Of course, President Bush didn't actually serve a plastic turkey for Thanksgiving. The idiot left and their community-based reality made that up and even the NY Times ran a correction noting that the turkey was real, not fake. But that hasn't stopped roughly half of Americans from believing in the myth of the plastic turkey.

The Left milked that non-event for all it was worth, squawking about phony presidents and staged photo-ops. Enter Michelle Obama, who couldn't be more fake.

For months, the Food Network ran ads about a forthcoming episode of “Iron Chef America,” its flagship chefs plus secret ingredient versus time competition. The show would take place at the White House garden, with Michelle Obama making a cameo and plugging her responsible-eating initiative. The network promised it would be its biggest episode ever.

The buildup matched the reality: The Jan. 3 “Iron Chef America” drew 7.6 million viewers, the highest-rated show in network history. In it, superstar chef Mario Batali teamed with Emeril Lagasse, and Bobby Flay with White House chef Cristeta Comerford to cook five dishes using the secret ingredient: produce from the White House garden.

Except for one thing: As first reported on AOLÂ’s Politics Daily blog, the fruits and vegetables used on the show werenÂ’t from the White House. They were stunt produce. Ringers.

All about the photo op.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:48 AM | Comments (96)
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There was every reason in the world for the Police Union to endorse Coakley.

Despite the idea that police tend to be somewhat conservative, police unions usually endorse the Democrat.

But here?

The Worcester police unions are endorsing Brown.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Scott Brown yesterday accepted the endorsement of the Police DepartmentÂ’s two major unions [in Worcester].

Local 911, New England Police Benevolent Association, and Local 504, International Brotherhood of Police Officers, handed their endorsement to the state senator. The endorsement comes one day after a debate in which Mr. Brown and his main opponent, Democrat Attorney General Martha Coakley, squared off. The special election to fill the seat formerly held by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy will be held Tuesday.

Sgt. Donald E. Cummings, president of Local 504, said Mr. BrownÂ’s service in the National Guard shows that he knows the threat of terrorism is real, and understands the role public safety personnel play in protecting residents.

Stephen Gunnerson, president of Local 911 patrolmen’s union, called Mr. Brown a “tireless advocate for public safety.” He cited Mr. Brown’s support for Jessica’s Law and Haley’s Bill and his support for sex offender and CORI reform.

In fairness, Brown was a JAG, too, so it's not as if there's nothing in his record police would find appealing.

Posted by: Ace at 07:19 AM | Comments (83)
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If you're good, Santa Christ fills your stockings with treats; if you're bad, Santa Christ drops an earthquake or meteor on your sinful ass.

There is another important issue involved here, which is a warped and confused theology Robertson has employed before. For example, Robertson agreed with Jerry Falwell that on 9/11 God lifted the “curtain” and allowed the enemies of America to give us “probably what we deserve”; and in 1998 he warned after Orlando city officials voted to fly rainbow flags from city lampposts during an annual Gay Day event at Disney World, “I don’t think I’d be waving those flags in God’s face if I were you. . . . [A] condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It’ll bring about terrorist bombs, it’ll bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor.”

Pat RobertsonÂ’s argument is as neat and clean as a mathematical equation: God grants blessings and curses on nations and people based on their allegiance and obedience to Him. If things are going well, youÂ’re living right; if things are going badly, youÂ’re living wrong. And it is Robertson himself who can divine the hierarchy of sins that most trouble God.

But this view simply does not correspond with any serious understanding of Christianity. After all, the most important symbol in Christianity is the Cross, which represents suffering, agony, and death. When Jesus spoke to Ananias, who was instrumental in the conversion of the Apostle Paul, Ananias was told, “I will show [Paul] how much he must suffer for my name.” Christ Himself warned His disciples that they would suffer for His sake; most of them were martyred for their faith. The Apostle Peter speaks about the suffering that Christians will endure for doing good. And in the book of Romans we read that we are to rejoice in our suffering because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance produces character; and character produces hope. On and on it goes.

The Lord works in mechanical ways, sayeth Pat Robertson.

You know what has always turned me off? Pitches for any religion (including cultish ones) where there are so many promises for prosperity and health and such in this world in exchange for belief.

According to Robertson (and some cult leaders), if I believe in the God he champions, that God will give me wealth and health and happiness.

Okay. Let's note right out of the gate, then, that this exchange, were I to make it, is a wholly selfish and mercenary one on my part: I'm being offered money and services for my belief.

I can't see how accepting a great deal like that is an indicator of faith, or piety. If I really believe that, and if I believe that is the primary benefit of giving my devotion to a god, then I'm not really showing any real spiritual thirst. I'm just accepting a beneficial business arrangement.

