The Greenroom » Howard Portnoy

WH spokeswoman cites ‘98 percenters’ in defense of contraception rule

Howard Portnoy — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:34:24 +0000

After having sparked yet another bitter national debate (call it Contraceptiongate) the White House has caved—sort of. It announced this morning that it will “accommodate” religious groups by tweaking the ObamaCare mandate that requires Catholic-run institutions to cover birth control in their health insurance plans.

Jake Tapper of ABC News quotes a White House source as saying that this proposal is an “accommodation,” not a “compromise.” (Democratic leaders are still smarting over the president’s last compromise in 2010.)

In an effort to put a happy face on its efforts at appeasement, the Obama campaign sent deputy manager Stephanie Cutter to appear as guest on CNN’s Starting Point—where she promptly skunked the deal by allowing it to be called a “compromise.”

In this video clip of the appearance, host Soledad O’Brien asks, “Is it possible, in fact, to make everyone happy in a compromise?” Cutter replies, “It’s already happening, Soledad.” (When asked later whether “the President [would] say, yeah, what he has done was a mistake, and now he’s backing away from the mistake?” Cutter whiffed again, replying, “This is not abortion, this is birth control.”)

But the most telling part of the interview comes in Cutter’s claim that “98% of Catholic women have taken it. The debate on this is over.”

Mediaite’s Nano di Fino observes that Cutter is likely misquoting a poll that states that 98% of sexually active Catholic women have used birth control in some form.

But take a minute to evaluate Cutter’s calculus. A 2011 study by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, which appeared in the National Catholic Reporter, asserted that “the US Catholic population is currently 77.7 million.” It is fair to assume that roughly half that population is female—that there are some 38.6 million Catholic women living in the U.S.

Even if Cutter’s claim were accurate, her assertion would be tantamount to saying that the religious convictions of 772,000 Americans (2% of 38.6 million) are necessary casualties of ObamaCare. With some finessing that can certainly make a neat bumper sticker.

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Woman driver claims her 38KKK breasts saved her life in crash

Howard Portnoy — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:11:20 +0000

One woman’s bane is another’s boon. A week to the day after a female Florida driver insisted that her top-heavy breasts were to blame for her failing a field sobriety test, a second several states away claimed she owes her very existence to her volleyball-size knockers.

Sheyla Hershey, proud owner of the world’s largest breast implants, insists her 38KKK assets functioned as a second airbag when she lost control of her car last Sunday and plowed into a tree.

Hershey, 32, was on her way home from a Super Bowl party near Houston when she lost control of her Ford Mustang. She told Barcroft Media:

I think my breasts saved my life. The accident was bad and my boobs are sore, but they protected the rest of me.

Unfortunately, they couldn’t protect Hershey, who is a model by profession, from being cited by police for drunk driving and failure to wear a seatbelt. Despite her protestations that she doesn’t drink, she admitted in court to taking drugs for her bipolar disorder, headaches, and backaches. Under Texas law, a driver can be considered impaired if he is taking legal medications.

Hershey, who is obsessed with having grotesquely large boobs, has spent $100,000 on 30 breast enlargements—so far. She has expressed a desire to make her breasts two cup sizes larger despite sustaining a life-threatening infection from one of her surgeries.

NOTE: In compliance with Internet rule 32, I have included photos, which are here. (There is also a video to appease the lechers among you.)

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Obama: ‘I deserve a second term’

Howard Portnoy — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:13:14 +0000

Long before his coronation—I mean “inauguration”—Barack Obama demonstrated an inescapable lack of humility. Even his apologists had a tough time explaining away such baldly egotistical pronouncements as “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” or the mock presidential seal that graced his podium at campaign stops during his candidacy.

Obama’s arrogance is a facet of his personal makeup that has always been in the foreground, even on occasions where he has attempted to appear humble. In his prayerful comments to the American people following the tragic shootings in Tucson in January of 2011, he was careful to exclude himself from the critique on polarizing discourse, eschewing his favored first person pronouns for the third:

At a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do, it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.

The advice itself was sound, but it was hard to square with its speaker, who a few months earlier had castigated a major cable news outlet, calling it “destructive to [America's] long-term growth.”

Yet, I must confess, I had a similar reaction to Splice Today blogger Russ Smith’s when I heard Obama tell NBC’s Matt Lauer before the Super Bowl, “I deserve a second term.” Smith writes:

Americans can, and will, decide whether or not that’s true, but the President’s sense of entitlement certainly rivals that what Romney is accused of every day. Had Obama, mindful of political manners, said, ‘I believe I’ve earned a second term, but, you know, Matt, that’s a decision voters will make in November,’ no one could complain. But ‘deserve’? Shucks, I could tell family and colleagues that I ‘deserve’ a best-selling book, say, or better eyesight, a Lotto jackpot or a map leading me to the Fountain of Youth. Such brio would be met by laughter, or scorn, and it’d be, well, deserved.

In his interview with Lauer (the relevant portion of which is captured early in this video clip), the president essays to explain his statement by tossing out a lot of impressive-sounding numbers about job creation. But even assuming all of his boasts are accurate (and there is much to suggest they paint a distorted picture), his hubristic assertion sounds delusional. It flies in the face of his own earlier prediction—made ironically to Matt Lauer prior to the Super Bowl in 2009—that unless he was able to get the economy back on track in three years his presidency would be a “one-term proposition.” In point of fact, the unemployment rate is higher than it was when Obama took office, despite his boast that his 2009 stimulus would prevent the rate from rising above 8.5%.

Obama has forsaken his own principles repeatedly. Despite an executive order early in his presidency to close the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay within a year, the prison remains open after three. Obama’s pledge to his base to “reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals” has been rendered meaningless by targeted assassinations and drone attacks.

He has failed abjectly to bridge the partisan gap that divides the country, if anything driving a deeper wedge between the two major political factions. He has made a mockery of his condemnation of greedy and evil Super Pacs by agreeing out of expediency to take money from them.

It would be fascinating to hear a frank accounting from the president of why, in spite of these and numerous other false starts and errors, he thinks he is entitled to a second term.

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NYC mom sues city for $900 trillion for taking custody of her children

Howard Portnoy — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:12:17 +0000

A woman who claims that the city of New York violated her and her children’s civil liberties by placing them in foster care has filed a civil suit. In and of itself, the story is sad but unremarkable. What makes it worthy of commentary is the amount that the plaintiff is seeking in damages—$900 trillion, a sum that exceeds the nation’s Gross National Product many times over.

The plaintiff, 46-year-old Fausat Ogunbayo, of Staten Island, was forced to surrender her two sons to the city’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) in 2008 after the agency investigated reports that she placed the children at risk by leaving them at home alone for several hours each day. A psychiatric evaluation revealed that Ogunbayo suffers from hallucinations but refused mental health treatment.

According to her lawsuit, which was filed last week in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, Ogunbayo contends that the government “recklessly disregarded” her “right to family integrity” and that she is in fact mentally stable. She further submits that her children, who were 9 and 12 at the time of their removal, suffered undue “emotional and mental distress” as a result.

The city released a statement to the effect that it is “unable to comment on pending litigation” but that “the amount a plaintiff requests in a lawsuit has no bearing on whether the case has any merit and no relation to actual damages if any.”

Yet, it is the dollar amount specified in the suit that has catapulted the story into the headlines. The New York Post, one of the first news outlets to report the suit, quips that if Ogunbayo wins, “she could pay off the US national debt and still have $885 trillion left.”

The Post also quotes one of her neighbors as saying, “she has this ritual where, every night around 2:30 a.m. or so, she starts chanting things like, ‘Fight those who fight against me,’ and ‘Hallelujah.’” Yahoo! News cites specific other examples of her alleged mental instability:

Ogunbayo wrote to her children’s former school, insisting that the FBI and Secret Service were after her children and that their skin was becoming darker due to radiation exposure.

The website also reports that Ogunbayo is representing herself in the case.

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CNN’s suspension of Roland Martin is a teachable moment

Howard Portnoy — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:17:33 +0000

Roland Martin, tweeted on Sunday, walked it back Monday, chastened on Tuesday, suspended on Wednesday…

That’s the short version of recent events in the life of the CNN commentator and author of Speak, Brother! A Black Man’s View of America.

The tale begins on Super Bowl Sunday, when Martin tweeted:

If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham’s H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him!

and

Who the hell was that New England Patriot they just showed in a head to toe pink suit? Oh, he needs a visit from #teamwhipdatass.

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) took umbrage, immediately tweeting back:

@rolandsmartin Advocates of gay bashing have no place at @CNN #SuperBowl #LGBT.

The organization followed up with a statement demanding Martin’s dismissal.

On Monday night Martin pled his case, writing that he “sincerely regret[ted] any offense” his tweets had occasioned and assured anyone who would listen that the target of his ridicule was the game of soccer. But the story refused to go away. By Wednesday CNN felt forced to take punitive action. In a statement network officials wrote:

Roland Martin’s tweets were regrettable and offensive. Language that demeans is inconsistent with the values and culture of our organization, and is not tolerated. We have been giving careful consideration to this matter, and Roland will not be appearing on our air for the time being.

Roland Martin, suspended on Wednesday…

Which brings us current. Today is Thursday, and the liberal blogosphere is still in a dither over the suspension, which after all is of a member of a diverse group over comments allegedly defaming another diverse group. Is a puzzlement. Whether there was true “homophobic” intent is almost beside the point. The Hollywood blog The Wrap, in its coverage of the story, links to an earlier article about GLAAD laughing off an anti-gay rant by comedian Tracy Morgan, which hints at a double standard.

