers who work in service industries would have received Christmas tips, Mr. Hicks said. This coming Saturday's release of the LeBron 9 Freegums shoe will come at a time when shoppers are armed with gift cards and Christmas money, he said.

The Stiletto never thought she’d have to say this but, they’re just shoes. Get a grip!

The Stiletto Scoops Jon Huntsman

It has not escaped the notice of The Boston Globe that as former MA Gov. Mitt Romney (R) “lays the groundwork for a possible second presidential run” he is steering clear of Tea Party activists" in NH and other key primary states. … No pundit or poli sci prof can explain why 2012 won’t be Romney’s year any better than these lyrics from the Culture Club song “Karma Chameleon”: He’s a man “without conviction”/ he’s a man “who doesn't know/how to sell a contradiction.”

- Update to Romney: The Sequel, The Stiletto Blog, January 21, 2011

Our Destiny PAC, the outside group supporting Jon Huntsman’s presidential campaign, is going on the air in New Hampshire with an ad that implores voters there to “stop the chameleon.” That “chameleon” would be Mitt Romney – one of two candidates the super PAC says is still viable in the 2012 primary.

- Huntsman PAC hits 'chameleon' Mitt, Politico, December 30, 2011

In Memoriam

Kaye Stevens, July 21, 1932 – December 28, 2011

THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Turning back the tide of information overload with a digest of the latest developments in news conservatives need to pay attention to:

† Does the U.S. need an election monitor?: The Justice Department continues the Obama administration’s war on the Tenth Amendment, this time over laws meant to discourage voter fraud (related article, third item on the page). The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division making the absurd claim that a SC law passed in May requiring a state-issued photo ID to vote is discriminatory because minority voters are nearly 20 percent more likely than whites to lack one. The Washington Post notes that this is “the first time the government has rejected a voter-identification law in nearly 20 years.”

To John Hayward of Human Events, the DOJ’s rationale fails the laugh test:

South Carolina’s law, duly passed by the legislature and signed by Governor Nikki Haley, was extremely lenient – even more so than voter-ID laws already on the books in some other states. A driver’s license, passport, military ID, or photographic voter registration card was good enough to pass muster. According to the South Carolina Election Commission’s filing with the Justice Department, voters could “obtain an Identification Card from DMV, or may obtain a Voter Registration Card with a photo from his county voter registration office, both free of charge.” Nothing more than a trip to the county voter registration and elections office was necessary to obtain the photo ID. …

This was, nonetheless, deemed unacceptable because “minority registered voters were nearly 20% more likely to lack DMV-issued ID than white registered voters, and thus to be effectively disenfranchised,” according to Perez. In other words, 20% more non-whites lack driver’s licenses, so the minimal imposition of asking for them to obtain free photo ID cards to validate their identities on Election Day was tantamount to barricading them from the polls.

With 30 requiring some form of ID before someone can vote, The Wall Street Journal sees this as a blatant attempt to play the race card because the DOJ is specifically targeting the SC and TX statutes “to intimidate other states that want to toughen their laws” – but more importantly, to “not-so-subtly [invent] a threat of Republican racism to drive minority turnout in 2012.” In a follow-up editorial, The Journal adds: “As African-American men at the most exalted reaches of government, Messrs. Obama and Holder are a testament to how much racial progress the country has made. It's a shame to see them pretending little has changed so they can scare up some votes.”

But Washington Times columnist Jeffrey Kuhner fears something even more sinister is going on:

Mr. Holder is a shameless demagogue. He has become the Democratic Party's new Al Sharpton: Everything is seen through the lens of race. He has refused to prosecute members of the New Black Panther Party, who in the 2008 election stood at a polling booth wielding clubs in a blatant attempt at voter intimidation. Career Justice Department lawyers admitted that Mr. Holder's policy is not to go after black perpetrators whose victims are white. …

Mr. Holder says his department's aim is to "expand the franchise." This begs the question: Expand it for whom? Jim Crow is long dead; not one single eligible voter has been turned away because of an ID requirement. In other words, minorities are not being disenfranchised. What Mr. Holder really means is to expand the vote to groups that will help ensure a Democratic victory in 2012 - ACORN and its nefarious allies.

Stealing an election is not beyond this administration. After all, it's the Chicago Way.

† AZ becomes the epicenter of civility: OK, it's been a year since Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' (D-AZ) near-fatal shooting, and the worthies running the University of Arizona's National Institute for Civil Discourse have accomplished little or nothing. The Arizona Republic, reports:

Public-opinion surveys show that the public recognizes incivility and wants something better, but research also suggests that not everyone is clear about the cause of the rancor.

