Ice Ice Bieber

Hilarious!

Justin Bieber and Vanilla Ice. Just saying. Biebs wears ridiculous outfit to Heat game nyp.st/14eJezz twitter.com/PageSix/status…
— Page Six (@PageSix) June 4, 2013

Final Deadline for Nikke Finke?

I often read her stuff. And I follow her on Twitter.

So this is interesting, at LAT, "Deadline Hollywood editor Nikki Finke's next big story may be her own exit."

Also, "Speculation swirls around Nikki Finke's future at Deadline Hollywood."

Whatever. She's not going away.

Check this piece from 2009 at NYT, "A Hollywood Blogger Feared by Executives."

Apple Faces Limited Ban on Products

In tech news, at WSJ, "Ruling Blocks iPhone Sales: If Upheld, Decision Favoring Samsung Would Halt Sales of Older iPhones, iPads."

Hearings Before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Military Sex Crimes

Looks like it got pretty heated up there yesterday.

At the New York Times, "Joint Chiefs’ Answers on Sex Crimes Dismay Senators."

'Unbecoming' IDF Women

Perhaps "naughty" would be the better adjective.

At London's Daily Mail, "Female Israeli soldiers disciplined for 'unbecoming behaviour' after posing for pictures dressed only in their underwear and combat fatigues."

Also, at Izismile, "Israeli Defense Force Girls Gone Wild." (Via Linkiest.)

National Organization for Marriage John Eastman Testimony Before House Ways and Means Committee

I watched this yesterday.

Check Yid With Lid, "Scandalpalooza Update: Revenge of the Tea Party."

And at Nice Deb, "Video: National Organization for Marriage’s John Eastman RIPS Democrats at IRS Hearing + Proof IRS Leaked Confidential Donor List to Political Rival."

The full published testimony is here.

Chris Christie Calls Special Election to Fill Frank Lautenberg's Senate Seat

Debilitating stupidity.

At National Journal, "Republicans Fuming Over Chris Christie's Senate Decision." (At Memeorandum.)

Plus, a big roundup at Legal Insurrection, "Chris Christie calls for Special Election in October to fill Lautenberg seat."

Obama Political Hacks Using Secret Email Accounts

At Fox News, "Obama officials deny using 'secret' email accounts, though some agencies won't disclose details."

And Michelle on the epic hypocrisy:

Libertarian Populism and Its Limits

See Ross Douthat, at the New York Times (and the links therein).

It's a debate about "reform conservatism," whatever that is. I recall going through this back in 2008 when the Barackalypse was first elected. And this latest iteration too shall pass.

Meanwhile, see the Other McCain for more, "Damn You, Josh Barro!"

@jbarro Hey, I'm not exactly president of the @ewerickson Fan Club, but ... "derpy"? That's all you got, "derpy"? businessinsider.com/erick-erickson…
— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) June 4, 2013

Yeah, that was a bit much with the "derpy."

And speaking of "derpy," click through for some "derpy" RAWMUSCLEGLUTES at the link:

Wow, I just got my second "Malkin Award" nomination of the year. dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/06/04/mal… I must be doing something right.
— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) June 4, 2013

Ethically Loose

Via the Looking Spoon, "The Only Response Needed For Anyone Questioning the 'Ethics' of a Republican Investigating Obama..."

PREVIOUSLY: "Jim Geraghty Destroys David Plouffe With One Tweet."

'He's quite handsome, but there's something about the shape of his features that suggests there's a fat man inside waiting to bust loose...'

That's Ann Althouse, ripping University of New Mexico Psychology Professor Geoffrey Miller, who slammed fat Ph.D. candidates on Twitter for "lacking willpower to do a dissertation."

See, "Fat-Shaming in Academe" (at Memeorandum).

The university's response is here, "UNM Response to Tweet by Professor Geoffrey Miller."

And go straight to the video of Department Chairwoman Jane Ellen Smith. It turns out that Professor Miller is apparently claiming that he's doing research on "provocative tweeting."

I gotta remember that one for next time the idiot progs contact my department!

The Truth About ObamaCare Rate Increases

At WSJ, "ObamaCare Bait and Switch":

Liberals have spent years claiming that "rate shock" under the Affordable Care Act—the 20% to 30% average spike in insurance premiums that every independent analyst projects—is merely the political imagination of Republicans and the insurance industry. So they immediately claimed victory when California reported last month that the plans that will be available on the state's new insurance exchange next year would be cheaper than they are today.

Except now it emerges that California goosed the data to make it appear as if ObamaCare won't send costs aloft as the law's regulations and mandates kick in. It will, by a lot. And now liberals have suddenly switched to arguing that, sure, insurance will be more expensive but the new costs are justified. Needless to say that was not how Democrats sold health-care reform.

California reported that the rates would range from 2% above to 29% below the current market. "This is a home run for consumers in every region of California," said Peter Lee, the director of the state exchange. "These rates are way below the worst-case gloom-and-doom scenarios we have heard."

But Mr. Lee and his fellow regulators were making a false comparison. They weren't looking at California's lightly regulated individual insurance market that functions surprisingly well. They were comparing ObamaCare insurance to the state's current small-business market where regulations similar to ObamaCare have already been imposed.