Daily Caller blogger Jim Treacher stands back from the fray to observe that

maybe some good will come of [Martin’s suspension]. Maybe now he’ll think twice before he complains about ‘dog whistles.’ Maybe now he sees firsthand how unfair it is when other people decide what your motives are for you.

(In a postscript, Treacher quotes Big Journalism’s John Nolte, who quips, “Martin inadvertently stepped into a trap he probably didn’t know existed, and as a result he is now receiving an invaluable lesson about today’s politically-correct hierarchy, where gay trumps black.”)

What I want to know is when Roland Martin plans to issue an apology to the International Soccer League.

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Romney and Gingrich debate ‘who’s on first’

Howard Portnoy — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:57:18 +0000

Move over Bad Lip Reading. As funny as these bits have been, they ultimately show the candidates spouting gibberish (as opposed to ….).

By contrast, a new viral YouTube video captures a little-remembered sequence from one of the GOP debates. In it, candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich weigh in on a topic of grave national importance.

From a technical standpoint, the lip synching is near-flawless. Kudos to jubripley, who uploaded the video.

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UK Teens given birth control without parental consent

Howard Portnoy — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:39:41 +0000

And you thought handing out condoms to middle schoolers was obscene! It’s mere child’s play in the view of Britain’s National Health Service. For the past three years, the state-run medical agency has been administering contraceptives at school to females as young as 13. And they have been doing it without parents’ knowledge, reports The Telegraph.

And it ain’t just pills, either. Some of the girls were given contraceptive implants, while others received hormones via injection.

A spokesperson for NHS is quoted as saying:

We are committed to ensuring local young people are able to access clinically appropriate sexual health support.This helps them to avoid unwanted pregnancies and protect themselves from sexually transmitted infections.

But not all parents are grateful. One told The Telegraph:

I agree that teaching teenagers about sexual health and contraception is very important, but this is a step too far. To perform a minor surgical procedure on school grounds without parents knowing is morally wrong. I cannot understand how this is allowed to happen.

But NHS managers are claiming the measures have been an unqualified success. According to their figures, they fitted out 1,700 girls aged 13 and 14 with implants last year, while another 800 received injections. In the time since, teenage pregnancies have dropped by 22%.

In addition, it’s not as though the girls weren’t themselves asked to sign a consent form or subject to a full medical history.

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Second teacher from LA elementary school identified as child molester

Howard Portnoy — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:31:28 +0000

When elementary school teacher Mark Berndt was arrested for sex crimes that included feeding his students his own semen, it was reported in this space that police suspected additional victims might turn up. It appears they should have been looking for additional villains. ABC News reports:

Prosecutors in Los Angeles have filed lewd-acts charges against a second teacher for allegedly fondling at least one student at the beleaguered Miramonte Elementary School in Los Angeles.

Martin Springer was charged Tuesday with committing three counts of committing lewd acts on one girl, according to the Los Angeles Times, which reported that a law enforcement officer said that a second girl recanted her accusation against the teacher.

This time, the Los Angeles Unified School District took quick and decisive action and fired Springer. They also took the additional (some will say disproportionate) step of transferring out the school’s entire 128-person staff and transferring in teachers who had been laid off.

The district also reports by way of assurances to parents, who are understandably vexed, that they will check “fingerprints, backgrounds and personnel files of those individuals who are interested in coming back to temporarily teach … to ensure that they have no record of inappropriate behavior with children.” But does that suggest that such checks were not run initially, and if so why?

Another question that cries out for an answer is why suddenly accounts of pedophiliac teachers are coming out of the woodwork. The same day the story about Springer broke, the New York Post reported that a teacher’s aide at a school in Brooklyn was arrested by the FBI for the second time in two weeks for “offenses linked to illegally possessing films of underage children engaged in sexual acts.” Taleek Brooks was charged this time with making pornographic videos of students he was assaulting.

The warning signs of child predators are well-documented. Usually perverts are males who appear to be hard-working and family-oriented and—this may be key—among the most popular teachers in school. Are school administrators ignoring the signs because of the stigma associated with profiling? Or are they just uniformly bad at the jobs they are paid, often lucratively, to do?

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The jobs numbers the Obama administration doesn’t want you to see

Howard Portnoy — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:03:16 +0000

“President Obama praised the latest jobs report,” write ABC News’ Tom Giusto and Rachel Martin. The column goes on to quote the president as saying:

Today is an encouraging day. We learned that the economy actually produced a substantial number of jobs instead of losing a substantial number of jobs. We are turning the corner.

Before you start popping corks, you should know that the dateline on that article is April 2, 2010. It provides a cautionary context to an Associated Press blurb on Obama’s reaction to the latest latest jobs report. On February 3 of this year, he told reporters, “The U.S. economy is growing stronger and the economic recovery is speeding up.”

But this time, we are assured, the cause for rejoicing is real. Here’s Katrina vanden Heuvel writing in the Washington Post several days after the president spoke:

The January jobs report—243,000 jobs added—was greeted with widespread relief. The economists over at the Wall Street Journal were virtually giddy: ‘a game changer,’ ‘positive report in really every way,’ ‘strength is everywhere,’ ‘a blow-out number.’ Liberal analysts celebrated its effects on Obama’s reelection prospects. Matt Yglesias hailed ‘recovery winter,’ arguing that barring ‘some tragic unforeseen disaster,’ we ‘should be in for … accelerating growth that put(s) us back on the path to full employment.’ Ezra Klein concluded that the report— ‘all good’—contained ‘the sort of numbers that win elections.’

Game, set, match. With “Recovery Winter” raining dollars down on us, can prosperity be far behind?

The answer depends on who you ask. If you ask former hedge fund manager Bruce Krasting, you get the distinct sense the government is telling the American people less than the whole story. On his blog My Take on Financial Events, Kasting writes:

The Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) is a key economic statistic today. Changes in the LFPR are shaping the direction of the capital markets, federal economic policy, monetary policy and, most importantly, politics.

The LFPR hit a new record low on Friday. The key question that must be answered is: Is the current LFPR a temporary phenomenon, or is this the ‘New Normal?’

Another blog, Zero Hedge, quantifies this metric, complete with a graph. The author’s conclusion is that the LFPR has fallen to a 30-year low. The civilian labor force lost an unprecedented 1.2 million participants in January—the same month that produced the BLS jobs report that has liberals dancing in the street.

The reason for the disparity between the White House’s reading of the jobs report and realists like Kasting and Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge is that the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not factor LFPR into its equation. An article at The Blaze.com suggests the BLS may be cooking the books and cites an email from Reagan budget director David Stockman that claims

the reports are so massaged, estimated, deemed, revised, re-bench marked and seasonally adjusted that any month-to-month change has a decent chance of being noise. What deep secret might they be hiding?

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Congressman outraged over satirical report of $8-billion ‘Abortionplex’

Howard Portnoy — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:46:00 +0000

t’s hard to know which aspect of the story is the most embarassing for Rep. John Fleming (R-LA). Is it that he really believed that Planned Parenthood was planning to build an $8-billion “Abortionplex”? That he never heard of The Onion, the publication in which the story was published? Or that the article was eight months old? Whichever way you slice it, the congressman is wearing a big gooey gob of egg on his face today.

The Mail Online reports:

Fleming—or someone on his staff—added a link to The Onion story … on his official Facebook page with the comment ‘More on Planned Parenthood, abortion by the wholesale.’

The article, which ran in the satirical publication in May, described the proposed complex as a “900,000-square-foot facility [with] more than 2,000 rooms dedicated to the abortion procedure.” It went on to “quote” Planned Parenthood’s president who boasted:

The Abortionplex’s high-tech machinery is capable of terminating one pregnancy every three seconds. That’s almost a million abortions every month. We’re so thrilled!

The link was removed from the congressman’s FB page, but not before the gaffe was noticed and Fleming skewered by the blogLiterally Unbelievable, which is devoted to reporting incidents of who people who post Onion stories to Facebook without realizing they are sendups. (Talk about your specialization!)

Joe Randazzo, the editor of The Onion, released a statement to Politico, in which he said:

We’re delighted to hear that Rep. Fleming is a regular reader of America’s Finest News Source and doesn’t bother himself with The New York Times, Washington Post, the mediums [sic] of television and radio, or any other lesser journalism outlets.

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Rapper who flipped off Super Bowl viewers re-releases explicit video

Howard Portnoy — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:46:30 +0000

Well, that didn’t take long. The day after she made headlines by flipping the bird to an estimated 111.3 million viewers who tuned in to Super Bowl XLVI, “artist” M.I.A. re-released an anti-American music video that had been previously banned by YouTube.

The content, which includes full frontal nudity, violence, and crack-pipe smoking, shows members of the U.S. military rounding up and summarily executing redheaded males. The title, Born Free, is presumably meant to shed light on the video’s elusive “message.” Suffice it to say that even the seemingly sympathetic Huffington Post is unsure of what the video is meant to communicate, speculating that it might be

a comment on the absurdity of genocide (of which MIA saw plenty during her early childhood in Sri Lanka) or a challenge to the idea of ‘other’ in Arizona’s immigration law.

Craig Bannister of CNSNews.com detects a point of irony in the video, writing that “M.I.A. has actually spoken out [against] ‘American kids seeing violence on their computer screens’,” while having no qualms about showing “a U.S. soldier putting a gun to the head of a child and blowing his brains out.”

