The Greenroom » Howard Portnoy

Will Obama be able to sell his ‘warrior-in-chief’ credentials?

Howard Portnoy — Wed, 30 May 2012 16:32:57 +0000

It seems a safe bet that 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama never envisioned himself running for a second term on the strength of his record as a hunter and killer of terrorists. But with little else to run on five months out from the 2012 election, the White House has invited two major campaign support groups—The New York Timesand Newsweek—into the “trophy room” (aka the Oval Office) where they can admire, and report back to their readers, on the collection of terrorists’ heads, 15 in all, that grace the walls.

If this seems like a curious turn, it is made all the more curious by the fact that a lengthy Times piece on the subject, which ran yesterday, reads in part like an exposé—as though the content was leaked rather than cheerfully handed to reporters. Consider this frank admission:

Just days after taking office, the president got word that the first strike under his administration had killed a number of innocent Pakistanis. ‘The president was very sharp on the thing, and said, ‘I want to know how this happened,’ a top White House adviser recounted.

Other criticisms sure to be leveled against Obama’s counterterrorism efforts is his “secret kill list” (as theTimes oddly refers to a hand-selected list of prospective assassination targets that has been public knowledge since July of 2010). The list has come under fire from the ACLU because some of the names on it belong(ed) to American citizens, such as cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, killed by a drone strike last September.

There is also criticism from military strategists over the administration’s over-reliance on drones and the fact that killing—rather than capturing—enemies of the state is depleting access to actionable intelligence.

Finally, there is the troubling hypocrisy of Obama’s words on the subject of fighting terrorism then and now. Then, in 2008, candidate Obama raised fierce objections to the Bush administration’s policies of rendition (where prisoners are shipped off to undisclosed locations to undergo harsh, often brutal interrogation), military commissions, and indefinite detention. As president, he has embraced all three and reneged on his first act in office, signing an executive order to close the military stockade at Guantanamo Bay within a year.

His own Press Secretary, Jay Carney, said yesterday in response to criticisms of the president’s seeming two-facedness on these policies that Obama was merely fulfilling the promise he made at the beginning of his presidency, to “take whatever steps are necessary to prevent American people from harm.” If I didn’t know better, I’d think Carney was reading from the notes of one of his predecessors under Bush 43, Ari Fleischer, on the subject of enhanced interrogation.

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Obama infuriates Poles with reference to ‘Polish death camp’

Howard Portnoy — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:23:18 +0000

The smartest man ever to occupy the White House has done it again. During a Medal of Freedom ceremony on Wednesday, President Obama committed the most egregious offense against the nation of Poland since another Democrat, Jimmy Carter, told its people, “I desire the Poles carnally.”

At least Carter could fall back on the excuse that he was addressing the Poles in what turned out to be badly mistranslated Polish. Obama was speaking English. In his prepared remarks honoring World War II hero Jan Karski, he referred to a Nazi prison in Poland as a “Polish death camp.” The gaffe prompted outrage from Polish leaders, including former President and Solidarity founder Lech Walesa, who said the phrasing confuses the villains with their victims. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski demanded an apology for what he called an “outrageous mistake,” adding that “it’s a pity that ignorance and incompetence overshadowed such a momentous ceremony.”

Luckily, the White House has had plenty of practice neutralizing the occasional presidential misstep over the last three and a half years. An administration spokesman immediately rose to the occasion by noting “that the president had visited the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial while in Poland and that he has repeatedly discussed the bravery of Poles during World War II.” They could have added that Obama’s uncle liberated Auschwitz. Oh, wait….

OK, so maybe history isn’t Obama’s strong suit (which would also explain his references to the U.S. as the country that “built the Intercontinental Railroad” and “invented the automobile”). Everyone knows his forte is constitutional law. It’s not like you’d ever hear him accuse the U.S. Supreme Court of “judicial activism” or dismiss the high court as “an unelected group of people [who] would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.”

Look, maybe the president is just tired after campaigning non-stop for the last five years. That would explain his reference—twice in one week—to his “sons,” of which at last count he still has zero. He does have two daughters, Malia and Sasha, and he knows their ages (more or less), not to mention his own birthday (less).

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New Obama 2012 slogan: ‘He’s never been in it for you’

Howard Portnoy — Tue, 29 May 2012 18:13:06 +0000

In case you haven’t noticed, Team Obama continues to struggle mightily to come up with a campaign slogan for 2012 that has the brevity and staying power of “hope and change.” So far they’ve tried on more taglines than Imelda Marcos has shoes and still there is nothing to show for their efforts. It just isn’t so easy to conjure up catchy text that fits on a bumper sticker when you have an at-best spotty record to defend rather than a pipe dream to sell.

So, the Obamaites are settling for the next best thing. Instead of encapsulating a reason why voters should pull the lever for Obama, they are investing their energies in coming up with a slogan that explains why voters shouldn’t pull the lever for Mitt Romney.

A New York Magazine feature titled “Hope: The Sequel” quotes a couple of Obama operatives whose identities remain undisclosed ostensibly because they carry Obama’s scatological tendencies to new heights. Here’s one of them:

Romney really, actually thinks that if you just take care of the folks at the top, it’ll trickle down to everybody else. But no one believes that stuff—no one! And once you puncture that, there’s nothing left. He’s not likable. He’s not trustworthy. He’s not on your side. You live in Pittsburgh and you’ve got dirt under your fingernails, who do you want to have a beer with? It ain’t f**king Mitt Romney. You’re like, ‘Sh*t, I’d rather have a beer with the black guy than him!’

Of course, only the first profanity gets charged to the operative’s. The second is merely his projection of how people from my hometown of Pittsburgh speak.

But I’m straying from the main theme, which is Obama’s new slogan. The second operative tells the New York columnist that one tagline the campaign is considering using is “He’s never been in it for you.” The catchphrase is meant as an indictment of Romney’s character, not to mention of “Bain, Massachusetts, and every Gordon Gekko–meets–Thurston Howell III gaffe he made during the primary season.” It has the advantage of being more concise than “he is a ‘self-serving plutocrat whose résumé is replete with self-enrichment but who has never cared an iota about bettering the lives of ordinary people’.”

Senior Obama campaign advisor David Plouffe is quoted in the piece as explaining the “core argument against” Romney, which “is that he’s gonna wreck the economy for the middle class. He’s gonna go back to the policies that caused the recession.”

Those would make for viable slogans as well, but the claims behind them aren’t quite the slam dunk that “Change you can believe in” was. For one thing, the Romney camp could turn around and highlight the fact that Obama’s policies haven’t exactly improved the lost of the middle class or eased the economic tensions that began to grip the country when he was first elected.

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Naked man who chewed off face of another was high on LSD

Howard Portnoy — Tue, 29 May 2012 16:37:58 +0000

According to new reports, it took as many as a dozen shots to bring down 31-year-old Rudy Eugene, as he tore off most of another man’s face with his teeth, growling all the while like a wild beast. Then again Eugene, who died in the hail of bullets, was high on a lethal drug cocktail that included cocaine and a new potent form of LSD.

Both details come from a story at The Daily Mail, which also published the first photo of the crazed cannibal—a police mugshot from an earlier arrest—along with new details about the state of health of his victim. That man, whose name has yet to be released, remains hospitalized, having lost 75% of his face in the attack. His injuries are described by hospital staff as “some of the worst they have encountered.” The injured man is homeless, as was Eugene.

Answers to questions as to why both men were naked at the time of the attack and what may have triggered Eugene’s derangement are beginning to emerge as well. Larry Vega, an eyewitness to the attack, was interviewed by reporters with WSVN, a Miami station. He told them:

The guy was like tearing him to pieces with his mouth and I told him to get off. But the guy just kept eating the other guy away, like ripping his skin.

A police officer came over, told him several times to get off then climbed over the divider and got in front of him and said, ‘Get off!’ But the guy just stood his head up like that with a piece of flesh in his mouth and growled.

Vega describes the scene as “one of the most gruesome things I have ever seen in my life in person. You know, you see these things in the movies but when you see it in person, it’s pretty traumatic.”

Armando Aguilar of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police told WSVN, “What’s happening is whenever we see that a person has taken all of his clothes off and has become violent, it’s indicative of this excited delirium that’s caused by overdose of drugs…. [I]nside their body their organs are burning up alive.”

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Senate Dems back plan to double TSA ‘security fee’ per flight

Howard Portnoy — Tue, 29 May 2012 15:12:37 +0000

If you enjoy the long lines and interminable waits at airport checkpoints, relish the thrill of removing your shoes, your belt, and any other article of clothing or jewelry that is likely to trip the sensors … then prepare to fall in love. The Transportation Security Administration—that paragon of governmental efficiency and competence—wants to double the security fee on each round-trip airline ticket from $5 to $10.

And what’s more is that the agency that has strip-searched wheelchair-bound grandmas and their grandchildren in diapers while never nabbing a single terrorist has the backing of Democrats in the Senate. Not since Barack Obama sought to unionize the TSA in 2011 to increase his support by Big Labor has there been a more galling move that involved an agency that should have long ago been disbanded.

A video report by CNN notes that the TSA’s budget, like many in Washington, is scheduled to be cut. Senate Republicans have proposed trimming other social programs to offset the security fee increase. Yet, it would appear from the revelation last month that the TSA was secretly shelving expensive high-tech equipment in a Texas warehouse that the budget could use a good trimming.

Meanwhile, flyers opposed to paying more to keep the TSA in hose have the support of a strange bedfellow—the airline industry. WTVR, the Richmond, Va., CBS affiliate, quotes Airlines for America spokesman Sean Kennedy as saying:

Air security is a national security function and it’s something that all of us need to be behind as Americans, and the government should be picking up the cost of that.