Via AllahPundit's Twitter feed.

Posted by: Ace at 07:14 AM | Comments (203)
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Eh. Cute. more...

Posted by: Ace at 06:55 AM | Comments (23)
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Read the whole thing. Seriously.

The guy -- innocent as a lamb on everything, but kept in jail by career-conscious Coakley just the same -- was just on a radio show an hour ago. Give him a listen.

How on earth is this woman even in the race.

Coulter Was, Of Course, Already On It. From December:

The allegations against the Amiraults were preposterous on their face. Children made claims of robots abusing them, a "bad clown" who took the children to a "magic room" for sex play, rape with a 2-foot butcher knife, other acts of sodomy with a "magic wand," naked children tied to trees within view of a highway, and -- standard fare in the child abuse hysteria era -- animal sacrifices.

There was not one shred of physical evidence to support the allegations -- no mutilated animals, no magic rooms, no butcher knives, no photographs, no physical signs of any abuse on the children.

...

It's one thing to put a person in prison for a crime he didn't commit. It's another to put an entire family in prison for a crime that didn't take place.

...

Coakley wasn't the prosecutor on the original trial. What she did was worse.

At least the original prosecutors, craven and ambition-driven though they were, could claim to have been caught up in the child abuse panic of the '80s. There had not yet been extensive psychological studies on the suggestibility of small children. A dozen similar cases from around the country had not already been discredited and the innocent freed.

...

In July 2001, the notoriously tough Massachusetts parole board voted unanimously to grant Gerald Amirault clemency. Although the parole board is not permitted to consider guilt or innocence, its recommendation said: "(I)t is clearly a matter of public knowledge that, at the minimum, real and substantial doubt exists concerning petitioner's conviction."

Immediately after the board's recommendation, The Boston Globe reported that Gov. Jane Swift was leaning toward accepting the board's recommendation and freeing Amirault.

Enter Martha Coakley, Middlesex district attorney. Gerald Amirault had already spent 15 years in prison for crimes he no more committed than anyone reading this column did. But Coakley put on a full court press to keep Amirault in prison simply to further her political ambitions.

By then, every sentient person knew that Amirault was innocent. But instead of saying nothing, Coakley frantically lobbied Gov. Jane Swift to keep him in prison to show that she was a take-no-prisoners prosecutor, who stood up for "the children." As a result of Coakley's efforts -- and her contagious ambition -- Gov. Swift denied Amirault's clemency.

Thanks to Martha Coakley, Gerald Amirault sat in prison for another three years.

And he's still a registered sex offender, commenters tell me, and still confined to house arrest for part of the day, and has to pay for his own GPS monitoring.

But, you know, Coakley's on the side of "the children" or something.

Liberal prosecutors scare me. Because they're worried about the soft-on-crime charge (because they are, in fact, soft-on-crime), they seem to overcompensate in "Worthy Victims" cases -- See the Duke Lacrosse Team. They wind up throwing innocent people in jail just to show how tough-on-non-crimes they are.

This is repulsive.

Incidentally, this idiot Jane Swift deserves just as much scorn for her cowardice. (And she's a Republican -- well, of the Boston variety.)

But Jane Swift isn't on the ballot. This knuckledragging "Tea-Bagger for Jailing the Innocent" Coakley is.

Putting the "Author" In Authoritarian: Simply no discernment -- or, should I say, nuance -- for the critical difference between proper and improper prosecutorial conduct. Between being hard on crime and being hard on citizens.

Last year, Coakley chose to personally argue her stateÂ’s case before the Supreme Court in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts. Despite the recent headlines detailing forensic mishaps, fraudulent testimony and crime lab incompetence, Coakley argued that requiring crime lab technicians to be present at trial for questioning by defense attorneys would place too large a burden on prosecutors. The Supreme Court found otherwise, in a decision that had Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia coming down on CoakleyÂ’s left.

...

Wall Street Journal reporter Dorothy Rabinowitz, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of bogus sex abuse cases, recently told The Boston Globe of the Amirault case, “Martha Coakley was a very, very good soldier who showed she would do anything to preserve this horrendous assault on justice.” According to journalist Mark Pendergrast, Coakley herself prosecuted another questionable child abuse case in 1993, using the same recovered-memory testimony and now-discredited methods of questioning children to convict Ray and Shirley Souza of molesting their grandchildren.