In other words, California wasn't comparing apples to apples. It wasn't even comparing apples to oranges. It was comparing apples to ostriches. The conservative analyst Avik Roy consulted current rates on the eHealthInsurance website and discovered that the cheapest ObamaCare plan for a typical 25-year-old man is roughly 64% to 117% more expensive than the five cheapest policies sold today. For a 40 year old, it's 73% to 146%. Stanford economist Dan Kessler adds his observations nearby...

Continue reading.

And the Kessler piece is here, "ObamaCare Is Raising Insurance Costs."

Plus, the epic idiot Ezra Klein's been scrambling to cover for this clusterf-k policy. Here's his latest stupidity, "The six ways Obamacare changes insurance premiums."

See that? How it "changes" premiums? Actually, the law is "raising" premiums. And it's raising premiums on young people to subsidize old people and the sick. And so what happened? Young people bailed. At the Los Angeles Times, "Affordable Care Act's challenge: getting young adults enrolled."

Things aren't going so well for this monstrosity. Not well at all.

Prosecutors Seek Life in Prison for Bradley Manning

Screw this guy.

Make sure he gets a fair trial, sure. Other than that, screw him.

At LAT, "Prosecutors look to closely link Bradley Manning and Julian Assange":

FT. MEADE, Md. — Government prosecutors seeking life in prison for Army Pfc. Bradley Manning opened his court-martial Monday closely linking the young, nondescript enlistee from Oklahoma with the outsized Julian Assange, head of the anti-secrecy WikiLeaks website who used his world stage to post hundreds of thousands of Manning’s purloined documents in the largest leak of U.S. classified material in the nation’s history.

Army Cpt. Joe Morrow, prosecuting Manning on 21 charges, including endangering the U.S. and aiding the enemy, said Manning downloaded and sent to WikiLeaks more than 700,000 classified materials after the short, bespectacled Manning and the silver-haired media celebrity Assange quietly exchanged personal contact information and crafted Internet chat logs to expose the deepest secrets in the fight against terrorism and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That partnership, Morrow and other Army prosecutors alleged, blossomed to one where the unlikely pair discussed their own attempts at secrecy even as Manning methodically flipped documents to Assange and the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief routinely posted the material – including State Department cables, assessments of terror captives, prisoner interrogation videos and U.S. evaluations of foreign allies.

“These were massive, massive downloads,” Morrow said. “Packaged and out the door to WikiLeaks in some instances in a matter of minutes.”

RTWT.

Erdogan's Grip on Power Is Rapidly Weakening

An analysis at Der Spiegel, "Revolt in Turkey":

For a decade, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has had a tight grip on power. But it suddenly looks to be weakening. Thousands have taken to the streets across the country and the threats to Erdogan's rule are many. His reaction has revealed him to be hopelessly disconnected.

The rooftops of Istanbul can be seen in the background and next to them is a gigantic image of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey's powerful prime minister is watching over the city -- and is also monitoring the work of the political party he controls. At least that seems to be the message of the image, which can be found in a conference room at the headquarters of Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP).

hese days, though, Istanbul is producing images that carry a distinctly different meaning -- images of violent protests against the vagaries of Erdogan's rule. And it is beginning to look as though the prime minister, the most powerful leader Turkey has seen since the days of modern Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, might be losing control.

As recently as mid-May, Erdogan boasted during an appearance at the Brookings Institute in Washington D.C. of the $29 billion airport his government was planning to build in Istanbul. "Turkey no longer talks about the world," he said. "The world talks about Turkey."

Just two weeks later, he appears to have been right -- just not quite in the way he had anticipated. The world is looking at Turkey and speaking of the violence with which Turkish police are assaulting demonstrators at dozens of marches across the country. Increasingly, Erdogan is looking like an autocratic ruler whose people are no longer willing to tolerate him.

Continue reading.

And at Atlas Shrugs, "TURKISH PM ERDOGAN DESCRIBES CONSTITUTION AS 'A HUGE LIE': 'SOVEREIGNTY BELONGS UNCONDITIONALLY AND ALWAYS TO ALLAH'; 'ONE CANNOT BE A MUSLIM, AND SECULAR'."

IRS Spent $50 million for Conferences Between 2010 and 2012

Here's Greta Van Susteren, "Isn’t this disgusting? IRS spends $50 million in two years on conferences! Conferences to teach each other how to target unfairly?"

And Dana Loesch on Hannity last night:

Hate Cleric Anjem Choudary's Vile Rant Attacking Drummer Lee Rigby

Choudary's a darling of the progressives left.

At the Sun UK, "Lee Rigby will burn in hellfire. But Michael is a nice man."

The IRS Story Keeps Getting Worse

From Jonathan Tobin, at Commentary:

The liberal line about the IRS and other administration scandals in the last week has been that even if there was some low-level wrongdoing, an American public that is worried about the economy isn’t really interested in any of it. They are convinced that the only people willing to connect the dots between the demonization of the Tea Party by President Obama and the liberal press and the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups are Republican partisans. As Seth wrote on Friday, Democratic complacence is based on the idea that Republicans are overreacting to the current scandals in much the same manner that they oversold the Monica Lewinsky affair in 1998. But the revelation of two new angles to the IRS story in recent days shows that contrary to the hopes of Democrats, it is not only not dying down but could get worse.

