Much more than I wanted to know

From Michigan comes some ... er, strange legal news. This snippet will give the idea:

Thomson, who works for a home-delivery food company, has been ordered to stay away from Sparkles and the dog's family as he awaits trial.

No mention of Paul Krugman.

Things are fairly bizarre out

'Wheel' sued for fortune:

A "Wheel of Fortune" winner has sued the show for $2 million, charging the game's exuberant host, Pat Sajak, hugged him so hard he caused severe back injuries.

Will Wright, 38, an accountant and father of two, was a contestant on the hit TV show three years ago during the taping of a special episode in Washington, said Wright's attorney, Gregory Lattimer.

Wright won $48,000.

Sajak was so excited by Wright's big win that he "hurled himself into [the] plaintiff's chest and wrapped his legs around the plaintiff's body," according to the lawsuit, first reported by the syndicated show "Celebrity Justice."

Say it isn't so, Pat!

Today's Hoot

As always, there's lots of goodness at James Taranto's Best of the Web. He has an interesting contrast of the Easterbrook flap with the Arab American Institute hoedown for Democrat presidential candidates. I guess anti-Semitism depends on who said it.

Meanwhile, some of his better one liners:

You've gotta love Reuters. It headlines the story "Bush Tells Mahathir His Jew Remarks Are Wrong." His "Jew remarks"?
...
Hey, has anyone else noticed that you never see Osama bin Laden and Ted Kennedy in the same place at once?
...
Along similar lines, the Science Fiction Book Club-- logo: "50 years of great science fiction and fantasy"--is offering for sale Al Franken's "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them."
...
Canada's National Post reports that the Toronto Globe and Mail has published a ranking of Canadian universities that "awarded top marks to medical and law schools that do not exist."

Today's Barbra Streisand "It Only Applies to the Peons" Award

Tom Bevan at Real Clear Politics - Howard Dean Leads by Example:

If I felt that America's oil dependence was a matter of national security and was responsible for people dying in the Middle East and money being funneled to terrorists, I would certainly take it upon myself to do what I could to make a difference - no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential the result. Wouldn't you? And wouldn't one of the most obvious expressions of your convictions be the car you choose to drive?

So guess what Howard Dean drives. A Geo Prism? Toyota Prius? Ford Focus? Of course not. According to this article from Dawson Bell, inside the Dean garage in Vermont you'll find a pair of Ford Explorers. That's right, the darling of the environmental left owns not one but two big, gas-guzzling SUVs.

But he's got an excuse:

Dean: Well, I drive an SUV. Naughty, naughty. But I have two children who play hockey and soccer and there was no way I could do without a seven- or eight-passenger car.

That's what us peons say too, Howie!

... most people, generally speaking, hate to be "lectured to" about morality. They also hate environmental hypocrites. You know, people like Barbra Streisand who ride around in limousines, fly on private jets, and own 50,000 square-foot mansions that use more electricity that most grocery stores and then have the nerve to go out and tell you and me to do our laundry by hand to save 1/1,000,000,000 of a megawatt.

Indeed.

Phatty Adams has a dream!

It must be something he ate. Maybe it was slugs.

We're from the United Nations. We're here to nag you.

Those pesky Swiss have the BBC's knickers in a twist - Swiss right in political avalanche:

The far-right Swiss People's Party (SVP) has won the biggest share of the vote in parliamentary elections, throwing a decades-old system of consensus government into turmoil.
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The party, once the smallest of four governing parties in the Swiss coalition, is now the largest.
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The party has doubled its share of the popular vote in the last 10 years.

The "turmoil" is that they will have to rearrange things in the coalition cabinet to maintain proportional representation. What really chaps the BBC's hide is actually:

The party ran an anti-foreigner campaign, in which asylum seekers were portrayed as criminals and drug dealers.
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The United Nations refugee agency also said the party's propaganda contained some of the most anti-asylum advertisements ever seen in Europe.

Say what? The United Nations is messing about in a national election?