Eighty percent of Americans surveyed believe that political campaigns are uncivil and many believe they will worsen, according to a June 2011 poll conducted for Weber Shandwick and Powell Tate, two Washington-based public-affairs and research firms. The poll found that 85 percent believe politics in general has become uncivil. Nearly nine in 10 said that their decisions in upcoming elections would be affected by a candidate's behavior and the way he treats those with opposing opinions. …

Yet experts say one of the reasons for the rise in incivility is that people no longer want to disagree respectfully. The idea of "agree to disagree" has been squashed by the array of partisan media that allows people to filter out opposing viewpoints. …

Any movement toward more civil politics will likely originate at the grass-roots level and move through the system slowly, experts say. Media outlets promote and profit from debates that invite hard-line opinions. Politicians often believe they can win only if they go negative. No one will change overnight.

† What Sarah Palin can teach Occupy Wall Street: It’s been a mild winter so far and the mayors of several cash-strapped IL cities couldn’t be happier, The Associated Press reports:

Despite some dire predictions about frigid temperatures and record snowfall similar to last winter's storm that dumped more than 20 inches in Chicago, it's been about 6 degrees warmer on average for much of Illinois so far. The light snow is hardly worth mentioning, meteorologists and municipal officials say.

Across the state, public works directors and streets and sanitation officials are positively giddy when talking about the mild weather, reveling in sunny skies and budget surpluses.

"It's been great," Bloomington public works director Jim Karch said with a laugh. "My kids hate it, our budgets love it."

Bloomington has spent just $8,000 out of its $325,000 winter labor budget, Karch said.

"Many municipalities, including Bloomington, have really seen a lot of dollars of savings," he said. "We're hoping it stays savings over the course of the winter."

Unfortunately, Los Angeles – which does not need to allocate funds for snow removal – cannot benefit from a similar boon and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is asking for budget cuts to offset the millions of dollars of unplanned expenses caused by Occupy LA riffraff, CBSLosAngeles.com reports:

Repairs to City Hall’s lawn where the Occupy group set up camp on Oct. 1 will require an estimated $400,000. The police action to clear out the encampment on Nov. 30 cost more than $700,000.

Additional expenses are attributed to hauling away debris from the camp, and cleaning up graffiti that defaced City Hall marble walls and trees.

† Obama creating green jobs that Americans won’t do: Fisker Automotive manufactured 239 Karma luxury plug-in hybrids, and is now recalling every one of the $103,000 vehicles because of improperly positioned hose clamps that allow coolant to enter the battery compartment, causing an electrical short that could start a fire. Fisker said the problem was discovered when workers at the Valmet Automotive assembly plant in Finland noticed coolant dripping (related article, fourth item on the page). 

BTW, The Washington Post notes that as 2011 expired, so did a tax credit that awarded plug-in electric car owners up to $1,000 to defray the cost of installing a 220-volt charging device in their homes – business owners got up to $30,000 to install a charger at a commercial location: . The WaPo would also like to see the $7,500 tax credit for consumers who buy these vehicles to expire as well:   

[O]nly upper-income consumers can afford to buy an electric vehicle (EV); so the charger subsidy is a giveaway to the well-to-do.

The same goes for the $7,500 tax credit that the government offers purchasers of electric vehicles, a subsidy that, alas, did not expire at year’s end. The Obama administration says that the credit helps build a market for EVs, which helps create jobs. Given the price of eligible models, like the $100,000 Fisker Karma, that rationale sounds an awful lot like trickle-down economics.

Backers of the charger tax credit may lobby Congress to renew it when lawmakers tackle the payroll tax extension issue again in the new year. We hope that Congress says no. Not only is it a case study in upward income redistribution, it also would represent a deepening of the taxpayers’ commitment to what looks increasingly like an industry not ready for prime time. …

The ethanol credit was on the books for 30 years before it finally died. Let’s hope Congress can start unwinding the federal government’s bad investment in electric vehicles faster than that.

† The right to bear arms belongs to us all: Part II: Santa is a jolly, gun-toting old elf, judging from the number of guns he left under Christmas trees this year, reports The Telegraph of London:

According to the FBI, over 1.5 million background checks on customers were requested by gun dealers to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System in December. Nearly 500,000 of those were in the six days before Christmas.

It was the highest number ever in a single month, surpassing the previous record set [on the day after Thanksgiving, when 129,166 background searches were carried out on customers buying weapons].

On Dec 23 alone there were 102,222 background checks, making it the second busiest single day for buying guns in history.

The actual number of guns bought may have been even higher if individual customers took home more than one each.