Thanks, Sean. Now, if you could do something about the ridiculous baggage fees imposed by major air carriers, we’d really be getting somewhere.

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On Memorial Day, MSNBC talking head ‘uncomfortable’ calling fallen military ‘heroes’

Howard Portnoy — Mon, 28 May 2012 19:28:42 +0000

Today is Memorial Day, a day when Americans everywhere take at least a moment out to remember the men and women in uniform who made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation. Perhaps I should say “everywhere but MSNBC.”

Yesterday one of the network’s hosts, Chris Hayes, paused to reflect on this solemn day of remembrance. Unfortunately, he introduced the segment with a puzzling admission of personal ambivalence over whether the word hero should apply to those whose graves we decorate the last Monday in May every year. Hayes elaborated on his concern that doing so is ”rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war.”

You can watch the man wrestle with his inner demons here, although you may find it difficult to keep your lunch down. Hayes’s crisis of conscience over the use of a term that any patriotic American would apply with alacrity is a splendid example of the misguided liberal tendency to over-analyze everything. It offers a window onto why liberals think of themselves as intellectually superior to conservatives. It is also a key to why those on the right so often consider those on the left unpatriotic.

NewsBusters’ Mark Finkelstein is correct in noting that “in fairness, Hayes and the other panel members distinguished between their respect for the valor of the individual military members who had given their lives with the worthiness of the various causes in which they fought.” But even that conversation should have been reserved for another day.

In case you’re wondering who Chris Hayes does consider a hero, the NewsBusters piece has an update that reveals that Hayes, during an episode of his show earlier in the month, saluted his parents as “totally amazing, heroic figures” [emphasis added]. What did they do to earn praise that their son might withhold from a fallen member of the military? His father was a community organizer in the manner of Saul Alinksy.

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Pizza chain delivers pies deliberately late to raise money to fight world hunger

Howard Portnoy — Sun, 27 May 2012 20:16:36 +0000

The M.O. goes something like this (actually it goes exactly like this): As proprietor of a pizza restaurant, you take a phone order for, say, a pepperoni pie. But instead of following the standard business practice of offering the pizza at no charge if it doesn’t arrive pronto, you go out of your way to deliver the food hours late. And then, when it finally reaches its destination limp and soggy of crust, the cheese having returned to its original congealed state, you attempt to extract extra money from your customer.

If it sounds bizarre, that’s because it is. The “marketing strategy” was dreamed up by Paraguayan ad agency ONIRIA/TBWA for two pizza emporia in the city of Asunción. The goal is to raise awareness of and cash donations for global hunger.

The campaign is being carried out in partnership with the Food Bank Foundation. Springwise.com explains that the cold, unappetizing food is accompanied by a note that reads: “When you’re hungry, you understand hunger.”

Cold pizza of course makes for hot customers, whose irritation is mitigated hardly at all by the revelation that the pizza is free of charge. Yet, the article goes on to report that the account execs who cooked up the idea have turned out to be crazy como un zorro. To date, the campaign has collected 50 tons of food donations.

Food Bank has released a promotional video, using actors, that simulates the experience of the customers inconvenienced in the initial collection drive.

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Miami police shoot and kill naked man chewing on another’s face

Howard Portnoy — Sun, 27 May 2012 17:52:44 +0000

The naked chronicles continue, but this time the story is no laughing matter.

CBS Miami has the details:

Miami police shot and killed a man on the MacArthur Causeway Saturday afternoon, and police sources told CBS4 they had no choice: the naked man they shot was trying to chew the face off another naked man, and refused to obey police orders to stop his grisly meal.

The shooting occurred shortly after 2 p.m. Police had received a 911 call indicating that two naked men were duking it out on a bike path on the causeway, which was heavy with weekend vehicular traffic.

Police ordered the “man making a meal out of the other man to stop.” When he failed to comply, officers say they had no choice but to apply deadly force.

CBS quotes Det. Willie Moreno, a Miami Police spokesperson as saying, “During this confrontation an officer did discharge his weapon striking one of theindividuals.” According to the police report, the suspect died instantly.

The victim, meanwhile, was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital. Police sources claim the man had virtually no face and was unrecognizable. His identity and condition have not been released, nor has the identity of his cannibalistic attacker.

There has been an odd spate of stories of public nudity lately, but this case has elements of another bizarre news item reported in this space in January, when Bridgeport. Ct., police arrested a homeless man for having cannibalized a local resident on whose porch he was crashing.

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Thomas Friedman: ‘Barack Obama is worst president I’ve ever seen’

Howard Portnoy — Sun, 27 May 2012 16:52:38 +0000

Extra! Extra! Read all about it. Liberal New York Timescolumnist Thomas Friedman calls Obama “worst president ever.”

Oh, forgive me. I was quoting out of context. What Friedman actually wrote in a Saturday op-ed was:

Barack Obama is a great orator, but he is the worst president I’ve ever seen when it comes to explaining his achievements, putting them in context, connecting with people on a gut level through repetition and thereby defining how the public views an issue.

I committed the sin of quoting out of context because I thought that was acceptable practice among liberal members of the press and the political class. They certainly had a field day with Mitt Romney’s comment in February about not being “concerned about the very poor,” purposely omitting the following explanatory sentence about a built-in societal “safety net.” Admittedly, the remark was a stupid one to make in the first place, but it was made far more pernicious by being taken out of context.

But let’s get back to Friedman’s argument. It is one Obama made himself multiple times. In 2010, the president said with respect to the wildly unpopular health care reform act that if he just explained it, say by giving a speech (or two … or three hundred), the American people would finally embrace the law (assuming they had the brains to understand the thought processes of a man of his stature).

Friedman in his musings takes another shot at explaining ObamaCare on the president’s behalf. He writes, “Think about this: Is there anyone in America today who doesn’t either have a pre-existing medical condition or know someone who does and can’t get health insurance as a result? Yet two years after Obama’s health care bill became law, how many Americans understand that once it is fully implemented no American with a pre-existing condition will ever again be denied coverage?”

There is no question that eliminating the one-year waiting period on pre-existing conditions is a good thing. That is why it appears in the Republican plan to replace ObamaCare with a viable reform package that includes other benefits ObamaCare doesn’t, such as portability of premium purchases across state lines and tort reform, both of which would drive down the cost.

Friedman turns to another topic that he thinks Obama did a lousy job of explaining: His auto bailout. Not only, Friedman writes, did Obama “save the auto industry from bankruptcy” but “he also got all the top U.S. automakers to agree to increase mileage for their vehicle fleets to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, from 27.5 m.p.g. today.” As proof of what a positive development this is, Friedman quotes a Popular Mechanics article that proclaims this as “the largest mandatory fuel economy increase in history.” This time it is Friedman who quotes out of context. Here is rest of the Popular Mechanics article, beginning with the next paragraph.

The ambitious new standards have encountered strong opposition from automakers, who suggest that the rules will mean large increases in cars’ sticker prices. But, as part of the announcement (where the CEOs of the Detroit big three and several foreign automakers were in attendance), Obama said that consumers would save an average of $8000 per vehicle in reduced fuel costs once the regulations are in full effect in 2025.

Make no mistake about it: The new regulations are hugely important. They will save consumers boatloads of money they would’ve spent on gas, drastically reduce American’s fuel consumption and carbon footprint and change the way cars are made. But, they present a major challenge to automakers, who must determine what technologies or combination of technologies will allow average fleet fuel economy to climb so high. They’ve got a lot of work to do.

Andrew Del-Colle, the author of the quoted article,is enthusiastic about the proposal—but expresses serious reservations about whether the plan is do-able. So far, there is nothing beyond a pie-in-the-sky promise from an administration that has a proven track record of breaking its promises.

In fact here is another the Obama White House made vis-à-vis the auto bailout: “The money that this administration invested, about $60 billion, we believe we’re on the path to recouping all of that.” That was on July 30, 2011. But on December 11 of that year, then-car czar Steven Rattner sang a different tune about recouping that $60 billion.

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Chris Matthews tired of being asked if he still feels ‘thrill up his leg’

Howard Portnoy — Sat, 26 May 2012 21:51:24 +0000

Greetings! Another “jackass” here taking an opportunity to remind readers of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews’s unfortunate (for him) decision in 2008 to announce that a speech by then-candidate Barack Obama sent a “thrill up” his “leg.”

I wouldn’t be bothering except that Matthews recently told another TB audience, “Perhaps I shouldn’t have said so because I’ve given a lot of jackasses the chance to talk about it.”

The occasion, Mediabistro reports, was a panel discussion on a cable station in Boston that included CNN’s John King, Univision’s Maria Salenas, and the Hardball host. The moderator was C-SPAN’s Steve Scully, who had the temerity to ask Matthews whether the thrill is gone.

Matthews’s visible annoyance is evident in this video clip from the program. In it, he admits to having made the same idiotic comment in 2004 (two’s a charm?), predicting as well that Obama would become “the first African-American president,” which Matthews self-indulgently insists “makes me look a little sharper.” If he says so!

He goes on to scold Scully: “I hope that you feel satisfied that you’ve used the most obvious question that is raised by every horse’s ass right-winger I ever bump into.”

On this point, I can actually sympathize with Matthews. If I had a nickel for every time someone made a joke about me that riffed on my surname—and those who have include a few fellow journalists I hold in high regard—I would be a wealthy man. The difference is that I had no role in the literary stylings of Philip Roth, while Matthews’s thrill is 100% his.

