Oh Me, Oh My!

A spontaneous, truthful utterance on live TV, and by a liberal, to boot! Wow.

Here's the longer, more entertaining clip from Mediaite:



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TSA Gets Cranky When It Can't Feel Up Granny

Talk about a likely Al Quaeda recruit. Just look at her! Well traveled. Strong-willed. Weighing in at a whopping 105 pounds. And get a load of that cane she's wielding. Boy, do I feel safer now.

Because after an intrusive, 45-minute search, the TSA told this 95-year old woman she could either (1) go home and not fly or (2) remove her Depends underwear because "it was wet and firm" and impeded a full inspection of her clearly suspect crotch.



Jean Weber, the daughter of this metal-bound menace, filed a complaint and told news outlets that the TSA ordered her cancer-riddled mother to remove her Depends diaper or else they would not clear her for boarding.

On Sunday, before word of its utter lunacy and humiliation of this old woman had spread throughout the land, the TSA held to its pat party-line: "our agents acted professionally and in accordance with proper procedure."

Naturally!

But after a few too many sheep began mewling too loudly, today the TSA changed course:

Whoa there, folks. Keep your pants on. We never made that old lady take off her diaper. We simply told her she couldn't fly unless she took it off, because it was impeding our "inspection."

Well, now. That just changes everything. Thanks for the clarification.

So hey, if the TSA has to terrorize us to catch the terrorists, I'm down with that. Whatever it takes to keep me safe!


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Facebook is the Devil

Call me a party-pooper, but whenever I have teenagers in my office, I feel compelled to give them my standard lawyer-mom spiel, the one I repeat to Mr. M almost daily:

1. Don't drink and drive
2. Don't go to ___________ (a nearby town whose police routinely goad teenage boys into arguments and then beat them up)
3. NEVER get a tattoo.

But a "tattoo" is more than you think. Because everything on the internet is a tattoo. Every email, every blog post, every comment, every blurb by or about you on a facebook wall . . . is permanent. It will never, ever go away.

When I talk to people about privacy and the internet, most of the time what I hear is, "Well, if you've got nothing to hide, what's the problem?" And this so misses the point.

Is there no value in privacy? Is there no indignity we won't cheerfully endure, or intimate detail we will not share with the world?


When I was in high school, if you screwed up, you could start over. Off to college you could go, in another state, with a clean slate. Not any more. Our children will get no fresh start. Their mistakes will follow and haunt them forever on the internet, thanks to social media sites like Facebook.


The latest creepy development is Facebook's facial recognition software. Once a person has uploaded a photo and identified you, Facebook can identify you in every photo uploaded by anyone. Watch Nightline's story on it below.



Spend an hour considering the implications of this, and you won't be able to come up with them all.

Imagine your 12-year old son is with a group of other boys and they download something raunchy from Youtube. They're young and dumb and they proudly pose around the computer screen for a picture. Then one of the boys uploads the photo to Facebook and tags all the boys in the photo. Boom. It's there. Forever. And your son can now be identified in any photo posted on Facebook, in perpetuity.

So when your son, older and wiser, applies to theology school? Well, he just might get rejected.

These foolish boys are surely tagged forever.

It's true that, at least for now, the only people who can "tag" you -- or so Facebook claims -- are your "friends" (and we all know how fair-weathered friends can be be). But we also know how eager kids (hell, even adults) are to amass more "friends" on their Facebook page. So don't tell me to calm down because only "friends" can "tag" me.


As for subpoenas from law enforcement that can require Facebook to hand over every single photo on its massive data base that has your kid's mug in it? Well, don't even get me started.


Facebook, my friends, is the devil.

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In Praise of Palin's Emails and Other Odds and Ends

First, a shockingly complimentary story from the New Republic on the cogency of Sarah Palin's scandal-less emails. After you finish it, you may be tempted to pulverize all those distracting devices our children pound and pounce on, in lieu of social interaction and reading.


Next up, an article by David Brooks(!) about the mammoth role our government played in the downfall of our economy.

If you're tired of scrabbling for ammunition -- hard, quantifiable facts -- to refute the misinformed, oft-repeated, "Republican deregulation caused the collapse of our economy," refrain, here it is.

Remember Franklin Raines' incredible testimony to Congress in 2004? Republicans concerned that the lending standards of these GSEs were too loose called a hearing. Democrats reacted to GOP worries with outrage and fury.

Fannie's President Raines claimed, with a straight face, that Fannie's mortgage loans were "riskless"!



In other news, the IMF announced today that the U.S. is no less in the grease than Greece.

For shame, for shame.

Happy Friday.

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Screwy Things

Doug Kass, a fairly prominent hedge fund manager, has coined a new word that aptly describes the middle class's plight: screwflation. You can catch him and his coining, in all of its dryness, here:



But alas, Obama clings to utter cluelessness. Here, his latest, jaw-dropping blather:



The company Obama highlights -- Cree -- is indeed creating jobs. Overseas. With your tax dollars! C-E-L-E-B-R-A-T-E good times. Come on!

Yet more confidence-inspiring is Obama's assertion that his last visit to Cree -- back in 2008, so many years ago! -- was "before the financial crisis happened." 2008 was "before the bottom fell out" of our economy.

Oh, dear God. Seriously? What doof was running his gig this time? The one who prompted Obama's toasting faux pas at Buckingham Palace during "God Save the Queen"?

Go ahead, call me a geek. Call me an alarmist, or histrionic. But I well remember where I was when two huge Bear Stearns hedge funds collapsed (summer of '07, in the mountains in N.C.) as vividly as I remember where I was when the Challenger exploded (the "ladies room" in a generic office building, tinkling to the Muzak before the solemn interruption).