Explanations for America's surge in gun buying include that it is a response to the stalled economy with people fearing crime waves. Another theory is that buyers are rushing to gun shops because they believe tighter firearms laws will be introduced in the future.

† How did we get from a knowledge economy to an unskilled and illiterate economy?: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has posted an advisory letter on its Website warning employers that requiring a high school diploma from a job applicant might violate the Americans with Disabilities Act, The Washington Times reports:

Employers could run afoul of the ADA if their requirement of a high school diploma “ 'screens out' an individual who is unable to graduate because of a learning disability that meets the ADA's definition of 'disability,' " the EEOC explained. …

Maria Greco Danaher, a lawyer with the labor and employment law firm Ogletree Deakins, said the EEOC letter means that employers must determine whether job applicants whose learning disabilities kept them from obtaining diplomas can perform the essential job functions, with or without reasonable accommodation. She said the development is "worthy of notice" for employers. …

Mary Theresa Metzler, a lawyer with Ballard Spahr in Philadelphia, said there may be an "unintended and unfortunate" repercussion of the EEOC's discussion: "There will be less incentive for the general public to obtain a high school diploma if many employers eliminate that requirement for job applicants in their workplace."

Some corporate counsels are advising clients to adjust the way they approach the hiring process.

"Employers are wise to evaluate whether a high school diploma really is necessary to perform the essential functions of any job for which it is being required," the Employer Law Report advised in a blog post by Lisa Whittaker, a lawyer with the Porter Wright firm, which has represented business clients for more than 150 years.

† When environmental values collide: In response to a judge’s ruling in lawsuit filed by Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, the U.S. Forest Service will no longer dump fire retardant to contain wildfires burning in areas that include waterways – meaning, that “[n]early 47 million acres of American forests are now off-limits” to this firefighting tool, reports Human Events:

When fire managers determine retardant is the right tool to use on a wildfire, they will direct pilots to avoid applying fire retardant in the newly mapped areas. All other firefighting tactics will be available in the avoidance areas, the Forest Service says. …

The new rules allow only one exception, when human life or public safety is threatened.

Robert Gordon, senior advisor for strategic outreach at the Heritage Foundation, questioned the decision in light of prolonged fights by environmentalists to ban logging in many forests to protect species like the “endangered” Spotted Owl and Marbled Murrelet.

“Now that they are preserved, the new plan is to let them burn?” Gordon asked.

† All the news that’s fart to print: After several farmers in Lynn Township, PA, began using “granulite” pellets –made from sewage sludge, 30 percent of which is human poop – local residents became concerned about the “biosolid” fertilizer seeping into the ground water, NBCPhiladelphia reports:

Township officials tell NBC Philadelphia that they have no control over the situation. According to the township, because the Department of Environmental Protection issued the permits, the township cannot override the permits. …

The DEP gave NBC Philadelphia this statement:

"The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection in conjunction with Lehigh County Conservation District monitors all farms in that county where land use approval has been obtained to utilize biosolids. The DEP does not issue permits to private land owners for use of this material.

The DEP issues permits to anyone who generates biosolids, including wastewater treatment plants and septage haulers. Those entities must get a permit from DEP before biosolids can be applied to the land."

Residents can file a formal complaint about biosolid use by area farmers with the DEP Northeast Regional Office (570-826-2511) or visiting the agency’s Website.

† New York Times runs catty article about Siri: Oh no, Siri didn't! Charlie Le Quesne, 12, asked iPhone 4S digital assistant Siri, "How many people are there in the world?" Much to his and his mother’s surprise and consternation the answer he got back was, “Shut the f*ck up, you ugly t*at," reports The Sun (London):

Charlie's horrified mum Kim said: "The phone was a demo version and was low enough on the shelf for Charlie to have a go with it. He asked it a simple question and we couldn't believe the filth it came out with. …

Apologetic staff at Tesco in Coventry told Kim pranksters had tampered with the phone's set-up instructions.

The Siri system refers to the phone's user by name – using information stored in its contacts system. The jokers had entered the rude seven-word phrase as the user's name – so the phone blurted it out when it answered a question.

Reader NJohn2012 explains how the prank was carried out:

Step One: Add a contact with an expletive name.

Step Two: tap Settings>General>Siri>My Info.

Step Three: scroll through Address book and choose contact.

Step Four: press and hold Home button until Siri appears and ask 'What's my name?'

Step Five: Siri will answer with your 'rude' name.

Deleting the offending contact(s) in the address book will make Siri behave herself.