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Feds forced to release list of words used to monitor online speech

Howard Portnoy — Sat, 26 May 2012 18:24:27 +0000

Pork. Cloud. Mexico. Exercise. Screening. Response. I have just given the U.S. Department of Homeland Security seven good reasons to investigate this article and its author.

The Daily Mail notes that a Freedom Of Information Act request has forced DHS to publicize a list of keywords it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.

View slideshow: List of DHS’s online surveillance keywords

A complete list of the terms (which include Department of Homeland Security andsocial media) can be found here, as well as in the department’s 2011 Analyst’s Desktop Binder, which has also been made public via the FOIA request—or mostly public anyway. The version available via the above link contains some redactions.

According to the Mail, “analysts are instructed to search for evidence of unfolding natural disasters, public health threats and serious crimes such as mall/school shootings, major drug busts, illegal immigrant busts.”

The FOIA request was filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a watchdog group that described the list in a letter to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counter-terrorism and Intelligence as “broad, vague and ambiguous.”

EPIC made the cast that the items include “vast amounts of First Amendment protected speech that is entirely unrelated to the Department of Homeland Security mission to protect the public against terrorism and disasters.”

I can see the group’s point. It is hard to fathom how words like aid, relief, or wave could be used to help agents tighten the noose on prospective terrorists. Then again, what do I know about SCREENING. Whoops, there I go again.

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The enduring legacy of Elizabeth Warren’s tribal roots

Howard Portnoy — Sat, 26 May 2012 16:32:35 +0000

The shrillest voices on the left will tell you that the lingering saga of Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren’s questionable claim of American Indian roots is a distraction. They will tell you it’s a media-manufactured story, and they will point to polls that show Massachusetts voters don’t really care about the issue.

The Warren campaign will tell you the same thing. They’re probably right for a change, but guess what? The story is not going away. In fact, it’s intensifying now that the press has picked up the scent of … well, blood in the water. The left-leaning Boston Globe devoted a lengthy article on Friday to Warren’s insistence that she’s 1/32 Cherokee. The piece was long not just in column inches but on skepticism:

US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has said she was unaware that Harvard Law School had been promoting her purported Native American heritage until she read about it in a newspaper several weeks ago.

But for at least six straight years during Warren’s tenure, Harvard University reported in federally mandated diversity statistics that it had a Native American woman in its senior ranks at the law school. According to both Harvard officials and federal guidelines, those statistics are almost always based on the way employees describe themselves.

In addition, both Harvard’s guidelines and federal regulations for the statistics lay out a specific definition of Native American that Warren does not meet.

Part of the reason the story gained legs in recent weeks was Warren’s and her campaign’s reaction, which was to stonewall. Fred Thys of the Boston NPR affiliate WBUR notes that Warren, who is running for as high-visibility an office as exists in this country, made herself invisible to the campaign-covering media for 12 straight days. The candidate, he writes, “held campaign events, but no press was there to cover them because her campaign did not want reporters there to ask questions.”

Finally, on Thursday, Warren emerged from the shadows, only—predictably—to be inundated with questions about her supposed Indian heritage. The Q & A went something like this:

Warren: I’m here today to support a new bill in Congress that takes the banking executives off the board of directors of the regional Federal Reserve banks.

Reporter: Can you tell us whether you are, in fact, a member of a minority group?

Warren: I… middle-class families are getting hammered.

Reporter: Members of the Cherokee nation want to know. They say you should come clean.

Warren: I have made the facts clear, and what I’m trying to do is talk about in this Senate race, what matters to America’s families.

Reporter: Why did you claim you were a minority and then stop? the reporter insisted.

Warren: I have told you, Warren replied. I have answered these questions. I am going to talk about what’s happening to America’s families.

The relentless chipping away went on in this same fashion for another ten minutes. Warren repeatedly tried to change the subject to the “issues” that were “substantive,” and each time the press brought her back to the question of whether she fudged her ancestral roots to get ahead.

Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast is one of the shrill skeptics cited earlier. He calls the story a “witch hunt” and asks what difference it makes whether the story is true. Dismissing the putative charge that it reflects negatively on Warren’s character, he writes, “Oh please,” adding “she was the daughter of an Oklahoma janitor, for God’s sakes, who started working as a pre-teenager when her father had a heart attack.” In other words, she fairly drips with character, whether she has so much as a corpuscle of Amerindian blood coursing through her veins.

The strong possibility that she may be a liar or the certainty in any case that she fell back on the flimsiest of technicalities to gain advancement do not count as character issues in Tomasky’s world—unless the individual being scrutinized is a conservative.

To the Tomaskys out there, Elizabeth Warren is—blood lines notwithstanding—a member of the tribe… the tribe being liberals, whom you can always count on to circle the wagons whenever it is one of their own.

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Barack Obama: Scatologist in chief

Howard Portnoy — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:24:25 +0000

Move over, Lenny Bruce. A new master of the scatological has emerged on the scene. His name is Barack Obama, and he dishes out dirt. A regular Cloaca Professional he’s become.

Matthew Continetti, writing about the president’s rapidly unraveling re-election team at The Washington Free Beacon, states that “one gaffe is an isolated event. Two is an embarrassment.” I submit that the same may be said of a verbally anal retentive administration’s inability to resist talking about excrement.

On Thursday, the day after White House Propaganda Minister Jay Carney accused the GOP of slinging “BS” by claiming that the Obama administration was guilty of profligate spending, the ever-hilarious president told a crowd in Iowa that candidate Mitt Romney had presented voters with a “cowpie of distortion” when he made similar claims.

Obama, always at the ready to crack wise at the expense anyone who disagrees with him, haughtily told 2,500 prospective voters at the Iowa State Fairgrounds that Romney, who had visited the same venue 10 days earlier, “left out some facts. His speech was more like a cowpie of distortion.” Hoots of laughter rose to the ceiling of the Knapp Center.

The president actually knows a good bit about distortion. This clip from Thursday’s Special Report with Bret Baier features a sound bite from a speech in which the president said with a straight face:

My opponents won’t admit it, because it runs contrary to … I guess, the only argument they have, but since I’ve been president, federal spending has actually risen at the lowest pace in 60 years.

The reference takes its cue from the same fanciful article that fueled Carney’s off-color putdown. The premise of that article is that if you count emergency spending as a regular fixture of any administration’s budget, then Obama—by perpetuating federal relief programs begun under George W. Bush—has arguably spent less than his predecessors. The question that arises is why anyone would fall back on such a bizarre calculus. It is the same “logic” that Obama used to explain the trillions of dollars he was saving the nation in 2010 by not extending the surge in Iraq into perpetuity.

Putting the current fiscal conflagration in terms familiar to the president, he is knee-deep in the “mess” he inherited because he has added immeasurably to it.

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My opponents won’t admit it, because it runs contrary to … I guess, the only argument they have, but since I’ve been president, federal spending has actually risen at the lowest pace in 60 years.

Putting the current fiscal conflagration in terms familiar to the president, he is knee-deep in the “mess” he inherited because he has added immeasurably to it.

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TV chef Lidia Bastianich sued for stealing tips from staff at swanky restaurant

Howard Portnoy — Fri, 25 May 2012 14:24:09 +0000

Like son, like mother. Despite her matronly presence on her homespun PBS series (“Give Nonni a kiss,” she affectionately demands of her grandchildren and occasional sous-chefs), restaurateur Lidia Bastianich beneath the surface is evidently no less a shark than her son, Joe. Which is saying a mouthful considering that the younger Bastianich and his partner, Mario Batali, settled a class action suit in March for a record $5.25 million that alleged the pair was stealing employees’ tips.

Now, the New York Post reports, Lidia is being sued for the same malfeasance. A complaint filed in Manhattan federal court states that “until recently,” Lidia was short-changing waiters at her exclusive upper East Side restaurant, Felidia.

The Post notes that three current and former servers insist they were cheated out of gratuities equaling approximately 5% of the nightly wine and beverage sales at the Italian restaurant. Court papers also allege that a “significant percentage” of the mandatory gratuities charged for private parties was kept from the staff or paid to the event coordinator.

Lidia, sad to say, is no stranger to the courts. In August of 2011, she was sued by a former home employee brought over from Italy who claimed that the Bastianich family treated her like a slave.

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‘Hustler’ publisher Larry Flynt answers criticism over obscene Cupp photo

Howard Portnoy — Thu, 24 May 2012 20:27:09 +0000

Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt has responded to criticisms over his magazine’s publication of a salacious doctored photo that depicts conservative columnist S.E. Cupp engaging in the act of fellatio. Flint’s defense? The photoshopped image was intended as satire.

In a statement to The Blaze.com, Flynt wrote:

That’s satire. I’m able to publish this because of the Supreme Court case I won in 1984 [sic], Flynt v. Falwell.

The reference, the date of which Flint got wrong, is to a highly publicized court decision handed down in 1988 that upheld Hustler’s right to parody public figures so long as it could not be considered libel. The lawsuit in the case was brought by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, who Hustler claimed “was a drunk and had engaged in an incestuous sexual encounter with his mother in an outhouse.”

The statement reveals that Flynt is not only unable to get his dates straight but that he has no idea what satire is. Satire is defined as “the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.” There is no mention in the definition of humorless debasement of another person whose political views you find repugnant, which was obviously the case in the photoshopped image of Cupp.

Now if one were to photoshop an image of Flynt deep in thought about a subject other than naked women and/or perverse sexual acts, that would be satire.

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NYC public school to require students grades 2 through 5 to learn Arabic

Howard Portnoy — Thu, 24 May 2012 18:47:21 +0000

If u c rd ths, u c b a terrrist: الموت للكفار. The sentence reads “Death to infidels,” but if you can’t read it, not to worry. Soon there be 200 new translators of Arabic in the country to assist you with the task.

