Friday, August 15, 2008

Same old Edwards, etc.

John Weidner calls BS on Walter Shapiro’s claim of John Edwards disillusionment:

What malarky. You were besotted with Edwards because he was (or was pretending to be) a liberal Democrat. And Edwards almost certainly paid flattering attention to the guy who was writing a book about his campaign. You dolt, Edwards and his wife almost certainly coldly planned how to woo you, and knew what your weaknesses are. That's what trial lawyers do with a jury. They study every scrap of information available on each juryman, and, like chameleons, tailor the message, and paint their very selves, to fit them. (I know about this stuff; my dear wife's on the other side, the good side, fighting scoundrels like Edwards every day.)

Everybody who retained any objectivity could see that he was a phony, and were not surprised by this. When a guy talks populism and green-ism while building the biggest mansion in the county, there's a 99% chance that he's a sham. When a guy spends minutes in front of a mirror fluffing his hairdo, there's a 99% chance that he will not resist the sexual temptations available to a celebrity.

And when you make millions as a trial lawyer, it means you are skilled at convincing people of things that just ain't so.

Hammer. Nail. Head. I’ve called Edwards the Empty Suit from North Carolina, but I think Dennis Miller is correct in saying that’s an insult to coat hangers.

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How does Michael Phelps swim 17 times in 9 days at the Olympics? Your standard 2000 calorie diet will not get it done. Try 4000 calories…every meal.

Phelps lends a new spin to the phrase "Breakfast of Champions" by starting off his day by eating three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise.

He follows that up with two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes.

At lunch, Phelps gobbles up a pound of enriched pasta and two large ham and cheese sandwiches slathered with mayo on white bread - capping off the meal by chugging about 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

For dinner, Phelps really loads up on the carbs - what he needs to give him plenty of energy for his five-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week regimen - with a pound of pasta and an entire pizza.

He washes all that down with another 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

Man...I think I need a pizza and a pitcher, I'm feeling a little tired today.

******

Man attacked bus, tried to rob 7-Eleven, stripped, fought dog and withstood Taser

Or, as we call it around here, Friday night.

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Those who claim that abortion is “settled law” based on a 35 year old Supreme Court precedent must have been mortified when the current Court extended habeas corpus rights to POW’s in Boumediene v. Bush. After all, it overturned 58 years of settled law in that the Court had ruled, in 1950’s Johnson v. Eisentrager, that nonresident alien enemy combatants had no right to habeas corpus.

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Isn’t “entitlements” an odd term for government programs that transfer assets from those who earned them to those who did not?

Wouldn’t “slavery” be a more proper term? That’s what one person being forced to work in the service of another, with no legal claim to the fruits of his labor, has traditionally been called. We should just be honest and call effective tax rates what they are, slavery rates – the percentage of their work time each year that an individual is required to function as a human slave.

Indeed, the difference between slavery and charity is one of freedom vs. coercion.

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Lat November, Brazil discovered a reserve of billions of barrels of oil in an area 180 miles offshore from Sao Paulo and Rio. And here’s the punch line: they are already working on the drilling platforms and pipelines to bring this oil into the market.

Why is it that there was no resistance by the international environmental movement? No moralistic pronouncements, no demonstrations against Brazil or its interests, no lawsuits filed in Brazilian or international courts to delay or prevent development.

You might conclude that the gnashing of teeth and legal maneuvering to prevent the US from drilling off its own coasts is not about concern for the environment at all, that it’s instead purely about trying to damage America.

And you would be correct.

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