† 10 reasons Michelle Obama should be proud – really proud – of America: This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series (previous article, last item on the page)) meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on Allie Carr, who has been Facebook friends with Dan Garrett for just five months, but immediately got tested when his wife posted that he needed a new kidney and none of his relatives were good matches, KCPQ-TV (Channel 13, Seattle) reports:

Carr and Dan Garrett were a match.

And last Wednesday, Carr gave the Garretts one of her kidneys.

Dan Garrett is doing well, and the kidney is healthy and working.

"She's (Carr’s) really amazing, to go to a stranger to give someone a piece of yourself literally and she's given me and Dan a chance to have a normal life, a honeymoon, having children," Megin Garrett said.

NOT THE SHARPEST KNIFE IN THE DRAWER: Michael Anthony Fuller, 53, went to Walmart to buy a vacuum cleaner, a microwave oven and other goods. He gave the cashier a $1 million bill to cover the $476 cost of the items he purchased, Winston-Salem (NC) Journal reports.

Fuller was arrested on felony charges of attempting to obtain property by false pretense and uttering a forged instrument. He is in custody at the Davidson County Jail in lieu of $17,500 bail.

IF THE SHOE FITS: You thought 2011 was tough?

- Reuters, December 30, 2011

PENETRATING INSIGHTS: For Newt Gingrich, a struggle to stay on message

- The Associated Press, December 30, 2011

WHAT A HEEL: Traffic Court Judge Willie Singletary has been removed from the bench for (allegedly) pulling a Weiner and showing a photograph of his, um, willy to a Philadelphia Parking Authority contractor, The Legal Intelligencer reports:

The alleged incident involving the lewd photo took place on the same day [Common Pleas Court Judge Gary S. Glazer] was named to lead the Traffic Court.

The state Supreme Court took the unprecedented step Dec. 19 of appointing a Common Pleas Court judge to oversee the Philadelphia Traffic Court in the wake of an ongoing FBI investigation into alleged ticket-fixing.

Three days later, Glazer asked Singletary to step down from the bench while he was in the middle of hearing cases. He relieved Singletary of his judicial assignment, told Singletary not to have contact with the people involved and had Singletary escorted from the building by three Philadelphia sheriff's deputies, according to a court source. Glazer took the bench to hear the rest of Singletary's docket, the source said.

Glazer has recommended to the Supreme Court that Singletary be suspended, the source said.

This, by the way, is the same Singletary who was disciplined for a 2007 campaign appearance at a motorcycle rally in which he solicited donations from members of the Philadelphia First State Road Rattlers by implying that they would receive favorable treatment ("Now you all want me to get there, you're all going to need my hook-up, right?").

IN MY SHOES: Minka Disbrow was raped as 17-year old while picnicking with her sewing class in rural SD, but as was customary in 1928 she was sent to a Lutheran home for pregnant girls. Much as Disbrow longed to keep the beautiful blond-haired girl born on May 22^nd, she her to a Norwegian pastor and his wife. For years, Disbrow corresponded with the adoption agency to get updates on her daughter’s life but after a change of ownership, that tenuous connection to her was severed and all she had left was a black and white photograph of the baby, whom she had named Betty Jane again. Five years ago, Disbrow began praying that she would get the chance see her child again and it wasn’t too long before her prayers were answered, The Associated Press reports:

[T]he phone rang in her California apartment in 2006 with the voice of an Alabama man and a story she could have only dreamed. …

He started asking Disbrow, then 94, about her background.

Worried about identity theft, Disbrow cut him off, and peppered him with questions.

Then, the man asked if she'd like to speak with Betty Jane.

Her name was now Ruth Lee. She had … gone on to marry and have six children including the Alabama man, a teacher and astronaut Mark Lee, a veteran of four space flights who has circled the world 517 times. She worked for nearly 20 years at Walmart - and especially enjoyed tending to the garden area.

Lee knew she was adopted her whole life, and grew up a happy child.

It wasn't until she was in her 70s that the search for her biological parents began.

Lee started suffering from heart problems and doctors asked about the family's medical history. … Her son, Brian, decided to try to find out more and petitioned the court in South Dakota for his mother's adoption records. …

"I was looking for somebody I thought was probably not living," said Lee's now-54-year-old son. He typed Disbrow's name into a web directory and was shocked when a phone listing popped up. "I kind of stopped breathing for a second." …

A month later, Ruth Lee and Brian Lee flew to California. They arrived at Disbrow's meticulous apartment on a palm tree-lined street armed with a gigantic bouquet of flowers. …

"It was just like we had never parted," Disbrow said. "Like you were with the family all your life."