Of course you’ll have to travel to New York City, to the Hamilton Heights neighborhood, to avail yourself of their services. All of these new recruits are elementary school students (second through fifth grade) at P.S. 368, in the uptown Manhattan community

According to the New York Post, Arabic was chosen by Principal Nicky Kram Rosen over more common foreign language offerings, such as Spanish or French, because it will help the school obtain a prestigious International Baccalaureate standing. Like it or not (and considering its use of an unfamiliar alphabet, Naskh, and the fact of its being written right to left, I’m guessing “not”), indoctrinees will be forced to spend 45 minutes twice a week on their Arabic lessons. That’s approximately the amount of time devoted currently to the study of science.

Angela Jackson, CEO of the Global Language Project, which is backing the initiative, is quoted by the Post as saying that Rosen floated the idea of teaching Arabic by the parent association who, she insists, “were very supportive.” Jackson adds:

Arabic has been identified as a critical-need language. It means they can spin the globe and decide where they want to work and live.

The article offers a testimonial by one student, 7-year-old Nayanti Brown, who participated in last year’s pilot program. “I like Arabic class. I like the words we learn,” she is quoted as saying. “I thought they sounded funny at first, now I think they sound cool. I teach my little sister the words I learn.’’

The mandate goes into effect in September, but insofar as P.S. 368 is a so-called “choice’’ school, no child is forced to take Arabic. That sounds reassuring, but then the article goes on to state in the next sentence that “if the school ever enrolls a student who objects to learning Arabic, administrators will deal with that on a case-by-case basis.”

Let me say in advance of the dozens of shocked and outraged emails I will be receiving that my intention in this article is not to conflate the speaking of Arabic with the philosophy or practice of Islamofascism. It is rather that mandating the teaching of this language at this particular time strikes me as an odd choice.

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Breaking: Man who claims he lured and killed Etan Patz in NYPD custody

Howard Portnoy — Thu, 24 May 2012 17:02:56 +0000

It could turn out to be déjà-vu all over again, but a man who willingly implicated himself in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz is in the custody of New York City Police this morning.

The New York Post, the Associated Press, and other prominent news outlets report that NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly has issued a release stating that the man, tentatively identify as Pedro Hernandez, was arrested in Camden, N.J., yesterday and brought to New York for questioning.

The Post quotes an unnamed source as saying that Hernandez “told investigators that he lured the boy with candy, stabbed him, cut up his remains and put them in plastic bags.”

At the time of the alleged crime 33 years ago, the suspect lived a few blocks away from the Patz family in SoHo and worked at a neighborhood bodega. He is said to have confessed his crime to family members, one of whom phoned the NYPD last month after police and the FBI excavated the basement of a building near the one where the missing child’s family still lives. The dig exonerated 75-year-old Othniel Miller, who had been identified as a possible suspect.

Hernandez, who has been on investigators’ radar for years and identified as a “person of interest,” has a criminal history. He was sentenced to three years for possession of cocaine and battery in 1997—his third such offense—according to Indiana Department of Corrections records.

The news of the arrest comes nearly 33 years to the day since Etan Patz disappeared. Following the child’s disappearance, May 25 became known as National Missing Children’s Day.

There is probably no family on earth that craves closure more than Stan and Julie Patz, the parents of the missing boy. The AP notes that the couple has been reluctant these many years to move or even change their phone number in case their son tried to reach out to them. They live to this day in the same apartment, which probably still contains haunting memories.

No doubt, the Patzes felt on the verge of that much-prayed-for closure last month when the police and FBI had refocused their attention on Othniel Miller only to have the basement dig come up empty of clues.

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The news of the arrest comes nearly 33 years to the day since Etan Patz disappeared. Following the child’s disappearance, May 25 became known as National Missing Children’s Day.

There is probably no family on earth who craves closure more than Stan and Julie Patz, the parents of the missing boy. The AP notes that the couple has been reluctant these many years to move or even change their phone number in case their son tried to reach out. They live to this day in the same apartment, which probably still contains haunting memories.

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WH to press corps: ‘Don’t buy into the BS’ GOP is slinging

Howard Portnoy — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:42:09 +0000

The Obama presidency has witnessed its share of firsts:

It is the first administration in history to preside over a $16 trillion-plus national deficit, a fair chunk of which it added. (In fact, a USA Today analysis published late Wednesday reveals that the true deficit last year was $5 trillion.)
It is the first administration under which the nation’s AAA debt security rating was downgraded by Standard & Poor’s.
Barack Obama is the first sitting president to debase the office by appearing on late night TV.
In August of 2011 he became the first chief executive since World War II to preside over an economy where net zero jobs were created in a given month.

Now the Obama presidency has added another notch to its belt of firsts. On Wednesday it became the first administration to officially accuse the opposition party of spouting “BS.” Breitbart.com offers up an audio of White House Press Secretary Jay Carney urging the press corps not to “buy into the BS that you hear about spending and fiscal constraint with regard to this administration.”

Carney is echoing a column by MarketWatch.com’s Rex Nutting that optimistically claimed that the commonly held view that “Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending” is wrong. (Nutting notes that “even Democrats seem to think it’s true,” but they’re wrong, too.)

The claims in Nutting’s column have been effectively debunked, most succintly by James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute, but that rebuttal ran almost concurrent with Carney’s insults, which were delivered Wednesday morning aboard Air Force One.

In fairness, Carney’s had a tough time of it riding herd over a press corps that has become increasingly hostile toward a president who is aloof and willing to exclude reporters seemingly on a whim. One of the most telling examples came in October 2011, when the administration barred press coverage of a presidential award ceremony. And what was the president receiving an award for? For transparency.

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‘Hustler’ runs fake explicit photo of conservative journalist S.E. Cupp

Howard Portnoy — Wed, 23 May 2012 19:52:33 +0000

f you can’t beat ‘em, scorn ‘em. That is an acceptable M.O. on the “civilized” left for dealing with one subset of conservatives who spend time in or commenting on politics: females.

I suppose it could be argued to their credit that when liberals sexualize women on the right, they at least select attractive ones. Take their most recent victim, right-wing journalist S.E. Cupp. As Mediaite’s Noah Rothman reports, Cupp was the subject of a tasteless photoshopped image that ran in a recent print issue of Hustler Magazine. The doctored photo depicts Cupp engaging in a sexual act under the headline “celebrity fantasy.”

As Rothman notes, the shot is accompanied by a disclaimer reading, “No such picture of S.E. Cupp actually exists. This composite fantasy is altered from the original for our imagination, does not depict reality, and is not to be taken seriously for any purpose.” The obvious intention is to cover management’s tail, which might otherwise be exposed for real.

An accompanying text “profile” of Cupp is unkind but not slanderous insofar as it is opinion, which is not covered by defamation laws. The paragraph reads:

S.E. Cupp is a lovely young lady who read too much Ayn Rand in high school and ended up joining the dark side. Cupp, an author and media commentator who often shows up on Fox News programs, is undeniably cute. But her hotness is diminished when she espouses dumb ideas like defunding Planned Parenthood. Perhaps the method pictured here is Ms. Cupp’s suggestion for avoiding an unwanted pregnancy.

In an update to the original post, Rothman writes that Cupp called in to Glenn Beck‘s radio program and issued a statement lamenting. “It will be out there forever. The fact that I work very hard and I’m an Ivy Leage educated woman with a pretty good job doesn’t matter when you look at a photo like this.”

In the audio segment, which is here, Cupp wonders aloud whether there would be significant outrage if the skin mag had done something similar to Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) or First Lady Michelle Obama.

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Judge rules 1st Amendment protects motorists’ right to warn others of speed traps

Howard Portnoy — Wed, 23 May 2012 18:42:36 +0000

Sanford, Fl., which has been in the headlines frequently in recent months, has made news again, this time unrelated to a shooting that occurred there in February.

The Orlando Sentinel reports:

A judge in Sanford ruled Tuesday that a Lake Mary man was lawfully exercising his First Amendment rights when he flashed his headlights to warn neighbors that a deputy had set up a speed trap nearby.

That decision is another victory for Ryan Kintner, 25, who sued the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office last year, accusing it of misconstruing a state law and violating his civil rights, principally his right to free speech.

The law in the current case, Florida Statute 316.2397, was cites in a nearly identical case reported in this space last August in which another motorist, Eric Campbell, received a summons from Florida Highway Patrol for tipping off on-coming traffic about a police presence by blinking his lights. The text of the statute reads in part:

(7) Flashing lights are prohibited on vehicles except as a means of indicating a right or left turn, to change lanes, or to indicate that the vehicle is lawfully stopped or disabled upon the highway or except that the lamps authorized in subsections (1), (2), (3), (4), and (9) and s. 316.235(5) are permitted to flash.

Circuit Judge Alan Dickey, who presided over the Kintner case, earlier ruled that that state law does not apply to people who did what Kintner did, use his headlights to communicate. On Tuesday the judge took his ruling a step further, declaring that people who flash their headlights to communicate are engaging in behavior protected by the U.S. Constitution.

Kintner’s attorney, J. Marcus Jones, is on record as stating that the judge “felt the police specifically went out of their way to silence Mr. Kintner and that it was clearly a violation of his free speech rights.”

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DC Comics reveals that major superhero will be coming out of closet

Howard Portnoy — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:47:51 +0000

Suffering sodomy, Batman!

To paraphrase Red Eye’s Andy Levy, if you can’t keep your superheroes straight, you are not alone. DC Comics has announced that one of its superheroes that previously had been assumed to be straight will soon reveal that he (or she) is gay.