Yep - UN condemns Swiss asylum rhetoric:

UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman Ron Redmond said publicity by the People's Party (SVP) was among the most blatantly anti-asylum seen in Europe.

A recent newspaper advertising campaign said left-wing policies had left the country with, among other things, "a brutal Albanian mafia" and "black African" domination of drug crime.
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The advertisement suggested that foreigners had played a major part in the surge in violent crime in recent years.

"Instead of severely punishing stubborn, criminal asylum-seekers, we give them apartments, jobs and welfare," it said.

How un-PC!

And Ron is wagging his finger:

"The politicisation of the asylum issue, and rampant manipulation of facts and statistics... to cast asylum seekers and refugees in as ugly a light as possible in support of a fixed political agenda is a disturbing phenomenon wherever it happens," he said.

"Recently in many industrialised countries it's happening all too often," he added.

The agency spokesman said some European politicians were deliberately using the term "asylum seeker" alongside words such as "terrorist", "criminal", "rape", "disease", "fraud" and "bogus" during campaigning.

Correspondents say that while the agency has frequently criticised similar phenomena elsewhere in Europe, these remarks are unusually strong and indicate a growing concern.

That'll learn 'em, Ron!

But hold on a sec!

Meanwhile SVP General Secretary Gregor Rutz described Mr Redmond's comments as "absolutely scandalous" and an interference in Swiss politics.

Ya think?

Ya gotta admire the United Nations bureaucrats. On one hand, they sponsor some of the most decrepit and scandalous Third World dictators who ever lorded over benighted pest holes and on the other, they lecture First World citizens on how it's their responsibility to bring into their homes any citizens of the pest holes who make a break for the border. I believe the technical term for this is "Maximization of Expense Account Opportunities" or perhaps "Enhancing Upside Career Potential".

But spouting off in a national political campaign? That's a new low even for them. On the other hand, we already have UN bueaucrats gadding about on propaganda tours in the USA. How along before one of them pipes up during a campaign?

Please!

Depends on your perspective

Poll: San Franciscans favor conservative candidate for next mayor

In San Francisco, a "moderate Democrat" is a conservative.

Best line award goes to the description of the corrupt hack, Willie Brown:

The charismatic and stylish Mayor Willie Brown must step aside after serving his limit of two terms

It's always nice to know that the guy who picks your pocket is a snappy dresser with an engaging personality.

Today's Hoot!

"Siobhan" has some thoughts on Barbra Streisand in Scotland on Sunday - Not such a funny girl:

THE most horrifying sentences in the English language (in ascending order of terror) run as follows. Your bank card has been withheld. This figure is only an estimate. I have written a novel, would you give it a look? The boss wants to see you. This is going to hurt a bit, I’m afraid. Come and see Barbra Streisand sing a song to her dead dog on television.

Say what?

With huge pictures of her ex-poodle Sammy projected behind her, Barbra Streisand last week launched her 60th album, a collection of film tunes, with a rare television appearance, crooning Smile in tribute to her pet, who had been dispatched to the great kennel in the sky 12 months earlier. Here was a showbiz legend taking us through every furball of her deceased dog.

But wait, there's more:

Now 61, it has been years since she had her finger on the button marked ‘perspective’.
...
Latterly she was even behind her audiences, who could see the punchlines for her onstage jokes rolling up on her Teleprompter before Streisand could mouth them.
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Not to jar anyone’s misty, watercoloured memories, but not every Streisand film was well-regarded, even during her heyday. The Way We Were is still loved by grandmothers who sense that Love Story was a little too hard-edged ...
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But she had virtually given up on the idea of a permanent relationship when she met actor James Brolin on a blind date in the summer of 1996. The former star of titanic entertainments such as Marcus Welby MD, Hotel and Night of the Juggler bowled her over, perhaps because she had not seen any of these z-list productions. They wed a year later. "We talk deeply and we feel deeply," enthused the second Mr Streisand. "We’ve been known to wake up and suddenly it’s dark again." Either this is love, or they live near the Arctic Circle.