In 1928, women did not have access to legalized abortion, and back then it was apparently within the realm of possibility to love a child conceived in a rape. Now, pro-lifers agree with NARAL that rape victims would be additionally traumatized by bringing the blameless child into the world and giving it up for adoption so anti-abortion laws include an exemption for rape.

NOT THE SHARPEST KNIFE IN THE DRAWER: Police responding to a call from a Nashville resident who saw two men prowling around a neighbor’s home found Alexander Warnatzsch (left) and Charles Davis (right) hiding in the closet. They had a shotgun with them, and police later found a rifle in their SUV, which was parked in the driveway of the home they had (allegedly) broken into, reports WKRN-TV (Channel 2):

Davis and Warnatzsch are each charged with two counts of aggravated burglary.

Police said Davis was convicted of three counts of aggravated burglary in 2010.  His three three-year sentences were being served through the community corrections program.

Property stolen from a home robbery on December 27^th was also recovered from their vehicle.

IF THE SHOE FITS: Need help avoiding hangover? Less booze, more H₂O

- The Associated Press, December 29, 2011

PENETRATING INSIGHTS: Immigration laws pose a test of states' rights in Supreme Court

- Los Angeles Times, December 28, 2011

WHAT HEELS: Five-time felon and recovering heroin addict Daniel Dockery, 49, found a reason to stay clean and sober nine months ago when he took in a stray four-day-old kitten, which he named Scruffy. But the Arizona Humane Society's Campus for Compassion took his pet from him when he was unable to pay a $400 veterinarian bill, The Arizona Republic reports:

[Dockery] said instead of working with him, or waiting 24 hours for his mother in Michigan to wire the money, Humane Society staff told him the only way Scruffy would be treated is if Dockery "surrendered" the animal and signed away his ownership rights. …

But Dockery's mother, Donna Koning of Muskegon, Mich., said it was a decision that didn't have to be made. She said that when her son called from the clinic in a panic over Scruffy's fate, she talked to a clinic manager and offered to pay the bill immediately with a credit card over the phone.

"They refused to take it. They said they didn't want to do that because they've had trouble in the past," Koning said. …

When he turned over Scruffy to the clinic, Dockery said he asked repeatedly what would happen to her. He said he was told the cat would likely be put up for adoption. He said he asked staff members if he would be able to re-adopt the cat.

"They hemmed and hawed. They finally said maybe if I could go to the shelter and find her," Dockery said, adding that he scoured shelter adoption books and looked at every cat in every cage without locating Scruffy.

The reason he couldn’t find Scruffy is that the Humane Society euthanized her just hours after Dockery had brought her in for treatment:

"The Humane Society took that cat with every intention of treating the cat and putting it in foster care," [spokesperson] Stacy Pearson said. "It was never intended for that cat to be euthanized."

Pearson said Scruffy was transported to the Humane Society's second-chance clinic along with three other cats; doctors were available to treat only two. …

She said if Dockery paid for the treatment or the clinic had accepted the credit card by phone, Scruffy would not have gone to the second-chance clinic.

On Friday, the Humane Society said it will review its credit-card policy.

THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Turning back the tide of information overload with a digest of the latest developments in news conservatives need to pay attention to:

† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s sobriquet, “The Food Stamp President,” for President Barack Hussein Obama, isn’t just campaign rhetoric. Because of the prolonged recession, high unemployment levels and stagnant wages, nearly one out of two Americans are economically insecure or have crossed the line into poverty, reports The Associated Press:

About 97.3 million Americans fall into a low-income category, commonly defined as those earning between 100 and 199 percent of the poverty level, based on a new supplemental measure by the Census Bureau that is designed to provide a fuller picture of poverty. Together with the 49.1 million who fall below the poverty line and are counted as poor, they number 146.4 million, or 48 percent of the U.S. population. That's up by 4 million from 2009, the earliest numbers for the newly developed poverty measure.

The new measure of poverty takes into account medical, commuting and other living costs. Doing that helped push the number of people below 200 percent of the poverty level up from 104 million, or 1 in 3 Americans, that was officially reported in September.

Kansas City, MO Mayor Sly James, who co-chairs a mayors' task force on hunger and homelessness, tells AP that, "People who never thought they would need food are in need of help." He’s not kidding. “The percentage of U.S. households using food stamps more than doubled in six of the nation’s 10 wealthiest counties as more residents find themselves out of work and unable to sell their homes,” reports The Washington Post:

“Sometimes people will come in a Mercedes,” said Gina Davio, program director of social services at Fisherman’s Mark, a nonprofit group in Lambertville, a city of 3,900 on the Delaware River. “Sometimes they come in nothing but Ralph Lauren, but you never know: That may be all they have left.”