For heaven's sake, the financial collapse is the reason Obama beat McCain. And it started in 2007, if not sooner.

At his Cree crow-fest, Obama went on to extol, with a confounding fatherly pride, all the progress Cree has made since Obama last visited it three years ago. Indeed he mentioned his 2008 visit several times, as if it had anything to do with . . . anything.

By Saul Loeb, AFP/Getty Images

Oh, brother. Get a grip!

Obama also (now, infamously) drew haughty laughter from the panel when he wittily quipped, "Shovel ready jobs were not as . . . uh . . . shovel ready as we expected."



Oh, he's a clever fellow, that One.

A close friend of mine -- who was forced to sell her house in a short sale rather than lose every penny of her equity and suffer the humiliation of a foreclosure -- texted this acronym after Obama's charming one-liner: LMAO. And a hearty laugh was had by none.

The strong of stomach and light of heart can read Neal Boortz's worthy comments on the gaffe-filled affair here.

Meanwhile I'll return to researching Facebook's stealthily compiled biometric data base that enables it to identify anyone whose face has ever been posted on its website.
(And, you may reasonably ask, why should you even care? Because, my dear, when your teenage son is photographed or videoed in an unflattering high school antic and it's uploaded to Facebook by his "friend," that picture will follow your son to his grave. No mistakes allowed. No such thing as a "clean slate" or "starting over" -- not any more.)

But frankly, sadly, I must confess the fact anonymity and privacy are fast becoming oxymorons depresses me less than the lameness of Obama. I used to think -- dare I say it, hope? -- that he was crazy like a fox. Now I think he's just plain Keynesian-Krugman dumb.

So if I don't go back to my old-fogy Facebook-is-the-devil days, I'll have to start scrutinizing the GOP field: Tim Polenta, Rick Sanitarium, Michelle Fostermom, No-Gin Rummy, Pizza Cain, and Scary-Bangs Perry. And then you'll have to call in the white coats.

UPDATE: re Facebook-is-the-devil, here's a perfect example.

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Just In: Weiner Asks for Leave of Absence

David Karp/Associated Press

Abstinence and absence might make our hearts grow fonder. And this poor victim of a man most certainly needs leave of his senses.

Today, Weiner wisely announced he will be seeking a Congressional leave of absence and checking himself into treatment, "to focus on becoming a better husband and healthier person."

Quite right.

Bill Maher and the Glee lady, Jane Lynch, did a dramatic reading of Weiner's textversations with a Vegas card dealer. It just about killed me.

But before you watch it, or this Xtranormal version, be sure to remove all minors from the room.



Meanwhile, back at the farms and on other homefronts, the economy flounders.


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Wow: Weiner Plays Back-up to Breitbart's Band

Richard Drew/AP Photo

Remember all the stories from the left, accusing Andrew Breitbart of doing a hack job on the poor, "manipulated" Anthony Weiner? The claims that Breitbart had hacked into Weiner's Twitter account and posted the member's member himself?

Well, Breitbart took care of that today. In a big way.

Weiner called a press conference (finally) to 'fess up to his numerous, illicit twitters. As it happened, Breitbart was staying at a hotel just a few blocks away and . . . he decided to take a stroll.

Here's Breitbart in fine form, lambasting the left-wing journalists who maligned him when all the while, Weiner was the one telling the lies.



(The long version of Breitbart's press conference can be seen here.)

Our man A-Rod was all atwitter as he served as Breitbart's back-up band. His tearful, moving confessions -- to "several inappropriate conversations" -- were captured by another Huma at ABC.



(h/t: The Right Scoop, Hot Air)

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Oh, I Wish I were a Representative Weiner: UPDATED

Naturally, the Weiner scandal continues to burgeon, and he's now saying, "yeah, sure, 'it could be' a picture of my weiner, but so what? No biggie." Curiously, this member of Congress is unable to confirm or deny (with any certitude) whether the throbbing member captured in pixels is his own.

Maybe it's because I'm a lawyer that I think such things, but the word "certitude" rhymes with turpitude. As in: moral turpitude.

So this would be his alibi, if it were a tweet: "I was twittering away when a dic-pic popped up in my feed. OMG! I'm puny -- that cannot be me! And I'm a U.S. congressman, so no deceit. Quickly I hit it: delete, delete. Then back to hockey and Tivo for some edifying tweets. I am so wholesome. Life is sweet!"

Alrighty then. But our puerile A-Rod's lack of penile certitude has left him prostrate before the national media (and his new bride). Because let's face it: young Anthony handily impaled himself on his own petard.

Sorry, big A, but wouldn't you know whether you'd proudly snapped your beloved Hancock? At the very least, you'd know if someone else had, right? And you'd sure as hell know if this hot dog was the fruit of your loom, even if the photo was snapped during some forgotten moment of oblivion.

Then again, perhaps such orgy-esque oblivion is best kept under wraps more substantial than a pair of big-boy BVDs.

But to allow your pal Jon Stewart to claim your member is not nearly so big? To stand erectly before reporters and jocularly apologize for your "stiffness" the day before, maintaining that a picture of your member might've been "manipulated"? That takes some balls, Congressman. Big ones.

Though the manipulated-member argument may be the most inscrutable, safe harbor yet for our young Anthony, since there's no proven correlation between ball size and striking out in high school and exhibitionism and . . .

Oh, well, never mind.



Well, knock me over with a feather. Our esteemed member of Congress has claimed ownership of the infamous member, and admits he sent it to the young co-ed. Moreover, he is no longer claiming said member was manipulated. But, "I'm not resigning," said the young Weiner.

So will this be the end of Weiner, or just the end of Weinergate?

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