It’s probably not surprising, then, that as DA in Middlesex County, Coakley opposed efforts to create an innocence commission in Massachusetts, calling the idea “backward-looking instead of forward-looking.” Of course, that’s sort of the point — to find people who have been wrongfully convicted. So far, there have been at least 23 exonerations in Massachusetts, including several in Coakley’s home county.

For the record, "innocence commissions" are conservative (assuming they're not shams, and simply tools for the wack-a-doodle left to pardon everyone; which, in practice, they haven't been).

The notion that the state cannot err is... well, let's just say that idea has its roots in a decidedly anti-freedom theory of governance.

Thanks to Craig A. for the original tip, Vic for the Coulter column, and Edward R. for the Politico piece.

Posted by: Ace at 06:18 AM | Comments (96)
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Either his economic advisors don't know shit or his economic policy is being set by his far-Left controllers. Actually, I don't see why it can't be both:

The White House, reacting to outrage over huge bonuses this year on Wall Street, will announce plans Thursday to impose about $90 billion in fees on the nation's largest financial institutions.

The idea: to ensure that taxpayers recoup every penny of the bailout money spent to stabilize the financial system and rescue the auto industry under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.

The government estimates TARP losses at $117 billion but expects the figure to fall. The "financial crisis responsibility fee" would raise about $90 billion over 10 years and could be extended to cover the government's losses, said a senior administration official, who was authorized to speak only anonymously in advance of the announcement.

Reminder to the economically challenged: when you tax a business, the customers get to pay for it. This populist idiocy always hurts the little guy in the long run.

But that's not all. This is the BDSM approach to economic policy:

Think of this: The U.S. government bailed the banks out with TARP. Then the banks repaid TARP last year, including the stock warrants that provided a handsome taxpayer profit from the banks. And now the government wants to tax them? In other words, help the banks get healthy, and then punish them? I donÂ’t understand it.

And hereÂ’s yet another ridiculous part of this story: The largest banks that de-TARPed, and are regaining their health, are now, with this tax, supposed to cover the government-owned failures like GM, GMAC, AIG, and Fannie and Freddie, which are running up huge deficits because they may be on the taxpayer dole in perpetuity. In other words, the healthy banks that made good decisions and paid down TARP are now getting taxed so that the government can finance the bad actors. This makes no sense at all.

Look, the big guys have de-TARPed. Now itÂ’s time to get off their backs. As I wrote yesterday, bankers should not get bonuses for the period in which they were TARPed. But for the new year, since the bankers met their TARP obligations, Team Obama should leave them alone. Let the bankers help the economy grow, create wealth, and create jobs.

Snowbeast?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 06:05 AM | Comments (51)
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Actually, it was a sting, so there was no actual girl, but damn, his search is thorough.

Officer Ryan Venneman was posing as 15-year-old "Emily" in an online chat room when he was contacted by someone using the name "Delmarm4fun." This person, later identified as Ritter, told "Emily" he was a 44-year-old male from Albany, N.Y.

"Emily" told Ritter she was a 15-year-old girl from the Poconos, at which point Ritter asked for a picture other than the one "Emily" had posted on her account. Ritter then sent her a link to his Web camera and began to masturbate on camera.

"Emily" asked Ritter for his cell phone number, which he provided.

Ritter again asked "Emily" how old she was. Told she was 15, Ritter said he didnÂ’t realize she was 15 and turned off his webcam, saying he didnÂ’t want to get in trouble.

Ritter told "Emily" he had been fantasizing about having sex with her, to which she replied: "Guess you turned it off Â…"

Ritter then said: "You want to see it finish," reactivated his webcam and continued masturbating and ejaculated on camera.

Do I want to see a 350 pound schlub with a face like a football crank off into a camera?

Do I?!?!

Thanks to Consigliere5.

Posted by: Ace at 06:02 AM | Comments (78)
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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:23 AM | Comments (131)
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What the hell is going on in this woman's head?

Coakley bristles at the suggestion that, with so little time left, in an election with such high stakes, she is being too passive.

“As opposed to standing outside Fenway Park? In the cold? Shaking hands?’’ she fires back, in an apparent reference to a Brown online video of him doing just that.

Unreal. Too busy to do meet-and-greets, she's spending her time kissing up to Democratic leaders and union bosses.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 08:03 PM | Comments (185)
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Happy hump day evening all!

Man Has Awesomest Remote Controlled Plane Ever
You know the average American guy builds things in his garage that Al Qaeda with all their resources could only dream of. If just a few of these guys decided to freelance, the Arab world would learn very quickly that asymmetric warfare can go both ways.

Posted by: Open Blog at 05:51 PM | Comments (731)
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