† Chevy Volt: An electric Edsel: In an interview with MSN, Audi of America President Johan de Nysschen said that the Chevy Volt will fail; that anybody who buys the Volt, in particular, is an idiot; and that people who buy electric vehicles (EVs) are just members of an “intellectual elite who want to show what enlightened souls they are.” Volt owners are elite: According to GM CEO Dan Akerson, the average Volt owner makes $170,000 per year. These folks can certainly afford to pay an inflated price for a car that no one else seems to want, and though they tell anyone who will listen that they want to pay higher taxes, they enjoy a $7,500 tax credit. But that’s just a tip of the iceberg. Each Volt sold to date has been subsidized by as much as $250K in state and federal loans, rebates, grants and tax credits, according to an analysis by James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports: 
 

The Volt subsidies flow through multiple companies involved in production. The analysis includes adding up the amount of government subsidies via tax credits and direct funding for not only General Motors, but other companies supplying parts for the vehicle. For example, the Department of Energy awarded a $105.9 million grant to the GM Brownstown plant that assembles the batteries. The company was also awarded approximately $106 million for its Hamtramck assembly plant in state credits to retain jobs. The company that supplies the Volt’s batteries, Compact Power, was awarded up to $100 million in refundable battery credits (combination tax breaks and cash subsidies). These are among many of the subsidies and tax credits for the vehicle.

 

And weak consumer demand for the Volt may be even more anemic than believed. In an interview with Neil Cavuto, Mark Modica, an Associate Fellow of the National Legal and Policy Center claims that the cars are not being sold to consumers but are fleet sales to municipalities and corporations like General Electric. Modica says that Chevy dealers have told him the Volt attracts “gawkers” and not buyers. Ditto the Nissan Leaf, he says. 
 

† Is Obama already a lame duck?: With the Obama administration not lifting a finger to stop Bashar Assad from murdering his countrymen, these Syrian protesters are amongst those who miss President George W. Bush (related article, ninth item on the page): 

The Stiletto wonders whether these were the protesters Time magazine had in mind when it named “The Protester” its “Person of the Year.”

† Obama is just about every U.S. president all rolled into one!: Although President Barack Hussein Obama has taken to likening himself to Teddy Roosevelt, GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney (R-MA) is having none of it:

 

[T]he important difference between Teddy Roosevelt and Barack Obama. Roosevelt believed that government should level the playing field to create equal opportunities. President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes.

In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort, and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others. And the only people who truly enjoy any real rewards are those who do the redistributing – the government. 

† Those who can’t teach, cheat: A pervasive cheating scandal that roiled the Atlanta School System (related article, sixth item on the page) also occurred in the Dougherty County School System where, “a new investigative report details a second major standardized test cheating scandal … implicating 49 educators, including 11 principals,” The Washington Post reports:

 

A key reason for the “disgraceful” cheating, investigators said, was pressure to meet No Child Left Behind requirements.

 

The probe (see here and here) by the Georgia governor’s Special Investigators team into cheating in the Dougherty County School System concluded that “hundreds of school children were harmed by extensive cheating.” …

 

The report cites three key reasons for the cheating:

 

*Pressure to meet the adequate yearly progress under the No Child Left Behind Act, a provision that requires school districts to annually increase the number of students who score at the proficient level on math and reading standardized tests.

 

*A fear by teachers and principals of being perceived as failures.

 

*The failure of principals, as well as the system’s administration, to lead. …

 

A conclusion in the report was this: “Since the enactment of NCLB, standardized testing has become more about measuring the teachers, principals and schools than accurately assessing the children’s academic progress.”

 

Or, to put it another way, an unintended bonus of high-stakes testing is that it not only measures a teacher’s competence, but also his or her honesty, integrity and professionalism.

 

† SOTU = Stuff Our Taxes Underwrite: James Bacon makes the case in this Washington Times op-ed that instead of wasting “hundreds of billions of public dollars building a high-speed, intercity rail network,” President Barack Hussein Obama should get out of the way of entrepreneurs who are building a less glamorous – but more feasible – network of intercity buses without bleeding taxpayers dry (related article, seventh item on the page):

 

According to a study published by DePaul University's Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development, intercity bus was the only major long-distance passenger mode to grow appreciably this year. Daily intercity bus operations expanded by 7.1 percent.

 

The most spectacular growth occurred among curbside operations, including BoltBus and Megabus, which eschew traditional bus stations in favor of curbside pickups. This category expanded operations by 32.1 percent. Compare that to the 5.2 percent growth for Amtrak, 1.8 percent growth for airlines and 1 percent decline for private automobiles.