But, of course, the politics is the fun part:

Unkindly known as "Barbra Strident", she gives the impression that she has two huge chips on her shoulder because we do not think of her as a hottie, and we do not take her seriously. But when she harps on about her looks, it sounds like relentless narcissism. And anyone who has been lectured about her sincerely-held political beliefs will confirm that when Streisand gets on her soap box, she’s a bore.

She has been a generous donor to good causes from Aids to conservation charities, to her favourite politicians. But rather creepily, she also spent most of Clinton’s administration around Washington and chumming up with Clinton’s mother Virginia.

Babs and the Hot Springs Hottie - that must have been a dynamic duo!

Much more by following the link. And stay tuned for the impending Truth Alert!

That's more like it!

Also in the San Francisco Chronicle, literary aesthete Mike Davis dons his tin foil beanie and gets the Angstfest back on message. He says the recall was all the fault of talk radio:

The mainstream media has done a poor job of documenting the organization of the recall at the grassroots level where AM radio voices like Roger's, or his counterpart Eric Hogue's in Sacramento, rouse thousands of mini- Terminators.

Ruh Oh! And Mikey tries his hand at pop psychology too:

Arnold Schwarzenegger does add something genuinely novel to the mix. He is not just another actor in politics but an extraordinary lightning rod, both in his movie persona and in real life, for dark, sexualized fantasies about omnipotence.

Woohoo!

But the best part? Mikey establishes his literary street cred by dragging in terminally morose author Nathanael West:

In his classic novel "The Day of the Locust" (1939), he clearly foresaw that fandom was an incipient version of fascism. On the edge of Hollywood's neon plains, he envisioned the unassuageable hungers of California's petty bourgeoisie.

Whine on, dude!

But it does make me wonder. In Mikey's world can every racial, economic, and social group be angry except the middle class? I guess that in Mikeyworld it is the job of the middle class to just suck it up and pay for socialist fantasies. The bad news for Mikey and his pals is that the overwhelming majority of Americans are middle class.

Whoa, Nellie!

From the San Francisco Chronicle - Lockyer's shocking choice in recall

Attorney General Bill Lockyer, considered a leading Democratic contender for governor in 2006, stunned a political conference in Berkeley Saturday by announcing that he voted for Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger in the recall election.

That'll get the coffee going the wrong direction.

Lockyer's statement came at a conference sponsored by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, where academics and reporters examined the aftermath of the recall election. At the conference, California Democrats, still reeling from the stunning recall of Gov. Gray Davis, turned their fire on each other in a flurry of accusations and finger-pointing.

Another Angstfest.

But the most shocking comments came from Lockyer, who revealed that Schwarzenegger "is the first Republican I ever voted for." He said felt he had to back the GOP candidate because "I thought I was doing what made sense.''

Lockyer said he voted against the recall, but couldn't bring himself to back Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante.

"You know people in your profession really well,'' he told reporters after his lunchtime speech to a post-mortem seminar on the recall election. "You know who works hard and who doesn't. You know who's honest and who isn't. And that's all I'm going to say.''

Ruh oh! Sounds like his opinion of the Cruzer is much like mine.

That's not going to sit too well with the Democrat Kool Aid drinkers.

Lockyer's complaints are nothing more than "sanctimonious posturing'' that didn't help keep Davis in office, said an angry Garry South, a top political aide to the governor.

Of course, Garry was grumpy about just about everybody:

Lockyer and Bustamante weren't the only Democrats to catch fire from other party members. South also blasted Sen. Barbara Boxer, Rep. Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats for backing Bustamante on the recall ballot, which he called "an idiotic notion.''

"There was a lot of silliness out among our officeholders,'' he said. "It was like 'pick a candidate, any candidate' and Democrats would flock to it.''

The lieutenant governor's "No on the recall, yes on Bustamante'' slogan was a nonstarter from the beginning, South added, because Bustamante's real interest was in becoming governor.

"Cruz thought this was a way of sneaking into the (governor's) job with a fig leaf on,'' South said.

Cruz with fig leaf? That's gag inducing.

More California political notes by following the link.