In any case, the entire episode, beginning with the obscene halftime gesture, is nothing more than a blatant attempt to get talked and written about—to promote the performer’s brand. Isn’t that the sort of crass commercialism that people who pretend to lofty social agenda are supposed to inveigh against?

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Woman busted for DUI says big boobs made her fail sobriety test

Howard Portnoy — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:34:37 +0000

In the annals of excuses, this one has got to be right up (or is it down?) there with “My dog ate my homework” and “I didn’t know the gun was loaded.”

A Florida woman who was pulled over because of her erratic driving claims she failed a field-sobriety test because of her “big breasts.” New York’s Daily News reports:

Maureen Raymond, 49, of Port St. Lucie, was collared in Jensen Beach on Jan. 29 after cops spotted her speeding and crossing double yellow lines before parking across two spaces at a drugstore.

Raymond had slurred speech, glassy eyes and staggered, a deputy wrote in his report, according to the station. She also warned him before she did any roadside tests.

‘She told me that I needed to understand that she is big-chested and … she is not going to balance well,’ he wrote.

The arrest affidavit notes that Raymond, who will turn 50 this month, had open alcohol containers in her car, which moreover reeked of booze.

But it was boobs, not booze, that she insisted made it difficult for her to walk a straight line. The deputy dutifully noted:

When I told her we were going to do some roadside tasks she told me that I needed to understand that she is big chested and if I asked her to close her eyes and balance she is not going to balance well. She told me ‘Big breast you don’t balance well.’

At one point, Raymond “began to take her clothes off” to prove to the deputy just how large her breasts were, but he stopped her.

Ultimately, she was taken to the Martin County Jail, where she was charged with DUI. She was released the following day on $750 bond.

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Tom Brady’s wife to Patriot receivers: ‘Catch the [bleep] ball’

Howard Portnoy — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:50:02 +0000

Another country heard from. Gisele Bundchen Brady, Brazilian supermodel and noted football analyst, was overheard after the big game tearing the receiving corps of her husband’s team a new one. The New York Post reports:

Fans can be heard yelling ‘Eli rules!’ and ‘Eli owns your husband’ as she made her way through Lucas Oil Stadium following the Patriots’ 21-17 defeat, the second time Giants quarterback Eli Manning has bettered three-time winner Brady on the Super Bowl stage.

The comments riled Bundchen, judging by video obtained by online gossip site ‘The Insider,’ with the model making it quite clear to those around her who she thought was to blame for Brady’s failure to land the win.

‘You [need] to catch the ball when you’re supposed to catch the ball,’ she is heard saying. ‘My husband cannot [expletive] throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time. I can’t believe they dropped the ball so many times.’

Poor baby. While there is no denying that two dropped passes late in the fourth quarter were potential game changers, so was Brady’s decision on his first play from scrimmage to drop back and pass from his own 5-yard line, which resulted in a safety.

More importantly, Bundchen could stand to learn a life lesson or two. To wit:

Ignore taunts, which—though themselves gratuitous—go with the territory of being a public persona.
Never publicly criticize your spouse’s friends or the people he works with.
If you going to share your opinions in public, do it minus the profanity.

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Obama’s positive polling numbers rise above negative: Thank the GOP?

Howard Portnoy — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:10:16 +0000

“Never pray for a new king,” an old Jewish saying holds, “because there is no certainty that he will be any better than the old one.” The tendency of voters in general elections to gravitate toward a “known quantity,” usually the incumbent, bears out the wisdom of this observation.

Which in turn seems to be as good an explanation as any as for why the Real Clear Politics average spread for the president’s job approval ratings is positive for the first time in seven months. As of this morning, the spread is +2.0, with 48.5% approving of the job President Obama is doing against 46.5% who disapprove. The Rasmussen poll—which tracks the opinions of likely voters—has the president’s approval rating at 50%. The last time the positive and negative ratings were at parity was July 7, 2011.

A factor that undeniably plays a role in this surge in Obama’s approval is the brutal and relentless infighting among Republican candidates. (A secondary factor is frontrunner Mitt Romney’s well documented capacity for shooting himself in the foot).

The attacks, many of them mounted by the Gingrich camp and directed at Romney, are unprecedented in number and nature. According to the Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG), the Florida primary was the most negative campaign ever waged. The group found that 92% of the ads airing in the state during the run-up to the primary vote were negative. Of a total 11,586 television spots that ran between January 23 and 29, 10,633 were negative.

The Romney camp, which reportedly ran 3,276 ads, 99% of which were negative, is quoted by CNN as rationalizing:

We were being whaled on by Speaker Gingrich and didn’t respond well in South Carolina. So we decided to respond. We made it clear if people want change in Washington you have to bring in someone from outside Washington. Both the change in tactic as well as the message have had a real impact in Florida.

The content of the back-and-forth volleys is also problematic for the GOP’s chances of reclaiming the White House. Gingrich’s characterization of Romney as “Obama lite” is just the latest in a string of invectives that provides red meat to the Obama campaign.

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Activist and performer flips bird, utters obscenity in Super Bowl halftime show

Howard Portnoy — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:02:43 +0000

On the NBF (“Nail Biting Finishes”) scale, Super Bowl XLVI ~~LXVI~~ was right up there. As the clock ticked to zero, a Hail Mary pass thrown by Tom Brady was batted around briefly in the end zone and nearly came down in the arms of New England tight end Rob Gronkowski.

But the real excitement, I am told, came approximately an hour earlier, during the halftime show. Since I (literally) tune out halftime shows, I wasn’t aware until this morning that an event occurred that some say rivaled Janet Jackson’s widely publicized “wardrobe malfunction” during Super Bowl XXXVIII.

This time, the buzz is over an obscene gesture and utterance by a female “performer” who goes by the stage name M.I.A. (I am proud to say that until this morning I never heard of her either). The Associated Press reports:

In front of some 110 million viewers on NBC and uncounted others online, she flipped the bird and appeared to sing, ‘I don’t give a [expletive]’ at one point, though it was hard to hear her clearly.

Several other sources have reported that the expletive was difficult to make out, though the context makes the message pretty unambiguous. A video of the relevant part of the performance is here, so judge for yourself.

NBC, the network that aired the big game, has apologized for the gesture, which it described as “completely inappropriate” and “very disappointing,” adding:

M.I.A. did not do anything similar during rehearsals and the league had no reason to believe she would pull something like that during the actual show.

But apart from the horse being out of the barn, so to speak, who does NBC think it’s kidding? Were they really unaware that M.I.A.—whose real name is Mathangi Arulpragasam—harbors rather strong political opinions? Had they not heard that she is virulently pro-Palestinian and has been accused by the Sri Lankan government (she is of Sri Lankan descent) of being a “terrorist sympathizer” and “LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] supporter”? But why try to pigeonhole her activism when she explains it so eloquently in her own words?

I’m not coming at it as a politician, it’s my own personal experience. And I just think that that’s just what people want to put out there, you know, ‘You don’t have the right to talk about this.’ And they use me as a puppet to explain that to you, that only people who, you know, have a PhD in this s**t are allowed to talk about this. Or that only politicians are allowed to talk about politics, and that’s why we’re f**ked, because the cycle is constantly kept within that f**king framework. There aren’t more people standing up and telling their personal experience … if a normal civilian comes up and says ‘Hey, this happened in my village and I’m not happy about it’, we’re not allowed to talk about it. You have to follow this bureaucratic bulls**t to get any sort of action, and it’s all part of this cycle. Like back in the day, we had ideals of revolution and fighting back, and most of the time that s**t starts with individual people having personal relationships, these experiences. And now it’s so disconnected and the media can paint a picture for you … they make so much bureaucracy and politics, and I think taking away the personal aspects, the human aspects of these political issues is really wrong. Whether it’s the floods, or starving people in Africa, or whatever. It’s all funnelled through this channel, you really are not getting it from the horse’s mouth, you know?

I dunno—I think the horse has spoken loudly and clearly. Shame on NBC for pretending they weren’t listening.

Of course, it’s entirely possible her “statement” was non-political. As a performer, she has after all been compared—favorably—to Igor Stravinsky.

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Brooklyn teacher who wrote on FB that students ‘should drown’ returned to classroom

Howard Portnoy — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:24:16 +0000

A Manhattan Supreme Court has reversed the dismissal of a Brooklyn schoolteacher for posting “repulsive” comments about her students on Facebook, the New York Post reports.

The judge, Barbara Jaffe, determined that the school’s decision to fire Christine Rubino, who taught at PS 203 in the borough’s Flatlands section, was disproportionate to her offense.

On June 23, 2010, Rubino wrote on Facebook:

After today, I’m thinking the beach sounds like a wonderful idea for my 5th graders. I HATE THEIR GUTS! They are all the devils [sic] spawn!

What made the remark especially invidious in the eyes of school administrators is that it came one day after a 12-year-old student, Nicole Suriel, accidentally drowned on a school trip to a Long Island beach.

The judge ruled that in spite of Rubino’s clear and obvious frustration with her students’ unruly behavior, there was no evidence that she intended to inflict actual harm on them or that the comments would impact her ability to teach.

In the administrative hearing that resulted in Rubino’s dismissal last June, presiding officer Randi Lowitt offered her view that Facebook and other social media “are becoming embedded in society.” She added, “People post without regard to the fact that what they post has a shelf life of forever.”