 

What's going on? The higher cost of automobile ownership and gasoline is pushing people to consider alternatives to driving. But that's only half the story. The intercity bus industry is highly competitive and driven by innovation. …

 

Even stodgy old Greyhound, which operates out of traditional bus stations, is getting creative. The company has introduced Greyhound Express, a premium service that provides free Wi-Fi and power outlets at every seat, has upgraded waiting areas for its Express passengers and has entered into a partnership with 7-Eleven stores to sell tickets.

 

Unlike publicly owned mass-transit companies, which face political pressure to maintain money-losing routes, private intercity buses are free to shut down unprofitable routes and redeploy resources to achieve greater growth potential. Flexibility is the hallmark of the curbside bus operators, which aren't tied down by fixed investment in bus stations.

 

Bacon suggests that the federal government invest in public safety and better police the "Chinatown bus" services that have been involved in several deadly crashes recently.

 

† "Persistent Vegetative State" Diagnoses Too Often A Rush To Judgement (second item on the page): The Schmid family was blessed with its own Christmas miracle when 21-year-old University of Arizona student Sam Schmid, who was comatose after a car accident on October 19^th, had done so well in rehab that within two months he was able to talk and move around with the aid of a walker, The Washington Times reports:

 

Doctors at Barrow Neurological Institute say Schmid has a long recovery ahead of him to regain full speech, balance and memory abilities. …

 

He underwent surgery performed by Dr. Robert Spetzler. With no responsive signs, staff discussed taking Schmid off life support. …

 

Spetzler said Schmid was never officially classified as a potential organ donor. And after an MRI scan showed he wasn't at a point of no hope of survival, Spetzler recommended keeping him alive for one more week.

 

Then on Oct. 24, Schmid shocked doctors by following commands to hold up two fingers.

 

"It may not seem like a lot to you," Spetzler said. "It's an incredible loop to show brain ability. That was like fireworks going off."

 

Neither Schmid’s family nor his doctors gave up on him. He is luckier than many patients in his situation.

 

† Is Hillary Clinton Campaigning For President?: Two weeks ago, an E-mail blast from Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign asking supporters to donate money so she can retire her 2008 campaign debt that included this quote from her speech at the Democratic National Convention, “You never gave in. You never gave up. And together, we made history.” Just before Christmas, voters in AZ, FL, MD, PA, MI, NY and WI – primary states that Hillary Clinton won in 2008 – got a robo-call stating that “America would be better off today if Hillary Clinton was our president” (related article, tenth item on the page). The call ends by asking voters to sign a petition on RunHillary2012.net to persuade Hillary to make another run for the White House. The Washington Post reports that a spokesperson for the Secretary of State has disavowed Hillary’s connection to the effort. Dem pollsters Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell – who have written several op-eds urging President Barack Hussein Obama to step aside and allow Hillary to run as the party’s nominee – also swear they have nothing to do with it.

 

† Is Armenian Genocide Denial Good For The Jews?: In the latest fallout from Turkey’s increasing Islamization, Israel abruptly cancelled a $140 million contract for Israeli electronic defense firms Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries to provide its erstwhile Muslim ally with a sophisticated aerial surveillance system over concerns that the technology (related article, sixth item on the page). Israel's Defense Ministry, which must approve all defense-related contracts, is concerned that the technology could fall into the hands of Iran, its existential enemy, The Washington Times reports:

 

The cancellation comes a week after Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told parliament in Ankara that Turkey's Middle East policies had "brought Israel to its knees" and had isolated the Jewish state.

 

The Israeli announcement made no reference to Mr. Davutoglu's remark; however, it appears relevant since Turkey's ties with Iran have long been known and the contract was signed three years ago.

 

Israel's once close defense and political relationship with Turkey began to unravel as the Turkish government sought to extend its influence in the Arab world during the past few years.

 

† 10 reasons Michelle Obama should be proud – really proud – of America: This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series (previous article, last item on the page) meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on Bryan VandenBosch, who owns the at A-Z Outlet pawn shop in Holland, MI. In November, veteran hocked one of the two Purple Hearts he had earned in while serving in Afghanistan so he would have money to cover his Christmas bills. VandenBosch tells The Holland Sentinel that he will “never sell” the medal and “it will be here waiting for him” when he is ready to retrieve it. Stars and Stripes reports that “Veterans groups and other local charities have been flooding the store with donation requests in the days since the story broke, but the owner has been directing them to other military support programs.”