The comic blog Bleeding.Cool.com is credited with breaking the story, reporting on Sunday that DC co-publisher Dan DiDio reversed his earlier stated position—that DC would bring in a new homosexual character rather than “out” an old one—while attending the Kapow Comic Convention in London.

Senior Vice President of sales, Bob Wayne (no relation to Bruce), confirmed the story, claiming that DiDio’s view “had evolved,” much like Barack Obama’s.

This is not the first time a fictional character has been recast in some manner to comply with a social agendum. That would be the rerelease of Joseph Conrad’s 1987 novella The Nigger of the “Narcissus” as The N-word of the “Narcissus” in 2010. (Despite the name change, the title character, James Wait, continues to be a black man from the West Indies.)

So will the move by DC advance the acceptance of homosexuality among those who disapprove of it or consider it sinful? Probably not—but neither will it likely hinder the acceptance of alternative lifestyles, which recent polls find to be increasing.

For me, the big question is the same one I raised whenCalifornia passed a law mandating the teaching of gay history: Namely, how will this change manifest itself in the work? Will Superman (or Batman, or whomever) suddenly be depicted holding hands with his “partner”? Kissing? Expressing a fondness for Broadway musicals and antiques? I don’t mean to be coy, but I just can’t see how the storyline will change, for better or worse.

In the meantime, for those who can’t wait for the roll-out by DC, here is a sneak preview.

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When did executive experience stop mattering as a presidential qualification?

Howard Portnoy — Wed, 23 May 2012 15:50:24 +0000

During the 2008 presidential campaign, one of the most compelling (and, history has decreed, portentous) criticisms leveled at candidate Barack Obama was his lack of executive experience. Mention of this Achilles heel had come up previously in his quest for public office. In his failed campaign to unseat incumbent U.S. Congressman Bobby Rush in 2000, Obama foolishly boasted when confronted with the accusation that he lacked the necessary skill set:

My experience previous to elected office equips me for the job. I have chaired major philanthropic efforts in the city, like the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, that gave $50 million to prompt school-reform efforts throughout the city.

In September of 2009, conservative writer David Freddoso quoted the final technical report of the Annenberg Foundation from that period. It found that the Challenge had “had little impact on student outcomes” in Chicago, but by the time of Freddoso’s article Obama had been president for 9 months and the story was yesterday’s news.

Besides, during the 2008 campaign, Democrats successfully downplayed Obama’s lack of executive experience by highlighting the fact that his GOP opponent, John McCain, was similarly lacking. In fact, the only candidate for either major party ticket who had run anything was then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, but she was the butt of incessant liberal jokes and send-ups, which provided a convenient distraction from Obama’s lack of preparedness.

In the quickness of Obama-loving Democrats to ridicule Palin, attention was also diverted from her “mirror” on the opposing ticket, Joe Biden, whose foot-in-mouth experiences as Vice President are now the stuff of legend.

In fact, Biden was out on the campaign trail on Tuesday telling voters that Mitt Romney’s record as CEO at Bain Capital make him no more qualified to run the nation than a plumber. (Actually, depending on the size of his company and number of employees, a plumber might make a fine chief executive—this despite his lack of philanthropic experience!)

But Biden’s mistake, like those of so many on the left, is to focus on the specific nature of the work Romney did rather than on his experiences as a visionary, a leader, and a business success.

Romney founded Bain & Company in 1984 with partners T. Coleman Andrews III and Eric Kriss. Facing skepticism from potential investors, Romney and his partners spent a year raising the $37 million in funds needed to start the new operation. Initially, the company had fewer than ten employees. By the end of 1990, Bain had raised $175 million of capital and financed 35 companies with combined revenues of $3.5 billion. By the end of a decade under the stewardship of Mitt Romney, Bain had risen to become one of the top private equity firms in the nation. It now had 18 partners, 115 employees, and $4 billion under its management.

During that time, Romney as a chief executive, was also responsible for overseeing employee relations and maintaining benefits, such as the company health plan, for meeting payroll, staying on budget, forecasting, and much else. Take a moment to consider how Barack Obama has answered the same demands of his own job over the last three and a half years.

By any standard measure, Romney has been resoundingly successful as a businessman and manager. Aren’t those the kinds of skills necessary for running a country?

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Technology update: Rent an online girlfriend for $5

Howard Portnoy — Tue, 22 May 2012 18:17:05 +0000

First comes virtual love, then comes virtual marriage….

It’s not quite a “beard” that Cody Krecicki is willing to rent you, and it’s certainly not a flesh-and-blood girlfriend. Rather it’s a woman who will perform “girlfriend-like tasks” for you—but strictly online.

The 22-year-old Edison State College student and brains behind Girlfriendhire.com is quoted by naplesnews.com as explaining that the females at his site who hire themselves out as virtual GFs “give guys advice, break up with their girlfriend for them, [and] send them a message on Facebook they can show off to their friends.”

Since he started up his online service a month ago, Krecicki has topped 100,000 page views and has better than 1,600 users who have placed 300 orders. The women who sign up, all of whom use screen names only, post their pictures and areas of expertise. Take SweetlyVague (please!). Her keywords are fun, flirty, and breakup, and her “bio” (if that is the correct term) reads:

I’m willing to send fun and flirty text messages. We all know how jealous girls can be, and the attention could be used to help break off a relationship, or draw other girls in! Also willing to send fun and flirty emails, as well as photos.

Some of the women advertise that they will cater to fetishes (foot fetishes seem to be big this spring), while others claim they will do anything except nudity. Others have a distinct self help feel to them (e.g., help you with your dating profile, teach you how “just to be friends,” answer fashion questions).

Krecicki explains that the rate per “fling” that he charges, $5, is to discourage the women from getting into adult or escort services, which is prohibited by the site’s terms of services.

Katie Browder, one of the women on the site who was willing to share her actual name, told naplesnews.com, “That can be hard to enforce because pictures and videos can be shared through a third-party service, like Skype or an instant messenger.”

So what accounts for Girlfriendhire.com’s instant popularity? Krecicki believes it comes down to down simple and immutable truths—that “girls are mysterious” and that “guys don’t know anything about girls.”

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Teen whose teacher said he could be jailed for speaking ill of Obama speaks out

Howard Portnoy — Tue, 22 May 2012 16:42:24 +0000

A North Carolina teacher who foolishly told one of her students that he could face jail time for “disrepecting” President Barack Obama is currently enjoying a vacation (read: suspension with full pay) while the school board decides her fate.

The student who challenged her politically bias, which was captured on a cellphone, has been identified. His name is Hunter Rogers, and he appeared, along with his mother, on FOX News’s FOX & Friends (h/t The Blaze.com).

In this video clip from the show, Hunter enlarges upon teacher Tanya Dixon-Neely’s blinkered approach to education, telling host Gretchen Carlson:

[She] always has open discussions about the presidents and candidates, and she doesn’t want to hear anything but what she believes, and if you disagree you get berated and put down, and I just decided to finally get some proof of it.

Rogers’ mother remarks, “My biggest concern is that this ‘teacher’ is responsible for teaching my child and hundreds of others, and she is not teaching them factual information.”

A concern that is not raised is the inappropriateness of any teacher using her classroom as a bully pulpit to indoctrinate students regardless of the beliefs being shared.

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NJ dad saves 5-year-old, car plunges over cliff, dad gets traffic tickets

Howard Portnoy — Tue, 22 May 2012 15:58:25 +0000

Some stories so teem with action that they create a nightmare for headline writers. This one not only teems with action but has a galling anticlimax.

FOXNews.com reports:

A New Jersey dad got the scare of his life when his 5-year-old son almost ran off a steep embankment, and though the man saved the boy from falling, he couldn’t stop his Jeep from going over the precipice and into a river below.

The reward for his ordeal? Two traffic tickets from local police.

The father, Frank Roder, had taken his son to the Rahway River to feed ducks Thursday. However, when he stopped the car briefly, the impatient 5-year-old leaped out and made a beeline toward the edge of a cliff that fell steeply 35 feet to the river below.

The panic-stricken father himself jumped out of his 2006 Jeep Commander and gave hot pursuit, catching up with his son just feet from the edge of the precipice. But Roder had not taken the car out of gear or set the brake. He turned in time to watch the vehicle roll down the side of the cliff and into the water.

Roder hugged his son, then phoned the police who in turn arranged for crane to pull the car back up the side of the embankment. To Roder’s amazement, the car started up instantly.

But then his amazement turned to disbelief. One of the Union County police deputees who had supervised the car’s rescue handed Roder two traffic tickets, one for failure to produce the insurance card (which would have been quite a feat), another for failing to use his emergency brake.

The chief of police, Daniel Vaniska told FoxNews.com that his officers have some latitude when it comes to writing up infractions, adding, “It probably could have gone either way. I can’t comment on the discretionary practices of an officer, but certainly, the fellow will have an opportunity to tell his story in court.”

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The Bain Chronicles: If the election centers on job creation, Obama loses

Howard Portnoy — Tue, 22 May 2012 15:23:49 +0000

President Obama is expending a good bit of capital—real and political—on Mitt Romney’s claim that he created 100,000 jobs while CEO of Bain Capital. The re-election campaign has launched a series of ads profiling companies that laid off employees and/or went belly up after Bain took control of their business operations. The president has also made a fanciful version of Romney’s record at Bain the centerpiece of recent whistle stops.

This tack is a fight, to borrow a phrase from Obama, that the Romney camp should be willing to have. And it seems they are. They came back with an ad of their own on Monday that features three Democrats—Newark Mayor Cory Booker, former Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford, and Obama’s own former car czar Steven Rattner—extolling the virtues of private equity firms like Bain.