But the judge demurred, writing that “even though [Rubino] should have known that her postings could become public,” she enjoyed the “reasonable” expectation that her comments would be viewed only by her Facebook adult friends. Citing Rubino’s “unblemished” 15-year teaching history, she voided the termination and sent the teacher back to the Department of Education for a “lesser penalty.”

In a superficially similar case last August, a Lake County, Florida, “Teacher of the Year” was suspended after expressing opposition to New York’s gay marriage law on his personal Facebook page. That teacher, Jerry Buell, was reinstated after the American Civil Liberties Union and Liberty Counsel publicly argued that the school’s action violated his First Amendment protections.

In the current case, the Post concludes, the ruling comes as a blow to the city’s beleaguered Ed Department, underscoring, as it does, “the grueling process to fire teachers accused of misconduct or incompetence.” That process is under review following the recent reports of a teacher who is earning $100 thousand as a hanger-on in the city’s now-defunct “rubber room” policy.

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Never too early to proselytize: Planned Parenthood’s pro-choice cartoon

Howard Portnoy — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:21:39 +0000

In the liberal-left worldview, you’re never too young to be indoctrinated. Childhood shmildhood, their message seems to go. Better to get to the little buggers while they’re young enough to sit still so that the important lessons of gay history and the palpable pleasures of bestiality can be inscribed on their tabula rosa minds.

Or, as The Blaze.com reminds us, the indisputable fairness of “reproductive choice,” made palpable for impressionable young viewers by being presented as a cartoon. The work’s title is Superhero for Choice! and its protagonist, who is subtly named Dionysus(!), is doubly “diverse”—a black woman—while the villain is not only a white male but of the Snidely Whiplash persuasion.

The cartoon was created in 2005 by Planned Parenthood Golden Gate. As Blaze columnist Mike Opelka writes, the video is no longer on the Planned Parenthood websites (hard to imagine why), but happily the internet never forgets. It can be viewed here in its entirety.

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Epic fail: HS students unable to name current veep and other horror stories

Howard Portnoy — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 19:24:05 +0000

If Diogenes was right—that the foundation of every state is the education of its youth—then the U.S. is in far greater danger of crumbling than anyone realizes.

A video making the rounds titled Lunch Scholars provides a candid glimpse into the sobering state of our educational system. The creator and narrator, a high school student named Austin, explains at the outset that his goal is “to put the bright young minds of our student body to the test.”

“The test,” as it turns out, is a handful of the most rudimentary American history and civics questions imaginable. The answers, if not surprising, are dispiriting.

When asked to identify the current vice president of the United States, students answer variously George Bush, Bill Clinton, and “somebody bin Laden.” Two different students say the Civil War is the way in which the U.S. gained its independence.

I could provide more examples but then I would need to add a spoiler alert.

That the system is broken goes without saying, but the sad reality is that the students in the video are hardly in a class by themselves. Judging from the tenuous grasp on our nation’s past exhibited by many Washington pols, it is conceivable that at least some of these clueless teens are destined to be our country’s future leaders.

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Now Showing: Painting of Obama trampling the Constitution

Howard Portnoy — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:32:11 +0000

Move over, Shepard Fairey. The iconic red, white, and blue poster titled HOPE—which became a fixture in college dorm rooms across the nation in 2008—is yesterday’s news. Say hello to The Forgotten Man, by artist Jon McNaughton.

The painting is far richer than Fairey’s graphic work and trades more in contrasts. In the foreground are two opposing main figures. On one side of the canvas is a man seated on a park bench, his head bowed, his eyes cast downward in despair. On the other is Barack Obama, standing tall, his arms folded, his expression stern but unwavering—his right foot planted firmly on the U.S. Constitution.

In the background under a darkening sky is the White House, its flag at half-staff, and in the middle ground are all 43 previous presidents, one of whom, James Madison, beseeches Obama to desist. Subtle the painting is not.

Artist McNaughton released a video in which he discusses the work and the conditions that prompted its creation:

For a long time I didn’t know if I wanted to paint this picture, because I worried that it might be too controversial. But as an American, I couldn’t be still; I knew I had to do something.

[…]

This man [on the bench] represents every man, woman, and child who is an American. Like you and me he hopes for a better life, to find the American dream of happiness and prosperity.

CBS Las Vegas reports that the painting has done well, then quotes the artist as acknowledging that his sales of copies have been in the thousands. Thousands. He has a long way to go to catch up to Fairey, who reportedly sold half a million HOPE posters.

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‘Mean’ Joe Greene to reprise his ad role in this year’s Super Bowl

Howard Portnoy — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:15:57 +0000

Some watch the Super Bowl because they love football. Some watch it because they love the commercials.

Finally, some watch the commercial sales because they represent something unprecedented in the realm of American business. Each year, the cost of airtime during the Big Game grows exponentially. And each year, the competition for a prized spot grows likewise.

For Super Bowl XLVI (that’s the one on Sunday, for those who don’t watch for the football) the average cost for a 30-second spot is $3.5 million, according to USA Today. And some time slots run as high as $4 million. And that’s not including the not-inconsiderable production costs that go into some ads, especially those featuring celebrities.

One of this year’s ads feature two celebrities, comedienne Amy Sedaris and Hall of Fame defensive tackle Mean Joe Greene, who was part of the Pittsburgh Steelers legendary “Steel Curtain” defense of the 1970s. Mean Joe is no stranger to Super Bowl ads, having played himself in a 1979 Coca-Cola commercial considered one of the all-time best Super Bowl ads.

This year Greene is reprising his role, with Sedaris playing the part of “the kid” to whom he tosses his jersey. For those who can’t wait until Sunday, a sneak peek of the ad is here.

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How would Obama—and his supporters—handle another Middle East war?

Howard Portnoy — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:43:45 +0000

When asked whether he genuinely believes there is a “strong likelihood” that Israel will launch a preemptive attack on Iran, as reported by Washington Post columnist David Igantius, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta did not dispute the claim, according to NBC. Instead, he is said to have told reporters that he was “just not commenting” for now, adding, “what I think and what I view, I consider that to be an area that belongs to me and nobody else.”

NBC also went on to say that “current and former U.S. and Israeli officials” with “access to their countries’ intelligence” affirmed:

[I]t is highly unlikely that the war-weary U.S. would mount a military attack on Iran, instead relying on financial sanctions and diplomatic pressure to squeeze Tehran.

But one high-ranking U.S. Air Force officer is not so sure. Former Deputy Commander of the U.S. European Command Charles F. Wald told the website of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that he is convinced the U.S. would feel pressure to “stand by Israel” if such an attack were planned.

“They have a fantastic military,” Wald is quoted as saying, “but not big enough for weeks or months of attacks—hundreds of sorties per day.”

This raises the question of what the Obama administration would do if faced with such pressure to stand by America’s true lone ally in the region. He would certainly feel put upon to commit to a war effort by Jewish groups here at home and by many other Americans, 63% of whom voice support for Israel. He would also feel tugged in the opposite direction by another “ally,” Russia, urging him to stand down.

For a president who, it can be argued, has made decisions more often than not on what is politically expedient, the choice would be Hobsonian. Certainly, Obama’s dovish tendencies—which led to announced withdrawals in Iraq and more recently Afghanistan—would kick in. He might adopt the same “lead-from-behind” strategy he opted for in the Libyan campaign, but then he would provide ammunition to his critics who would remind voters that his administration took five months to accomplish a military objective in Libya that should have been measured in weeks if not days.

And of course there would be hectoring from his anti-war base. It is on occasions like this that Obama probably wishes he were genuinely a commander-in-chief and not just someone who dresses for the part.

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TSA trains Super Bowl stadium vendors to ID terrorists

Howard Portnoy — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:54:20 +0000

Talk about the blind leading the half blind. From Government Security News (h/t Drudge Report):

According to TSA, Super Bowl fans may encounter TSA Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) teams at local transportation venues, including commercial and general aviation facilities and mass transit….

Additionally, TSA said over 8,000 stadium vendors, parking lot attendants, shuttle bus drivers, and other transportation professionals received the agency’s First Observer training for detecting and assessing indicators and planning tactics of potential terrorist activities. [Emphasis added]

Sounds like a capital idea. Flag down the guy selling peanuts and receive a pat down free of charge.

Considering the TSA’s less than stellar record—the agency has been guilty of 25,000 security fumbles since 2001—one wonders if they are in the best position to provide training to non-professionals for the big game. Some of the agency’s recent misadventures have included detaining a teen with a handgun design on her pocketbook. And who can forget the quick-witted, eagle-eyed screeners who confiscated a plastic toy hammer that functioned as a security blanket for a mentally challenged man?

One wonders as well whether recruiting stadium personnel to operate as snitches under the VIPR’s “See Something, Say Something” program is not a recipe for chaos or worse.

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Black Philly teens who attacked white cabbie, passenger not to be charged with hate crime

Howard Portnoy — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:05:22 +0000

When is a hate crime not a hate crime? When the skin color of the villain(s) and victim(s) doesn’t fit the paradigm that prompted the creation of hate crime laws in the first place.

Our friend Stephanie Farr of philly.com is back with the latest development in what she initially reported as “a horrific assault in Center City” in which “three teenagers who were spouting racial slurs pulled a man out of a cab to beat him.”

This time reporter Farr buries the lede only until the second paragraph, which follows:

The teens, who are black, were not charged with hate crimes because there was no evidence that the assault had been motivated by the race of the victims, who are white, said Tasha Jamerson, D.A. spokeswoman. Just shouting racial epithets during the commission of a crime doesn’t rise to the level of ethnic intimidation, she said.