NOT THE SHARPEST KNIVES IN THE DRAWER: Paul Daniel Kunzler, 34, was arrested on charges of child rape, sodomy of a child and sexual abuse of a child after his four month relationship with the 13-year old daughter of a friend was discovered when police were called to his home after one of his roommates accidentally shot another roommate, KSL-TV (Channel 5, Salt Lake City) reports:

Officers arrived to discover that a man … had accidentally been shot in the chest by his 27-year-old housemate who was shooting at a mouse in the kitchen with a [9mm] handgun, said Taylorsville Police Sgt. Tracy Wyant.

The bullet went through a wall and struck the 28-year- old man while he was in the bathroom. …

During an ensuing search of the house, officers found a 13-year-old girl hiding in a basement closet, Wyant said. The girl told police she had sneaked out of her house without her father's knowledge to see Kunzler.

IF THE SHOE FITS: Is your relationship healthy?

- HealthDay News, December 7, 2011

PENETRATING INSIGHTS: U.S. exit from Iraq leaves a power void

- The Washington Times, December 22, 2011

WHAT A HEEL: In an incident sure to be featured in an upcoming episode of Spike TV’s “1000 Ways to Die,” after a police officer found thee small bags of cocaine beneath the rear seat of their car during a traffic stop Deangelo Mitchell was concerned that the one ounce of cocaine secreted in his buttocks would be discovered when he and his brother Wayne were booked. So while they were being driven to jail in the back of a North Charleston (SC) Police Department squad car Deangelo (right) implored Wayne to eat the evidence, The Smoking Gun reports:

[Deangelo] Mitchell, who has a lengthy rap sheet, apparently was concerned that he could face life in prison if convicted of a narcotics charge. “I can’t get no more strikes,” he told his brother. …

Soon after ingesting the drug, Wayne Mitchell began convulsing and bleeding from his mouth. Cops noted that “white powder residue” was found on the cruiser’s rear seat. …

Within an hour of ingesting the cocaine, Wayne Mitchell was dead.

Deangelo has been charged with narcotics trafficking and involuntary manslaughter in connection with his brother’s death.

IN MY SHOES: In this New York Times op-ed, PA deer hunter Seamus McGraw, author of “The End of Country,” explains why his weapon of choice is a .50-caliber flintlock:

Maybe it’s because I grew up in a family that always did things the hard way, or maybe it’s because I’m basically a Luddite, but when I took up hunting, I eschewed all the technological gadgets designed to give modern hunters an extra edge over their prey. I like to believe that there’s something primitive and existential about the art of hunting, and that somehow, stripping the act of hunting to its basics makes it purer.

I wanted a weapon that required more of me, one that demanded all the skill and all the planning that I could muster, a weapon that gave me just one chance to get it right. I made the decision to hunt only with the most basic firearm there is, a muzzle-loading black-powder rifle, fired by a piece of flint striking cold steel. I often tell my more conservative friends that I carry the gun the Second Amendment explicitly guarantees me the right to carry. …

[A]ntique weapons also carry with them an antique sense of responsibility. To kill with a flintlock, you must get close. And because these ancient guns are notoriously balky and inaccurate, there is a very good chance that you’ll miss your target altogether or, worse, that you’ll simply wound the creature and in so doing, inflict greater suffering than is necessary. And so you take every precaution to make sure that your one shot is clean, that it kills quickly and mercifully.

NOT THE SHARPEST KNIFE IN THE DRAWER: Ronald Broadway, 45, wanted to celebrate his birthday in style and had a feast planned for his family and friends – shrimp, rib-eye steak, baby back ribs and smoked turkey. The smarty pants had what he thought was a fool-proof plan to get $283 worth of food out of his local Food Lion supermarket in Salisbury, NC, without paying for it. He wore a pair of sweatpants under his jeans and duct taped the legs to his ankles to keep the shoplifted items from falling out as he stuffed them into the sweatpants, CBS Charlotte.com reports:

While walking to his car, police noticed food dropping from his pants, which Broadway allegedly kicked underneath cars. As police detained Broadway, they began to pat him down and discovered that food coming from the fly section of his jeans. Coming from his fly were eight bags of shrimp, eight rib-eye steaks, a package of smoked turkey and an undisclosed number of baby back ribs.

Broadway, who has been charged with shoplifting, remains in custody on $3,000 bond.

IF THE SHOE FITS: Are you disposed to the holiday blues?

- HealthDay News, December 6, 2011

PENETRATING INSIGHTS: Poll: Paul as third party candidate could doom GOP in 2012

- The Washington Post, December 20, 2011