Of course, successful equity investment takes some measure of business acumen, as the president learned at the American taxpayers’ expense. You can’t merely throw darts at a list of companies and expect to hit a winner. Chances are better than not that you will blow more than half a million dollars on a Solyndra or $100 million on an Ener1.

But Obama’s losing bets on green energy are are not his only problem. If the national conversation that helps voters decide the next president focuses on job creation, Obama flat out loses.

Consider that on Feb. 17, the third anniversary of his signing into law the $787-billion American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (aka, the stimulus), the unemployment rate set a new record, remaining above 8% for the longest continuous stretch—36 straight months—since the end of World War I. Those numbers come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Obama can make the claim that Romney at Bain created wealth for investors, not jobs, but that argument turns the spotlight back on the president, who has created debt for Americans and not jobs.

Then there is the ticklish matter of Jonathan Lavine. Lavine is currently a managing director at Bain, where he is CEO of affiliate Sankaty Advisors, which he helped found in 1997.He is also a chief Obama bundler, having raised between $100,000 and $200,000 for the re-election campaign.

Still another pitfall for Team Obama is that the more they talk about private equity investment, the more voters are going to learn about what firms like Bain actually do and that popular slurs like vulture capitalism and corporate raider tell just one side of the story—and a grossly distorted one at that. They will hear that many financial gurus view private equity investment is a net positive for the economy. Finally, they will learn that Bain, which Romney founded with two partners in 1984 and has since grown to be one of the nation’s biggest private-equity firms, is a remarkable success story.

UPDATE (12:02, 5-22-12): As an interesting coda to this article, The Hill cites a report from OpenSecrets.org noting that in 2008 candidate Obama raised more cash from hedge fund and private equity donors than any other candidate. Obama took in nearly $3.5 million from large private-equity donors that year—twice the amount that general-election rival John McCain pocketed.

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Food celeb Anthony Bourdain’s fantasy: Sodomizing and deep-frying Dick Cheney

Howard Portnoy — Mon, 21 May 2012 20:23:32 +0000

If the biggest news scoop coming out of the The Great GoogaMooga Festival, held in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park this past weekend, involved any food celebrity other than Anthony Bourdain, I’d be inclined to write it off as (a) idle gossip or (b) the result of excessive imbibing.

But seeing as the story centers on this most pitiful of life’s rejects, a man who has made a fortune stringing together more profanities in a single breath than the most pathetic, leather jacket-wearing, chain-smoking high school drop-out, I accept it as gospel. (Oh, and by the way, did I mention that this charmer chain smokes—and boorishly did so between courses at three-Michelin star French Laundry in the Napa Valley?)

But far and away the high point of Bourdain’s latest naughty-boy hijinks was his answer to a question from the crowd vis-à-vis who he’d most like to fry. The answer was Dick Cheney, whom he said he would first waterboard, then “deep fry his head, f*ck him up the ass and then he’d cook him.” (Runner-up was Bourdain’s answer—“F*ck yeah!”—to the question of whether he would cannibalize another human being if they were stranded without food.)

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Elizabeth Warren not the only Cherokee to work in Obama WH; Obama also ‘red-blooded’

Howard Portnoy — Mon, 21 May 2012 17:54:04 +0000

President Obama and former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau chief Elizabeth Warren have much in common. Both tilt heavily to the left in their political outlooks. Both subscribe to the view that no one in this country succeeds without the government’s help. (Here is the president on the subject, and here is Warren.)

Now it turns out that they share an even deeper connection, one that runs blood-deep. Both claim, entirely independently of any formal records or other substantive evidence, to have Cherokee ancestry. Big Government discovered the president’s alleged Amerindian roots on pages 12 and 13 of the 2004 paperback edition of Dreams from My Father:

If asked, Toot [Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyne Payne Dunham] would turn her head in profile to show off her beaked nose, which, along with a pair of jet-black eyes, was offered as proof of Cherokee blood.

But an old, sepia toned photograph on the bookshelf spoke most eloquently of their [grandparents Stanley and Madelyne Dunham’s] roots. It showed Toot’s grandparents, of Scottish and English stock, standing in front of a ramshackle homestead, unsmiling and dressed in coarse wool, their eyes squinting at the sun baked flinty life that stretched before them… in their eyes one could see truths that I would have to learn later as facts…that while one of my great-great grandfathers, Christopher Columbus Clark, had been a decorated Union soldier, his wife’s mother was rumored to have been a second cousin of Jefferson Davis… that although another distant ancestor had indeed been a full-blooded Cherokee, such lineage was a source of shame to Toot’s mother [Leona McCurry Payne] who blanched whenever someone mentioned the subject [of Cherokee ancestry] and hoped to carry the secret to her grave.

(For further proof of Obama’s Indian connection, notice the similarity of the circular symbol on this tribal gear to the president’s campaign logo.)

A difference between Warren and Obama is that Warren capitalized directly on her claims of being 1/32 Cherokee to advance her career, while Obama did not. Instead, he used his black roots (eschewing his white ones) to get himself admitted to two Ivy League schools on the basis of affirmative action (as he himself wrote).

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Teacher tells students they can be arrested for badmouthing Obama

Howard Portnoy — Mon, 21 May 2012 15:56:13 +0000

Another great moment in modern education was preserved for posterity—literally, on a cell phone recording—last Monday. The Salisbury Post reports that a social studies teacher at North Rowan High School, in Spencer, N.C., told her class during an animated debate on the relative merits of the two major party presidential candidates that a person could be arrested for speaking ill of President Obama.

The teacher, who is quite obviously an Obama supporter, didn’t specify whether the “law” she was referencing applied to all presidents or just the current one, though she did read students the riot act for daring to “disrespect” Obama in her class, making it clear several times that she will not tolerate this behavior.

As for that law, Sarah Campbell of the Salisbury Post consulted one Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at Catawba College, who told her that “the social studies teacher just doesn’t have her facts straight when she insists speaking your mind about a president can get you charged with a criminal offense.”

The Rowan-Salisbury school district, which refuses to release the name of the teacher, has not surprisingly clammed up on the issue, claiming that their reticence is “due to personnel and student confidentiality.” It’s not at all clear why the district can’t comment on the teacher’s outrageous behavior—which includes profanity—irrespective of her identity.

The exchange, which is captured in this video, became tense when one student had the temerity to ask a question in re the teacher’s “fact of the day,” which is that Mitt Romney was a bully back in high school. The student can heard asking, “Didn’t Obama bully somebody, though?” The teacher’s voice grows ever so slightly louder when she replies”“Not to my knowledge.”

When the student militates on behalf of a fair and open debate, pointing out that “if you’re gonna talk trash about one side, you gotta talk trash about the other,” the becomes noticeably more defensive and agitated. “You will not disrespect the president of the United States in this classroom,” she tells him.

The low point of the exchange comes when the student remarks, “Whenever Bush was president, everybody talked sh*t about him.” The teacher’s response? “Because he was sh*tty.”

The Blaze.com notes that district released a statement by the end of the week:

The Rowan-Salisbury School System expects all students and employees to be respectful in the school environment and for all teachers to maintain their professionalism in the classroom. This incident should serve as an education for all teachers to stop and reflect on their interaction with students.

How about instructing this particular teacher to check her political biases at the classroom door?

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Buyer beware: Restaurants use ‘meat glue’ to create ‘steaks’ from scraps

Howard Portnoy — Sun, 20 May 2012 20:12:17 +0000

Move over, pink slime. An exposé by station WCVB in Boston reveals that the steaks we buy in supermarkets and restaurants aren’t necessarily all they’re cracked up to be. Which is not to say they aren’t “cracked up.”

According to cattle rancher Nigel Tudor, the expensive “fillet steaks” sold in many American food stores are actually made up of scraps of beef held together by the enzymetransglutaminase. Known in the industry as “meat glue,” this white powder is derived from the clotting agents in pigs’ and cows’ blood.

View slideshow: How “meat glue” is used to make steak

A number of videos detailing the steps in creating a “prime” steak out of bits and pieces have begun turning up on the Internet. The video here was made by an Australian news team. The narrator emphasizes that the segment is “for instructional purposes only.” Australia is one many countries that prohibit the use of transglutaminase. The United States is not among them.

The U.S. federal government has ruled that meat glue is “generally recognized as safe,” but not all health experts are in agreement. Steve Steingart, of the Allegheny County Health Department in Pennsylvania, told WCVB that glued meat could pose a health risk if smaller pieces of meat that have been contaminated end up in the center of a steak served rare.

Then of course there are the legalities associated with deceptive business practices. In grocery stores, steaks assembled using meat glue are mandatorily labeled as “formed” or “reformed.” But restaurants are not constrained by such labeling requirements. Since many in the industry claim that not even the most refined palate can necessarily detect a glued steak, you could easily end up eating less than you paid for.

Grainne Trainor, a restaurant owner, puts it best. She says:

Meat is something you buy at your neighborhood local butcher shop. Glue is something you buy at Home Depot. Those two words just don’t belong in the same sentence.

Or on a dinner plate, one might add.

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Lockerbie bomber finally joins his fellow ‘martyrs’

Howard Portnoy — Sun, 20 May 2012 14:39:05 +0000

At the news on Sunday that cancer had finally claimed the life of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, better known as the Lockerbie bomber, relatives of his victims reportedly breathed a sigh of relief. Some are said to have remarked that they “never thought this day would come.”