Jamerson is quoted as saying, “They just didn’t have that in this case. If they had somebody who, two blocks before, heard them say, ‘We’re going to beat somebody up because they’re white, brown or purple,’ it might be different.”

But the first hate-crime legislation in the “modern era,” Section 249 of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, contains no such stipulation. In fact, the language of the law is pretty broad, covering “offenses involving actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin” and specifying punishment for

[w]hoever, whether or not acting under color of law, willfully causes bodily injury to any person or, through the use of fire, a firearm, a dangerous weapon, or an explosive or incendiary device, attempts to cause bodily injury to any person, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin of any person.

It would appear that the crime—in which the perpetrators hurled “racially derogatory names” at the cabbie and passenger and “punched … in the face, kicked … and threw a liquid” on the driver—meet the criteria for a hate enhancement as spelled out in the law.

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PETA: Prison should serve flesh-free meals to cannibal inmate

Howard Portnoy — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:58:20 +0000

It is a day for tying up loose ends. First came word that prosecutors are seeking a more stringent sentence for a store clerk who pled guilty to feeding female shoppers semen-laced yogurt. Now comes the next chapter in a story reported last week about a man who feasted on the eye and brain of another whom he had hacked to death.

A short while ago, I received an email from David Perle of PETA stating that his organization is requesting that the jail housing accused hatchet murderer and cannibal Tyree Lincoln Smith

help quell Smith’s apparent thirst for blood by providing him with flesh-free, vegetarian meals, which would be cost-effective and ensure that Smith does not contribute to any needless violence.

The email further states:

‘Studies show that vegetarian meals can reduce violence among offenders—and if anyone needs a reduction in violence, it’s someone who killed and ate another human being,’ says PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk. ‘PETA can help New Haven Correctional Center introduce a menu of bean burritos instead of burgers and so save many lives.’

Finally, there is a copy of the letter sent by Lindsay Rajt, PETA’s Associate Director of Campaigns, to Warden Jose Feliciano Jr. of the New Haven Correctional Center, where Smith is being held:

On behalf of PETA and our more than 3 million members and supporters, including thousands across Connecticut, I am writing to suggest that you help ensure that alleged killer and cannibal Tyree Smith swears off flesh forever by providing him with exclusively vegan meals while he is in your custody.

If Smith did, in fact, kill Angel Gonzalez and eat parts of his body, that would demonstrate a disturbing taste for flesh. Opting to feed him only vegan foods and denying him meat (flesh) could diminish such a tendency and thus potentially help protect staff and neighboring inmates. In fact, a meat-free meal plan could benefit all your other inmates too. Some prison operators—including those at Alabama’s highest-security prison, William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility—have found that switching inmates to vegetarian meals can be a successful part of a violence-reduction program.

Every vegan meal served at your facility would spare helpless animals from their own death penalties. In today’s industrialized meat and dairy industries, animals face cruelty not unlike that which Smith allegedly inflicted on Angel Gonzalez: Chickens and turkeys have their throats cut while they’re still conscious, piglets have their tails and testicles cut off without being given any painkillers, fish are suffocated or cut open while they’re still alive on the decks of fishing boats, and calves are taken away from their mothers within hours of birth.

Vegan meals are healthy and easy to prepare, and they can be less expensive than meat-based dishes. I hope you’ll agree that going vegan is the best way for Smith and other inmates to start making more compassionate choices. PETA would be happy to help you design the perfect cruelty-free meal plan for the New Haven Correctional Center.

Vegan meals may be easy to prepare, but I would submit they are no easier than killing your prey and eating it raw. In any case, PETA’s barking up the wrong tree. The person they should be contacting is Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who runs the Maricopa County Jail and has expressed repeatedly his view that “inmates should be treated as harshly as legally possible to emphasize the punishment aspect of their incarceration.” What punishment could be harsher than being forced to eat lentil and brown rice cutlets or quinoa and black-eyed pea salad?

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Prosecutors come down hard on clerk who laced yogurt samples with semen

Howard Portnoy — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:13:37 +0000

The next time you are in a mall food court or supermarket where samples of food are being handed out, you might want to think twice about indulging. Otherwise you might run afoul of a “prevert” like Anthony Garcia of Albuquerque. Garcia has a history of sexual deviance that … er—“climaxed” in December of 2010 when he offered female shoppers in the supermarket where he worked samples of yogurt seasoned with a special flavoring agent: his own semen.

In January, Garcia pleaded guilty to adulterating the yogurt and making false statements to investigators, crimes which carry up to three and five years of jail time respectively. But, notes The Smoking Gun, last week federal prosecutors argued in U.S. District Court that Garcia, who is scheduled to be sentenced on March 1, would not be adequately punished if the judge followed federal sentencing guidelines, which call for significantly less than the statutory maximum sentences. As the lawyers explained:

Garcia, 32, has a ‘low criminal history’ score that puts him in the ‘same category as first time offenders who have never had a single encounter with law enforcement authorities,’ prosecutors reported.

Claiming that following these guidelines “does not fairly reflect the far more disturbing portrait” of Garcia, prosecutors asked in a motion for “upward departure”—legalese for more stringent punishment.

A copy of the motion, which can be read here, provides details of Garcia’s illustrious history as a sex offender, including his having “exposed himself at a Walmart, flashed a female jogger,” and been “spotted masturbating in a car.” As The Smoking Gun further notes, he also faces a state charge of having had criminal sexual contact with a child under age 13.

My recommendation would be to make him this guy’s “celly.” The two have oodles in common as well as the potential to save the prison a bundle on food costs.

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New argument for regulating sugar: What could be bad?

Howard Portnoy — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:11:22 +0000

Maybe it’s because today is Groundhog Day, and as in the enormously entertaining movie of that name, I have the disquieting suspicion that I’ve been here before.

An article in TIME asks rhetorically “Should Sugar Be Regulated Like Alcohol and Tobacco?” then gets busy answering its own question by quoting extensively from a pre-study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The answer—a resounding yes—is intimated more grimly in the work’s title: “Public health: The toxic truth about sugar.”

The article, by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), states:

There is nothing empty about these calories [from sugar]. A growing body of scientific evidence is showing that fructose can trigger processes that lead to liver toxicity and a host of other chronic diseases. A little is not a problem, but a lot kills—slowly.

Here the authors are just getting warmed up. They have released a video version of their message in which lead researcher, Professor of Pediatrics Robert Lustig, gravely intones:

We are in the midst of the biggest public health crisis in the history of the world—and nobody even gets it. Nobody understands how important this is because they don’t consider it public health. They consider it personal responsibility.

Eventually the good doctor gets around to making his point, dismissing the bromide “It’s your fault” by ruefully observing, “I take care of obese 6-month-olds; it ain’t their fault.”

The fault, rather, rests with wholesale ignorance of the dangers of an evil white powder (a different evil white powder), consumption of which worldwide has “tripled during the past 50 years and is viewed as a key cause of the obesity epidemic.”

It’s scary stuff, but so is the team’s prescription: “Take 2 cc’s of government intervention and call me in the morning.” Somewhere, Michelle Obama’s ears are burning.

The idea of taxing sugar is nothing new. As the TIME article points out, Fance, Greece, and Denmark already tax soda, and 20 U.S. cities and states are contemplating following their lead. “Last summer, Philadelphia came close to passing a 2-cent-per-ounce soda tax.” But an endorsement like this and a federal government that is both deep in the red and in love with regulation are a marriage made in hell.

One of the most disconcerting comments in connection with the UCSF team’s proposal is this one by team member Laura Schmidt:

We’re not talking prohibition. We’re not advocating a major imposition of the government into people’s lives. We’re talking about gentle ways to make sugar consumption slightly less convenient, thereby moving people away from the concentrated dose. What we want is to actually increase people’s choices by making foods that aren’t loaded with sugar comparatively easier and cheaper to get.

The last time a promise with a tone that reassuring was made, 6 million people ended up receiving a surprise rather than a shower.

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Liberal blogger Jamelle Bouie: Obama not to blame for the polarization in country

Howard Portnoy — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:00:39 +0000

“President Barack Obama,” writes Jamelle Bouie of The American Prospect, “is the most polarizing president in Gallup polling history.” Bouie is described in his bio at the magazine’s website as “a writing fellow,” which suggests he ought to be able to do a better job of reading the text at Gallup Politics that accompanies the table he copies and pastes. It states:

Obama’s Year Three average 68-percentage-point partisan gap is tied for the fourth highest in Gallup records dating back to the Eisenhower administration. Only George W. Bush’s fourth, fifth, and sixth years in office showed higher degrees of political polarization. [Emphasis added]

Nevertheless, the general point he is making—that the nation is historically polarized under Obama—is accurate. But what inquiring minds, like Bouie’s, want to know is whose fault it is. The first person Obama usually blames for the nation’s ills is George W. Bush (who, as above quote acknowledges, was also more polarizing than Obama).

By way of an answer to his own question, Bouie writes:

[P]residents themselves aren’t responsible for the increase in polarization. That Republicans and Democrats have a stark contrast in opinions on the performance of President Obama has less to do with Obama, and everything to do with the public itself, which has grown more ideological and more partisan over the last 30 years.

There is no denying that partisanship has increased in recent decades. In fact, I’m inclined to agree with another American Prospect columnist, Ezra Klein, who opined that bipartisanship is overrated and largely unattainable.