By now, just about everyone has seen the videos of IRS employees line dancing at a conference paid for by taxpayers. The videos, like another bizarre IRS project previously discovered in which government employees acted out “Star Trek” and “Gilligan’s Island” parodies, illustrates an agency that is out of control and unaccountable in the way it wastes the money that it so zealously collects from the public.

But just as hard to explain is the news first reported on Friday by the Daily Caller that the wife of the IRS commissioner on whose watch the targeting of conservatives occurred is a senior official of a Washington group that has advocated for this kind of discriminatory scrutiny. One of the top talking points for liberals about the IRS has been to point out that former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman was appointed to his office by President George W. Bush, therefore lending a bipartisan gloss to the problem. But now it seems as if what was going on during Shulman’s frequent trips to the Obama White House isn’t the only question about his conduct that needs answering...

Continue reading.

Low-Info Voters Keep Obama Ratings Afloat

Barely afloat.

At IBD:

The scandals that have broadsided the Obama administration in recent weeks have the potential for leaving a gaping hole in the president's standing with the American people, according to a new IBD/TIPP poll.

Overall, more Americans still approve (48%) than disapprove (44%) of the job President Obama is doing — a 3 percentage-point improvement over approval readings in the last two months.

But the reverse is true among those who are following the administration's handling of the Benghazi crisis, the IRS' targeting of the Tea Party and other groups, and the Justice Department's seizure and pursuit of the phone logs of the Associated Press and Fox News reporter James Rosen.

See No Scandal?

The president's approval rating tops 60% among those who are not closely following coverage of the three scandals but is only 42% among those following Benghazi, 43% among those fol lowing IRS and 39% among those keeping an eye on AP/Rosen.

Put another way, disapproval stands at 55%, 53% and 57% among those watching the respective scandals vs. only 21%, 22% and 28% among those who aren't.

The results suggest Obama's ratings could erode dramatically if the scandals stay front and center in the news. There's no guarantee of that, of course, given media support of this administration. But even the decidedly pro-Obama mainstream media are stepping up scandal coverage.

Continue reading.

Also at American Thinker, "Obama approval slips in new Quinnipiac poll."

And Rasmussen, Monday, June 03, 2013: "The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 47% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Obama's job performance. Fifty-two percent (52%) now disapprove."

More at Breitbart, "Obama Approval Rating Hits 12-Month Low."

Lautenberg's Death Adds to Democrats' Legislative Difficulties

Well, I guess there's a silver lining then.

At the New York Times, "Death of Senator Places Christie in Difficult Spot":

The death of Frank R. Lautenberg on Monday has left Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey the kind of opportunity that politicians usually covet: the chance to give away a seat in the United States Senate. But the decision is fraught with pitfalls, none bigger than having to choose between improving his party’s fortunes in Washington and furthering his own political ambitions at home.

Mr. Christie, a Republican, is up for re-election in November and was hoping to roll up a huge victory margin, which he could then use to accelerate his drive to present himself as a presidential candidate with broad appeal even in a blue state.

But adding a special election for the Senate seat to the ballot could put Mayor Cory A. Booker of Newark at the top of the Democratic ticket, potentially energizing more Democrats, who already outnumber Republicans in New Jersey by 700,000 registered voters, to come to the polls.

The implications extend beyond New Jersey to Washington, where both parties are maneuvering for strategic advantage in a Senate where even a single vote can derail legislation. The replacement of Mr. Lautenberg, a Democrat, with an interim senator appointed by Mr. Christie creates immediate complications for the White House and Democrats on Capitol Hill as they try to push through an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws and presidential nominations, under the constant threat of Republican filibuster.

Mr. Lautenberg, a steadfast liberal who was New Jersey’s longest serving senator and the nation’s oldest senator, died of complications from pneumonia in Manhattan. He was 89 and had already announced he would not run for re-election next year.

Mr. Christie, whose popularity soared after Hurricane Sandy, is so eager to avoid appearing on the same ballot as Mr. Booker, according to Republican insiders, that he is considering two alternatives to a November election for Mr. Lautenberg’s successor. Each carries a potential political cost and could easily be challenged in court.

Christie turned RINO sometime back, so I'm not so bothered by his difficulties. And screw the the Dems. They can suck slime-balls.

More at the link.

Also, "Frank Lautenberg, 89, New Jersey Senator In His 5th Term, Dies."

Michael Douglas Backs Off Claim of Oral Sex Throat Cancer Cause

Here's this morning's New York Post, "Michael Douglas: Oral sex gave me cancer."

He's trying to back out of the claim now, but the Guardian UK has him pinned down, "Michael Douglas cancer oral sex claim: transcript and audio":

A spokesperson for Michael Douglas has claimed that the actor did not say his particular cancer was caused by oral sex. Here is the relevant audio and transcript to prove that he did...