I can imagine that al-Megrahi’s long-awaited death provides a measure of closure to those who lost loved ones in 1988 when a bomb he planted on Pan Am Flight 103 detonated over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing everyone on board and a dozen more on the ground. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that the Islamofascist terrorist cheated death, or at least the death he deserved.

Certainly he escaped the punishment his actions had earned. Al-Megrahi was released from captivity in 2009 on “compassionate grounds” when Scottish doctors reported he was suffering from advanced prostate cancer and had three only months to live. He was allowed to return to his homeland of Libya, where he received a hero’s welcome when he stepped off the plane.

The revulsion this scene caused was felt viscerally on both sides of the Atlantic. It was amplified by reports that the doctors had likely erred in their prognosis and that al-Megrahi wasn’t as sick as they had claimed.

Then there was the occasional bitter reminder from the press that he had managed to cheat death for yet another year.

The fates finally caught up with him today at 5:55 a.m. ET. He took his last breath lying in a soft bed at home, surrounded by his own loved ones. Here’s hoping that justice awaits him beyond the grave.

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Black Wal-Mart customer files frivolous ‘emotional distress’ lawsuit

Howard Portnoy — Sat, 19 May 2012 21:01:16 +0000

Try to put yourself in Donnell Battie’s shoes. Battie was a customer at a Wal-Mart store in New Jersey in March of 2010 when a misguided teenage cretin gained access to the store’s public address system and broadcast this message: “Attention Wal-Mart customers: All black people leave the store now.”

I’ve thought long and hard about this incident since I first read about it at MSNBC.com four days ago. I came to the conclusion that if I were in Battie’s shoes—a black man living in twenty-first century America and experienced so overt an act of racism—I’d feel enraged. Saddened, too, to learn that hatred driven by superficial differences in skin color is alive and well.

I’d probably seek out the store’s manager and give him “what for” for allowing such an offensive action to take place on his watch. And then I’d go home and try to put the ugly incident out of my mind.

But that’s not what Donnell Battie did. Instead, he hired a lawyer, who is representing him in a $1 million lawsuit against Wal-Mart. He is suing the company for damages for the emotional distress he claims he suffered as a result of their carelessness.

He is suing in spite of the fact that when this unfortunate incident occurred, the store manager immediately took to the P.A. system himself and apologized profusely for the outrage. Then he phoned the police, who later arrested the 16-year-old responsible for the heinous prank and charged him with harassment and bias intimidation.

But Battie’s attorney, John Klamo, who appeared last week in the U.S. District Court in Camden, argues that Wal-Mart was negligent, careless, and reckless, and showed deliberate indifference by failing to properly control access to the P.A. system.

Klamo argues further that his client was traumatized by the incident and is being treated for depression, anxiety, anger, loss of sleep and appetite, paranoia, anti-social tendencies, and loss of enjoyment in activities. Klamo told the New Jersey Law Journal:

Mr. Battie is an individual who has been under care of a doctor for various disabilities dealing with his psychological makeup. He’s in Wal-Mart and something of this nature presents its ugly head and it brings up past situations in his life that affected him.

Wal-Mart declined comment on the specifics of the lawsuit, but a spokesman, Greg Rossiter, told MSNBC.com:

We were appalled by this incident and are amazed that anyone could be so backward and mean-spirited in this day and age. We are sorry it happened and apologized at the time to any of our customers and associates who heard it. We updated our intercom system in this store to prevent this from happening in the future.

I am now thinking about personally boycotting Wal-Mart myself, but not because they allowed such a “backward and mean-spirited” thing to happen but because they desperately need to grow a pair. Donnell Battie, too. While what happened in the store was admittedly distasteful, so are Battie’s claims of emotional whiplash and willingness to become another leech on the already strained system.

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History buff claims Obama is not the first gay president

Howard Portnoy — Sat, 19 May 2012 18:28:55 +0000

Poor President Obama! He just can’t cut a break. First he is denied the distinction of being the first black president, partly because Democrats conferred that title on Bill Clinton and partly because Obama is only half-black.

Now it turns out he may not be the first gay president either. The Daily Mail breaks the bad news:

It would seem that Newsweek’s latest cover showing President Obama with a rainbow halo declaring him ‘The First Gay President’ is not merely attention-grabbing but historically inaccurate too.

Critics and history buffs, quick to scorn the sensationalist cover, have pointed out that James Buchanan was likely the first homosexual President more than a century ago.

Rumours about Buchanan’s sexuality have circulated with historians determining that the fifteenth leader of the U.S was gay—and that the nation knew it.

‘There can be no doubt that James Buchanan was gay, before, during and after his four years in the White House. Moreover, the nation knew it, too—he was not far into the closet,’ [ultra-liberal] historian Jim Loewen wrote on History News Network in response to the news magazine’s daring cover.

Loewen’s evidence, the Mail reports, is a letter Buchanan wrote in May of 1844, in which he confesses not only to pining for Alabama Senator William Rufus King, who had moved to Paris after being named U.S. ambassador to France, but to having “gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them.”

Maybe Obama can still squeak through on a technicality, though. In the same letter, Buchanan observes:

I feel that it is not good for man to be alone; and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection.

In other words, the fifteenth president, even if he was gay, was not forward-thinking enough to envision marrying another male of the species.

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Uncensored video of woman who took naked stroll unwrapped

Howard Portnoy — Sat, 19 May 2012 17:35:53 +0000

It was bound to happen in an age where any video is likely to end up on YouTube (and most, it seems, do). The uncensored security footage of a naked customer strolling into a lumber store in upstate New York has been uploaded to the popular site.

Barbara LeFleur (whose surname was originally reported as “LaFleur”), of Saratoga Springs (headshot here), did her Lady Godiva imitation Tuesday morning, much to the surprise (and one guesses in some cases delight) of staff and customers. She was arrested soon afterward, but protested, telling police that walking freely in the nude is a form of “self-expression.”

The Saratoga County District Attorney sees things differently. He has told reporters that LeFleur faces the possibility of up to 90 days in the slammer if she is convicted of the charges against her, which include public lewdness.

The Daily Mail did some background sleuthing on LeFleur and reports:

According to her LinkedIn profile, Lefleur is a longtime content product manager at Delmar Cengage Learning, where she helps ‘shepherd projects through the production process.’

In addition to her more formal employment, she is also a licensed massage therapist and singer-songwriter.

While her act of exhibitionism on Tuesday may have been across some legal lines, she is used to having an audience as she claims to regularly perform at area open mike nights.

In keeping with her free spirit attitude, she writes on her profile that her goal is ‘to enjoy life fully by maximizing my potential in all areas of interest and expertise.’

While the video capturing her fifteen minutes of fame is unpixilated, the resolution of the video is nevertheless low enough to render the images grainy.

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McDonalds customer finds cockroach in food; Arby’s customer finds finger

Howard Portnoy — Fri, 18 May 2012 18:57:06 +0000

A two-fer from the world of fast food. Remarkably, both stories broke on the same day.

The first anecdote, supported by visual evidence, comes from Reddit user LinkBoyJT who writes, I was eating a hash brown from McDonald’s on the way home when I felt something on the bottom….”

The something turned out to be a cockroach. But it is what happened next that gives the tale its unique flavor. In an addendum to the original post, LinkBoyJT states:

I took the thing and showed it to the manager and she marked my receipt so I could get the same meal for free the next time I come in for breakfast. She didn’t really seem all that concerned. [Emphasis added]

The same meal? Does that mean he is going back? And if so, is it in an effort to see what prize turns up in his next order of hash browns?

Meanwhile TIME carries a story out of Jackson, Michigan that gives a new definition to finger sandwich. A 14-year-old sitting in a car in the parking lot of an Arby’s with his mother and her friend had just tucked into his roast beef sandwich when he came upon something that he said was rubbery and hard to chew. Removing the offending object from his mouth, he shouted out (ostensibly in the local vernacular), “That gots to be a finger.”

His mother, Jamie Vail, at first assumed he was clowning around. Then she got a look at the severed digit, which she described as about an inch long and between an eighth and a quarter of inch thick.

Sure enough, an employee during an earlier shift had cut her finger on a meat slicer. Jackson police and the Jackson County Health Department both had a record of the injury. A spokesman for the health department said that the injured employee had likely left her station and was replaced by other workers before anyone was wise to what had happened.

John Gray, vice president for corporate communications and public relations for the chain, released a statement reading in part:

Arby’s wants to reassure customers that we are committed to providing quality food in a safe and healthy environment. We are deeply concerned and apologetic to the guest involved in this unfortunate incident.

As for the teen, Vail told the website Michigan Live, “He hasn’t been able to sleep very good.” That’s entirely reasonable. Given what he’s been through, the child gots to be having nightmares.

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News flash: Barack Obama was born on the moon

Howard Portnoy — Fri, 18 May 2012 18:06:34 +0000

By rough estimate, there are 430 bajillion news and opinion blogs currently in operation. All vie for readers’ attention, which is their lifeblood, though a second vital barometer of success is repeat business. And the key to getting readers to come back is by earning their trust and offering them something useful they can’t find elsewhere. The operant term in the previous sentence is useful.

Breitbart.com has an exclusive on a nugget of information of questionable utility. Following a disclaimer affirming that the late Andrew Breitbart, who founded the blog, was not a “Birther,” the item goes on to state:

Breitbart News has obtained a promotional booklet produced in 1991 by Barack Obama’s then-literary agency, Acton & Dystel, which touts Obama as ‘born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.’

There is a visual to confirm that such a document exists in print.