But the claim that “presidents themselves aren’t responsible for the increase in polarization” deserves a closer look, as does Obama’s behavior during his three years in office toward those who disagree with him. Here are several of many examples:

In October 2011, Obama told a crowd of supporters:

This week I’m asking members of Congress to vote—what we’re gonna do is break up my jobs bill. Maybe they just couldn’t understand the whole thing all at once.

In May 2011, appearing in El Paso, he said on the topic of border security:

We have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader [immigration] reform as long as we got serious about enforcement…. But even though we’ve answered these concerns, I suspect there are some who will try to move the goalposts on us—again. They said we needed to triple the border patrol. Now they’ll say we need to quadruple the border patrol. Or they’ll want a higher fence. Maybe they’ll need a moat. Maybe they’ll want alligators in the moat.

In April 2011, he called then-rising GOP star Donald Trump a “carnival barker” for raising questions about Obama’s place of birth.

In April 2010, he ridiculed the press for demanding information on his health care reform bill”:

Can you imagine if some of these reporters were working on a farm? You planted some seeds and they came out the next day: ‘Nothing’s happened. There’s no crop. We’re gonna to starve. Oh, no! It’s a disaster!’

When reading these quotes, the words sarcasm, arrogance, and rigidity come to mind. These are qualities that, if you are a member of the dissenting faction, are likely to strike you as antagonistic and make you feel antipathetic toward their speaker. As the crowd reaction in this video (ca 5:17) of one of the statements reveals, the remarks strike supporters as amusing and make them feel sympathetic toward their speaker. In other words, the comments are polarizing— and so is the figure responsible for them.

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Elementary school teacher arrested for tying up and feeding students his semen

Howard Portnoy — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:02:27 +0000

Even the network NBC has its limits, having recently pulled an episode of its “reality series” Fear Factor in which contestants would be asked to drink donkey semen. Not so a California elementary school teacher, who is reported to have tied up and blindfolded his young charges, placed live cockroaches on their faces, and—yes—fed them spoonfuls of his own semen. From the Daily News of New York:

Mark Berndt, 61, was arrested Monday and charged with lewd acts on more than 20 children aged 7 to 10 years old, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said.

A teacher with three decades of experience at Miramonte Elementary School in South Los Angeles, Berndt was busted after a film processor discovered 40 prints of the dastardly acts and turned them over to authorities.

The photos, along with more sickening pics recovered from Berndt’s home, show the defenseless students bound and blindfolded with giant Madagascar cockroaches crawling on them in a classroom, authorities said.

Is this the kind of man you want teaching your children—someone so devoid of common sense that he keeps evidence of his twisted crimes?

Police also found photos of young girls holding a blue plastic spoon filled with an unknown clear white liquid up to their mouths. A spoon matching that description was recovered from the trash in Berndt’s classroom. The spoon tested positive for Berndt’s semen.

More than two dozen children were identified in the 390 photos. A video report from Los Angeles station KTLA notes that investigators are speculating that other victims may yet turn up. Adult pornography in Berndt’s house is thought to have inspired the bondage-type poses in which the children are depicted in the photos.

Berndt was arrested at his home on Monday. He has been charged with 23 counts of child molestation and is being held on $2.3 million bail.

One abiding concern is that none of the children thought to complain to parents or other authority figures.

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Romney: Perfect at feeding ad lines to the opposition

Howard Portnoy — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:05:12 +0000

It’s an odd criticism, coming from one-time conservative commentator Kathleen Parker, who writes in Wednesday’s Washington Post that Mitt Romney’s main problem is that he’s “too perfect” for “ordinary Americans” to identify with. I thought it was Barack Obama who was too perfect.

Anyway, Parker wishes. The traits that she summons up—that Romney is handsome, rich, successful, happily married, etc.—are all superficial. Deep down, where it counts, Romney isn’t especially good, let alone perfect. And where it counts is his viability as would-be (and as of last night presumptive) GOP nominee for president.

His perfectly tonsured hair, which Parker praises, became slightly tousled in a one-on-one with FOX News Channel’s Bret Baier last November. Baier challenged Romney on some of his past positions, which had been highlighted in Democratic ads. A testy Romney chastened Baier:

There’s no question but that people are going to take snippets and take things out of context and try and show there are differences where in some cases there are not.

But one of things Romney excels at is feeding lines to the opposition that they can take not only out of context but to the bank. Consider this gem, fresh out of the candidate’s mouth: “I’m not concerned about the very poor.”

Romney made this statement this morning on CNN’s Starting Point with Soledad O’Brien (h/t Mediaite). It sounds fairly brutal and uncaring, but maybe a little context would help remove some of its rough edges: “I’m not concerned about the very poor; we have a safety net there.”

Hmm, still fairly damning. And broadening the context, quite frankly, only seems to make matters worse. You can judge for yourself by watching the entire interview, or at least Romney’s entire comment, which begins at around 3:05.

Ultimately, voters want a candidate’s reassurance that he cares about them and their plight, regardless of whether they are very poor or very rich. By telling voters that he’s concerned about “the very heart of America, the 90-95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling,” Romney is sending a toxic message to the remain 5 to 10 percent. He is also sounding a lot like the other “perfect candidate” in the race.

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Copycat crime: Shopping cart dropped on two men at Bronx Home Depot

Howard Portnoy — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:53:17 +0000

Remember the story of the two pre-teens who, to assuage their boredom, threw a shopping cart from a fourth-story garage, which struck a passerby, leaving her comatose and near death? Someone else not only remembers but apparently thought it would be fun to imitate the crime. From New York’s Daily News:

Two men were injured outside a Bronx Home Depot Monday when they were hit by a shopping cart tossed from an upper level of a parking garage—the second such incident in the city in the last three months.

The haunting replay happened about 5:30 p.m. at the Gateway Center near Yankee Stadium—and was nearly identical to the incident in Harlem that left a mother of two with brain damage last October.

As in the original case, the projectile landed on its victims’ heads. The injured men, Camara Lounceny, 52, and Sagne Ibrahima, 30, were taken by ambulance to Lincoln Medical Center, where they are both reported to be in stable condition.

The Daily News quotes a cashier who witnessed the incident as saying:

It was pretty bloody. They were laying on the ground. One guy was trying to sit up, and the other guy was just laying there—he wasn’t moving.

The account is not dissimilar to eyewitness reports after Marion Hedges, a 47-year-old mother of one, was struck on October 30 by an identical projectile hurled from 40 feet up. The two 12-year-olds perpetrators of that crime were said to be laughing and joking at the time of their arrest two days later—and with good reason, as it turns out. The family court judge who presided over their case betrayed an inclination to “return” the boys “to the community” rather than sentence them to up to five years in juvenile hall.

One has to wonder whether the person behind this most recent heinous assault was aware of that unfortunate turn in the original case. And, if so, whether the family court judge, Susan Larabee, senses the blood on her hands.

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Four-year-old brings marijuana to school, offers to share with classmates

Howard Portnoy — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:38:08 +0000

Remember the rule—that you can’t chew gum in class unless you have enough to share with everyone? It’s a lesson that a preschooler appears to have learned well. Reuters reports:

A four-year-old U.S. boy who announced to his teacher at school snack time that he wanted to share pulled nine bags of marijuana out of his jacket pocket, police said on Wednesday.

Police in Meriden, Connecticut were called to Hanover Elementary School Tuesday afternoon after the young special needs student displayed the drugs, authorities said.

Meriden police are on record as saying that child was carrying nine individually wrapped bags of marijuana that looked like they had been “prepared for sale.” The report does not specify whether the pot came from the child’s own stash or whether his mommy packed it in his lunchbox next to his pb & j sandwich.

Mark Benigni, the Meriden schools superintendent, told Reuters:

What’s so disheartening is this is really an adult issue and problem and adult behavior put a student at risk.

This student had no idea what he brought to school or what the substance was.

Or at least so he assumes. Is there any reason to suppose that parents who send a controlled substance to school with their 4-year-old are above identifying and using it in his presence? For all the superintendent knows, the child may regularly consume foods prepared with the drug. Or smoke it himself.

The Department of Children and Families is reported to be looking into the incident.

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Voting for the least of all evils

Howard Portnoy — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:04:54 +0000

As Mitt Romeny stands poised to win the Florida primary, a victory that will catapult him one giant step closer to the GOP candidacy for president, the question on everyone’s mind—especially Republicans (and especially Democrats)—is whether he and, for that matter, his chief opponent, Newt Gingrich, are electable.

It is a question asked again today in an article by Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics. Trende’s conclusion is bipartite. First, he argues, the claims about Romney’s and Gingrich’s unelectability are greatly exaggerated. As evidence, he points to the example of Christine O’Donnell who—despite being written off by many pundits as one of the least electable candidates in history—lost the independent vote in the Delaware race for U.S. senator by a slender three-point margin.

But second, and more importantly, Trende notes, if the GOP frontrunners are unelectable, then the same may be said for Barack Obama. In support of this assertion, Trende offers five obstacles to re-election that the Obama camp will need to surmount if they are to emerge victorious.

While I like the picture Trende paints and concede that Obama will have a tough road to hoe—and would have an immeasurably tougher one had a Mitch Daniels or possibly Paul Ryan entered the race—I believe Trende is being overly optimistic.

Take his first of five points: that Obama is still unpopular. He writes:

Obama probably needs to be pretty close to 50 percent approval on Election Day to secure re-election.

[…]

As of this writing Obama’s job approval in the RCP Average is 46.8 percent. For the last month, his job approval in Gallup has bounced around between 42 percent and 46 percent, averaging 44.7 percent.

Putting aside concerns about another reliable time-tested metric—that no president has ever won re-election with a Gallup approval rating of under 47 percent going into Election Day—Obama’s positives have been steadily improving since mid-January in his Real Clear Politics average while his negatives have been steadily decreasing. This trend might be related to a resonance with voters of the president’s populist “economic fairness” pitch, but it’s more likely a reflection of the circular firing squad in which the leading GOP candidates have placed themselves.

In support for his second point—that the economy is still Obama’s albatross—Trende offers a battery of impressive graphics, including one that shows how weak the economic indicators are under Obama’s stewardship compared with those in previous election years. One overarching observation, that the economy is improving too slowly for the president to reap the benefits, is hard to quibble with. But that hasn’t stopped Obama from telling the crowds who turn out at his whistle stops that “America is back.” He boasts that 200,000 new jobs were added to the economy in December and that unemployment is back under 9%. True, the number of new jobs is still 50,000 shy of the sort of monthly growth needed continuously for five years just to return to the pre-recession unemployment rate, but if Obama demonstrated anything in the 2008 campaign it is that he is a great salesman. Those who underestimate his powers of persuasion do so at their own peril.

Trende’s third point, the unpopularity of Obama’s domestic agenda, is unimpeachable. The percentage of likely voters who want to see ObamaCare repealed has remained unwaveringly above 50 for close to two years, and 62% of Americans believe the 2009 stimulus created more debt. So far, these are messages that the GOP campaigners have failed to capitalize on while they beat up on each other, but presumably once a candidate has been nominated the focus will revert to these domestic failings.

Point four—head-to-head polling—is of limited usefulness even by Trende’s lights, not to mention that currently Obama leads either front-running GOP opponent in important national polls.

Which brings us to the final point: “We’ve heard it before.” My only reservation about Trende’s claim that those arguing Obama’s electability suffer from “stuck record” syndrome is that such arguments are the stuff of which tugs-of-war are made. Democratic leaders and pundits will argue that the election is not a referendum on Obama’s presidency, that the Republicans simply don’t understand what Americans need or want, and that it’s all Bush’s fault. And Republicans will take the opposite tack.

When all is said and done, and considering Americans’ conservative tendencies when it comes to choosing a leader—which is to say that on more than one occasion voters have been willing to stick with a known quantity no matter how weak—it is hard to deny that Obama’s chances of winning a second term are solid. Naturally, he won’t be able to do it alone. And he won’t have to. He will have cover from the mainstream media, which once again will assume the role of enabler in helping him promote his radical agenda by pretending it is middle-of-the-road.

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Video of news reader Brian Williams poking finger at George W. Bush

Howard Portnoy — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:50:48 +0000

It can’t be any fun for liberals trying to build a case against Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer as (a) rude, (b) racist, or (c) both for wagging a finger in the face of President Obama, but Breitbart.tv has dredged up an old video clip of NBC news reader Brian Williams poking a finger in the chest of then-President George W. Bush.

Frankly, having watched the video (in which the former president, detractors will be quick to note, adds an extra syllable to the word eclectic), I can’t for the life of me figure out why Williams made the gesture. The clip, which lasts approximately 90 seconds, appears to be part of a longer interview, whose broader context might shed light on the gesture. In the portion highlighted in the clip, the exchange between the two men seems largely amicable.

Interestingly, the gesture comes after an observation by the former president that contains a kernel of advice the current president might do well to follow:

The great thing about the presidency is that you’re totally exposed. And people—particularly if you’re making decisions, and hard decisions—spend a lot of time not only analyzing the decisions. They analyze the decision maker, and I understand that. But a president must never let them get him off track.

Of the gesture, Mediaite writes, “There’s a difference between a media figure and an elected official” poking a finger at the sitting president. That’s true. A state governor is a high-ranking political figure whose stature is much closer to the president’s than some member of the press.

It will be interesting, though, to see whether Brewer’s critics will react to this clip.

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Brooklyn mother deserts unwanted daughters, 3 and 5, on sidewalk, drives off (Udpate)

Howard Portnoy — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:47:42 +0000

UPDATE: In case anyone was beginning to feel sympathy toward this mother, reasoning that she may have been a beleaguered soul acting out of desperation, new information courtesy of the Daily Mail should help clear away the emotional cobwebs. The report reveals that just prior to abandoning her daughters, Dalisha Adams was overheard by a neighbor shouting at the children, “Stop crying, shut the f*** up. I’m gonna get you out of here.” The article further reveals that after deserting the girls, Adams went home and busied herself with uploading “a photograph of a seemingly naked man holding a bottle of champagne” to her Facebook page. Sounds like she was moving on to the next chapter of her life.

* * *

What do you do if you’re a parent and your children become just too much to handle? One Brooklyn mother came up with an ingenious idea. She bundled up her two young daughters in their winter coats and deposited them on a street corner, evidently hoping that some passerby desirous of owning a couple of kids would take them home and feed them each a saucer of milk.

Before you come down hard on the mom, Dalisha Adams, 26, you should have all the facts at your disposal. According to the New York Daily News, Adams had the presence of mind to give the girls a starter supply of unsoiled disposable diapers, so their new owner would be prepared. Also give her some credit for leaving the children on a busy sidewalk. She could have dropped them off in the woods.

One of the two girls—named Domini and Dioni, ages 5 and 3 respectively—told the Daily News, “Mommy just left us on the sidewalk and drove away.”

Luckily, the first person to notice the children was good Samaritan Michelle Davis, who is quoted as saying:

They were wandering up and down the sidewalk for a while, just playing by themselves.

It’s horrible. How could you leave your own children out there? They’re babies and you just leave them out there like that?

Davis notified police, who took the sisters to an area hospital as a precaution. Then cops went to work finding the parent who abandoned them.

Domini told police that she lived “in a blue house with flowers in front,” that she believed the house was on 53rd Street, that her mother’s name Dalisha, and that she drove a white car.

It took some time, but police ultimately found Dalisha Adams—and promptly arrested her. She has been charged with two counts of endangering the welfare of a child. The girls, meanwhile, are in the temporary custody of Children’s Services.

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MSM distorts news reporting in order to play race card

Howard Portnoy — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:04:12 +0000

As is inevitably the case in a 24-hour news cycle, the outrage over last week’s literally-in-your-face clash between Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and the president has subsided, but not before the equally inevitable shouts of racism were heard around the web. MSNBC “News analyst” Al Sharpton helped those with a code deficit decipher the incident, which he called “another example of disrespect and ‘deligitimatizing’ this president.” [Video clip here]

As though he needed backup, Sharpton enlisted the services of Sirius XM black radio host Joe Madison, who explained that the governor is just one more white conservative “who cannot stand the fact that this is an African American who is now one of the most powerful individuals on the planet.”

Now that that controversy has died down, time to ask, as Daniel Tosh might, “What’s next?” That would be a story by a reporter named Stephanie Farr, who writes at the Philadelphia Inquirer website philly.com:

In a horrific assault in Center City on Saturday night, three teenagers who were spouting racial slurs pulled a man out of a cab to beat him. And when the cabdriver intervened to stop the assault, the teens turned their rage on him, police said yesterday.

About 8:25 p.m., a cab was stopped at a red light at 15th and Chestnut streets when two 17-year-old boys and a 15-year-old boy approached and started calling the male passenger in the back seat racially derogatory names, police said.

The boys then threw an unknown liquid at the cab before they opened the door, pulled the passenger out and started to pummel him, police said.

When the cabbie got out of the car to see what was going on, the passenger ran away and the teens turned on the cabbie. They punched him in the face, kicked him and threw a liquid on him, police said.

Before anyone pages Rev. Al, I should point out that, after continuing in this vein for another two paragraphs, reporter Farr writes, “Police said the three teens were black and the cabbie and passenger were white.”

If the topic were anything else, the reporter (or conceivably her editor) would be guilty of burying the lede, a cardinal sin that is deligitimatized in Journalism 101.

It is one thing for the mainstream media to perpetuate the widely held liberal notion that the United States remains a fundamentally racist nation. But to report a story about a racially motivated crime and ignore until the seventh paragraph the fact that the perpetrators are black is to engage in the worst kind of race baiting.

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NYC teacher making $100K in rubber room refuses to retire

Howard Portnoy — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:38:41 +0000

How broken is the educational system in New York City? Broken enough that a 66-year-old teacher relegated to one of the city’s “rubber rooms” after being deemed a danger to his students refuses to leave. To add insult to injury, the teacher, Alan Rosenfeld, is still pulling down $100,049 a year in salary, plus health benefits, a growing pension, and vacation and sick pay. Oh, and he’s worth a cool $10 million.

Because there is no mandatory retirement age for teachers in New York State, the city Department of Education has no recourse but to let Rosenfeld stay as long as he likes.

And he likes. The New York Post quotes a friend of Rosenfeld as saying of his refusal to quit:

It’s an F-U. He’s happy about it, and very proud that he beat the system. This is a great show-up-but-don’t-do-anything job.

The city has only itself to blame. Rosenfeld was accused in 2001 of making lewd comments to students and ogling eighth-grade girls’ behinds. These were grounds for dismissal that even the powerful American Federation of Teachers would have had a tough time defending.