So what does all this mean? From where I sit, it means that most likely Obama lied to his agent, perhaps to make himself sound more exotic or worldly or both. The agent, Miriam Goderich, has come out with a mea culpa, reporting that the text, which is wrong, resulted from “a fact checking error by me—an agency assistant at the time.” I believe that Goderich is being either kind to Obama, by covering for him, or kind to herself, by writing off an embarrassing misstatement to poor copy-editing skills.

But that’s about as far as I believe this anecdote is likely to go. And for that Breitbart.com should be thankful. The whole “birther” movement, like the “9-11 truther” movement that preceded it, was a stain on the character of those who subscribed to it. If Barack Obama is going to be removed from office—as this writer believes he should—it should be via the voting booth and properly viewed as an indictment of his failure as president. Anything less will afford him and his supporters the luxury of claiming he was destined for greatness and would have achieved it were it not for some “technicality.”

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Obama cynically tries to capitalize on Romney’s decision not to mention Rev. Wright

Howard Portnoy — Fri, 18 May 2012 16:08:37 +0000

Note to the Romney campaign: This is what you get for taking the high road.

Yesterday I reported that Mitt Romney had publicly rejected the idea of tying Barack Obama to his longtime spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright. I vented my frustration over what I viewed as Romney’s channeling of John McCain in 2008. I argued that in a campaign that has already been sullied by half-truths and exaggerations on the part of Team Obama, nothing should be out of play.

A number of readers made compelling arguments in defense of Romney’s position. One of the strongest came from my friend and colleague, J.E. Dyer, who wrote:

I think he’s trying to immunize himself against the lefty theme—no doubt soon to be deployed in some shabby back-door manner—that Romney was a Mormon during the period when blacks weren’t allowed to have high positions in LDS leadership.

By this morning, I had done a complete 180 on this issue. Partly my view was tempered by learning in the intervening period that Joe Ricketts, the rich conservative who was to bankroll the $10 million ad buy against Obama, had opted out before Romney even spoke.

So what did Team Obama do with the same information? They sent out an email asking supporters to double up on their donations to fight the Romney/GOP smear machine. The Daily News quotes the email from campaign manager Jim Messina:

This is going to be worse than we could have imagined. President Obama needs your help before it starts.

The Republican proposal shows in vivid and gruesome detail what the President and all of us are up against…. [P]itch in today to fight these attacks and show them this only makes us stronger.

So let me see if I understand this. Wright, who married the Obamas, baptized their children, and served as a confidante to Obama right up to the period when Obama threw him under the bus three years ago, is forbidden fruit. But a childhood indiscretion that Mitt Romney committed half a century ago is not.

One might further argue that Wright is current news. He is back in the headlines for reportedly telling author Ed Klein that Obama offered him $150,000 to keep quiet in 2008. Clearly one would be wasting one’s time.

Somewhere the fabulist Aesop is spinning in his grave!

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Mario Batali takes ‘Food Stamp challenge’? What challenge?

Howard Portnoy — Thu, 17 May 2012 21:00:37 +0000

It’s admirable that Mario Batali, owner of the most expensive restaurant on the planet Earth, cares that everyone has enough to eat. To prove he cares—that he is down with the 1% (the bottom 1% that is)—Batali has carefully lowered himself down into the gutter (actually, for him I believe the gutter is “up”) with the 1 in 7 American families on Food Stamps so that he can walk a mile in their diet.

In a paean to the portly chef and his magnanimity, the Associated Press writes:

The chef, his wife and their two teenage sons are eating for a week on the equivalent of a food stamp budget in protest of potential cuts pending in Congress to the benefit program used by more than 46 million Americans.

That’s $31 per person for the week, or about $1.48 per meal each.

Goodbye restaurants, free nibbles on his talk show ‘The Chew’ and all the luxe offerings at Eataly, the high-end New York City market he co-owns. Hello, Trader Joe‘s, Jack’s Dollar Store, Gristedes and Western Beef, a low-cost supermarket chain.

What a guy! I could mention here that Batali was considerably less charitable to his own employees whose tips he helped himself to (they subsequently sued him and his partner, Joe Bastianich, and won a $3.9 million settlement), but that would be off-topic.

The important thing here is that Batali is, in his own words, “starving.” (Relevant science question: How long does it take a beached whale to starve?) Not only is he finding it difficult to sustain his girth on a buck-and-a-half per meal, but he’s also having to make do without organic and pesticide- and hormone-free food. “The organic word,” he told AP, “slides out and saves you about 50 percent.”

Let’s not forget that he’s dragged his kids into this. So how are the poor little dears holding out? Says their dad:

They’re having more peanut butter and jelly than they’ve had in the last 10 years because bread is inexpensive and peanut butter and jelly, if you buy it at the right place at the right time, is cheap.

I love pb & j and have it for lunch most weekends, even though I earn a decent living. What’s more is we buy extra-virgin olive oil at the aforementioned Trader Joe‘s, do the bulk of our shopping at the aforementioned Gristedes, and my wife frequently brings home some amazing bargains from the aforementioned Jack’s Dollar Store. One of my favorite dishes to cook is arroz com pollo, for which I use whole chicken thighs ($1.99 a pound), a large Spanish onion, a green pepper, a cup of rice, and assorted seasonings. The dish feeds a family of four for around $5, or $1.25 apiece. I don’t do this out of dire necessity but, rather, because I enjoy eating simple, wholesome food most of the time. Anyone who sets his mind to it can do the same.

The article goes on to note that Batali is on the board(!) of Food Bank for New York City, which issued the challenge. Margarette Purvis, who heads the organization, laments:

Nearly 3 million New Yorkers have difficulty paying for the food they need. They live in every single neighborhood. We’re not trying to compare the food stamp challenge to the very real challenges people face. We’re just trying to raise awareness that it’s no longer just the homeless. It’s working families who use the food stamp program. It’s seniors. It’s a lot more children, in every single neighborhood.

I’d be happy to share other recipes with hungry New Yorkers on Food Stamps. All of the meals can be cooked for under $1.48 per person. If these families choose instead to dine at McDonald’s, as so many do, they can expect their expenditure per person to triple or quadruple. Or they can splurge on a single 12-course Collezione Grand Tasting at Batali’s restaurant, but then they will be forced to fast for the entire year following.

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Study: Gila monster spit reduces food and possibly booze cravings

Howard Portnoy — Thu, 17 May 2012 19:19:56 +0000

What are you willing to do to shed a few pounds or cut down on your alcohol intake? If your answer to either question is “anything,” then I’m here to tell you there’s a pill for that. It contains Gila monster saliva, but that’s a small sacrifice for those who are serious about fighting the battle of the bulge or climbing up on the wagon.

Sounding like something straight out of Fear Factor, the active ingredient in the drug, exendin-4, is not just lizard drool but venomous lizard drool. Yet, as the Daily Mail reports, researchers at the University of Gothenburg have discovered that the drug controls the brain regions that cause us to crave food and, to a lesser extent, booze.

The discovery of the benefits of extendin-4, which is already marketed as a treatment for type 2 diabetes, was a “happy accident.” During tests of the drug on lab rats, researchers noticed that the rodents didn’t have much of an appetite at the end of a day’s work.

Karolina Skibicka, lead author of the study (which is scheduled to appear in the Journal of Neuroscience), is quoted as saying, “This is both an unknown and quite unexpected effect.” She adds:

Our decision to eat is linked to the same mechanisms in the brain which control addictive behaviours.

We have shown that exendin-4 affects the reward and motivation regions of the brain.

Co-researcher Suzanne Dickson told the Mail, “The implications of the findings are significant. Most dieting fails because we are obsessed with the desire to eat, especially tempting foods like sweets. As exendin-4 suppresses the cravings for food, it can help obese people to take control of their weight.”

The team noted that further research on the impact of the compound on alcohol cravings would be needed before they could offer similarly optimistic pronouncements. In the meantime, those looking to kick the habit can attempt to score a supply of WA|HH Quantum Sensations spray, which simulates the effects of drinking (albeit with none of the pleasure).

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Upstate NY women arrested for strolling naked through store

Howard Portnoy — Thu, 17 May 2012 19:10:48 +0000

Busted! There must be a bug or something going around that it is causing people to drop their drawers (and more) in public. Last month it was two travelers—one male, onefemale—who elected to give their fellow passengers an eyeful when they went full monty in airport terminals in Portland and Denver.

On Tuesday, it was a woman from Saratoga Springs in upstate New York who took a leisurely stroll au natural. TheAlbany Times Union reports that the woman, identified as Barbara LaFleur, 49, visited two stores in the nearby town of Ballston (I won’t be touching that one, thank you), chatting it up employees.

View photo: Surveillance photo of nude shopper

When she entered Curtis Lumber, her nakedness was captured on a security camera, which along with the testimony of employees (who phoned the police) was sufficient to warrant charges of public lewdness by the Saratoga County District Attorney’s office.

Bob Eakin, the manager of the lumber store, told reporters, “No one wanted to say much to her. It’s not a situation you want to be involved in.” He has a point. In 1970, Candid Camera creator Allen Funt even made a movie titled What Do You Say to a Naked Lady?

Nevertheless Eakin eventually found his voice and said to the woman, “Ma’am, are you aware you have no clothes on?” The correct reply would have been, “Sorry, I can’t hear you, I don’t have any clothes on,” but instead she simply responded, “Have a good day,” and walked out.

She was clothed again by the time the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Office intercepted her. She was released pending a future court appearance and could face up to 90 days in jail if convicted.

District Attorney James Murphy III issued a statement, reading in part:

While the defendant claimed she was merely expressing her freedom to be fully liberated by walking nude into Stewart’s and Curtis Lumber, this alleged conduct is actually a crime under the penal law. Surprisingly, mental health found no psychiatric issues whatsoever.

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