But the DOE failed to produce enough witnesses at a hearing to make the charges stick. The only choices available were to return Rosenfeld to the classroom or send him to a rubber room. Officials opted for the latter and Rosenfeld—a licensed attorney and real-estate broker—continued to draw a paycheck from the city while enriching himself by managing a portfolio of lucrative investment properties.

After the DOE closed down its rubber rooms in 2010, Rosenfeld was permanently reassigned to a Division of School Facilities warehouse in Long Island City, Queens, where he is asked to do occasional light clerical work. But even that has not been sufficient to unseat Rosenfeld whose pension grows by $1,700 annually. If he quit today at full retirement, his pension would total around $85,400 a year.

The paper quotes Marcus Winters, a Manhattan Institute expert on teacher evaluation, as saying:

It’s a tremendous waste of money. While we don’t want to remove people just because they’ve been accused, we also want the school system to cut ties with teachers it’s not going to put in the classroom.

Rosenfeld is currently one of six hangers-on in a broken system that is draining $650,000 a year from the city coffers.

What makes the situation even more outrageous is that, according to the education reform documentary Waiting for “Superman,” one out of every 57 doctors loses his license to practice medicine and one out of every 97 lawyers loses his license to practice law. But in New York City between the years 2007 and 2010, just 88 out of some 80,000 city schoolteachers lost their jobs for poor performance.

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Allen West to Obama et al: ‘Get the hell out of America’

Howard Portnoy — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:51:23 +0000

New York’s Daily News may have exaggerated when it adorned the front page of its October 29, 1975 edition with the headline “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD,” but there is no missing the rancor in the choice words Rep. Allen West had over the weekend for the president and Democratic leaders (h/t The Blaze).

The congressman was speaking at a Palm Beach County GOP Party event on Saturday when he said of Florida:

This is a battlefield that we must stand upon. And we need to let President Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and my dear friend, chairman of the Democrat National Committee, we need to let them know that Florida ain’t on the table.

Take your message of equality of achievement, take your message of economic dependency, take your message of enslaving the entrepreneurial will and spirit of the American people somewhere else. You can take it to Europe, you can take it to the bottom of the sea, you can take it to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States of America.

The video clip, which is here, is bound to be used by Democrats in this election year as an example of Republican oppositionalism, hostility, ill will, and a host of other sins. All GOP members have to do to fight back is focus on the yawning chasm between the promises of post partisanship made by Barack Obama in Chicago’s Grant Park the night of the election and the reality that has ensued in the years since. Commentary’s Peter Wehner has a catalog of some of these lofty pledges. He also has a link to a Gallup poll that highlights Obama’s unprecedented polarization of the country in each of his three years in office.

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Obama’s fairness doctrine a recipe for AMP (Assured Mass Poverty)

Howard Portnoy — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 17:46:33 +0000

In his populist lectures on income equality, Barack Obama has long tossed around terms that beg for clarification. Last July, when a battle raged over extending the debt ceiling, he said:

I do not want, and I will not accept, a deal in which I am … able to keep hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional income that I don’t need, while a parent out there who is struggling to figure out how to send their [sic] kid to college suddenly finds that they’ve [sic] got a couple thousand dollars less in grants or student loans. [Emphasis added]

In a column back then, I made a whimsical reference to an additional income reserve (AIR), a cash source that could be tapped, at least in the president’s worldview, to pay down the nation’s debt.

In an article at The Freeman, editor Sheldon Richman remarked on some of the will-o’-the-wisp notions Obama used to pepper his State of the Union address on Tuesday. Highlighting the line “[Americans] understand that when I get tax breaks I don’t need and the country can’t afford, it either adds to the deficit,” Richman writes:

[W]hat’s need got to do with it? Does Obama really favor a tax system that leaves you only what you need—as determined by someone else? And look at that term “tax breaks.” If a burglar decides not to break into your house and take your things, have you gotten a break? Or have you simply kept what is yours? Is Obama really suggesting that how much of your income you retain should depend on what “the country” can afford? What does that even mean?

I think what is means is that, when all is said and done, the president prefers a level playing field above all else—and he isn’t especially concerned about how high that level happens to be. I maintain that, left to his devices, Obama would sooner preside over a country where everyone had little than a land of haves and have-nots.

Consider his unorthodox view of what constitutes wealth. For the first two years of his presidency, Obama hammered away repeatedly at the idea that any couple earning over $250,000 a year was “rich.” In fact, even though he has since reset his sights on punishing millionaires, he still seems to consider those earning $250,000 as wealthy. In the SOTU he said:

In fact, if you’re earning a million dollars a year, you shouldn’t get special tax subsidies or deductions. On the other hand, if you make under $250,000 a year, like 98 percent of American families, your taxes shouldn’t go up.

He failed to specify what he thinks should be the fate of a broad swath of the population—those earning less than $1 million but at least $250,000—but it’s not hard to imagine, given his distate for the well-to-do.

One of his favorite bullet points in his economic fairness pitch these days is increasing the tax on capital gains for the wealthiest Americans from its current rate of 15% to at least 30%. What he fails to acknowledge is that such an increase is already set to happen, and not just for millionaires. Roberton Williams of the Tax Policy Center notes that if the Bush tax cuts are permitted to expire and ObamaCare remains the law of the land, taxes associated with that legislation will drive the maximum tax rate on capital gains up to 25 percent by 2013. The Carleson Center for Public Policy notes that over the last 40 years, every time the capital gains tax rate has been increased, revenues have declined.

But it’s not just the rich (whoever they are) who will be affected by the increase. Despite an 11-point decline since 2007 in the percentage of Americans who invest in the stock market, a robust 54% are still investors. If they are forced to sell off securities, which is not hard to imagine in an economy in the throes of a slow and jobless recovery, they too will be hurt. But at least the pain will be shared equally.

Now that we know what Obama’s singing voice sounds like, one can almost hear the commander in chief crooning this 1927 populist ditty.

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Soap actor despondent over dog’s forced euthanasia kills self

Howard Portnoy — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 19:53:52 +0000

Animal lovers understand all too well the grief of losing a furry or other non-human companion. But for a New York actor who had appeared in TV soap operas, the loss of his beloved dog Rocco was more than he could handle—especially considering the circumstances. The dog, a pit bull, was perfectly healthy at the time it was destroyed.

Forty-seven-year-old Nick Santino, whose TV credits included roles in All My Children and Guiding Light, took his own life on Tuesday, the New York Post reports. Earlier in the day, he euthanized Rocco, which he had rescued from a shelter several years ago.

[Photo: Nick Santino and Rocco in better times]

Nick Santino knew all about shelters, having been raised himself in an orphanage and foster homes. He was fond of saying and even wrote on his Facebook page, “I did not rescue Rocco, Rocco rescued me.”

The decision to put down Rocco, possibly the most difficult Santino ever faced, was the result of non-stop pressure from neighbors in the Lincoln Center-area building where he lived. A regulation passed in 2010 prohibited tenants from owning pit bulls as pets. The rule was not retroactive, however: It did not apply to pit bulls already in the building, which included Rocco.

That did not deter Santino’s neighbors from harassing him and complaining to the building management about Rocco. The dog was not permitted to ride in the main elevators and was not allowed to be left in the apartment alone for more than nine hours.

Ulitmately, the anguish became overbearing. Santino, unable to find another home for Rocco, was left with no choice but the tragic one he ultimately made. After the deed was done, neighbors report that a tearful Santino brought dog treats and a fluffy bed to the building’s doorman and said, “Give these to the other dogs. Rocco is no more.”

One of those neighbors, James Steven Grant, is himself a dog owner. He found two rawhide bones on his doorstep. He is quoted as saying, “Rocco was the sweetest dog in the world. Rocco wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Next to Santino’s body, authorities found a suicide note reading:

Today I betrayed my best friend and put down my best friend. Rocco trusted me and I failed him. He didn’t deserve this.

The same is certainly true of Santino.

Rocco was cremated, according to his owner’s instructions. A close friend, Stuart Sarnoff, has arranged for Santino’s remains to be cremated as well. “One way or another,” Sarnoff is quoted as saying, “their ashes will be together forever.”

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Bill Maher aghast over Jan Brewer’s ‘unprecedented disrespect’ for president

Howard Portnoy — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 19:32:44 +0000

From the “you can’t make this stuff up department”: On Thursday, self-styled sage Bill Maher waded into the kerfuffle over Gov. Jan Brewer’s dustup with President Obama (h/t Mediaite). Here is Maher’s assessment of the now-viral image of the governor wagging a finger in Obama’s face:

I think this is unprecedented. I don’t know of any other instance where someone has been this disrespectful to the president and [applause], you know, I don’t know who Miss Daisy there thinks she’s talking to.

You hope for Maher’s sake that he’s joking—but he’s not. He was apparently asleep when Rep. Pete Stark called then-President George W. Bush a “dunce” and an “idiot” on CNBC’s Squawk Box on November 7, 2003:

The political message is that George Bush is a dunce … Eight Americans were killed last night, God knows how many will be killed today because this idiot in the White House has been lying to us….

Or when Stark said on the House floor in 2007 that the president sends American soldiers into battle so they can die for his “amusement.” Or when then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that Bush was “a total failure” as president.

Or it that’s too localized (since both Stark and Pelosi represent California), how about crowds of Americans booing and jeering Bush at Obama’s inauguration? Blogger William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection offers a challenge:

Please dig deep into the history books and show me another President who was booed at his successor’s inauguration.

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