Weiner?! — Spitzer?!

Saw this just now on Twitter:

Awesome. RT @audreygelman: cover of monday's @nymag. wow. pic.twitter.com/MY1etX1Q1a

— Marin Cogan (@marincogan) July 13, 2013

And at the magazine, "The Steamroller Returns."

Stranahan in Sanford

Check Lee Stranahan on Twitter and Instagraham.

Malala Yousafzai Addresses the United Nations

At the Telegraph UK, "Malala tells UN she will not be silenced by Taliban attack":

Malala Yousafzai has she will not be silenced by terrorist threats, in an address to the United Nations on her 16th birthday that was her first public speech since being shot by the Taliban.

“Let us pick up our books and pens,” said the Pakistani teenager, who was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman as she left school last October.

“They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world. Education is the only solution.”

Malala, who has been recovering in Britain, delivered her address in New York in front of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to an auditorium packed with 1,000 students from around the world.

Her parents watched proudly as she assured her audience that she was “the same Malala”.

Wearing a loose-fitting pink shawl that had belonged to assassinated former Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto, she continued: “I am not against anyone. Nor am I here to speak against the Taliban or any other terrorist group. I am here to speak up for the right to education of every child.”

It was a typically impressive performance by a teen who earned the enmity of the Taliban in her home country for campaigning for girls’ rights to go to school. She said she was speaking for human rights activists across the world fighting for education, justice and equality.

“Here I stand not as one voice but speaking for those who have fought for the right to be treated with dignity, their right for equality of opportunity, and their right to be educated,” she said.

She called on governments to fight for the rights of women and children deprived of an education by child labour and forced marriages at early ages.

“The extremists were afraid of education,” she said. “That is why they’re blasting schools every day. Because they’re afraid of progress, afraid of change.

“If we want to achieve our goals, let us empower ourselves with a weapon of knowledge and shield ourselves with unity and togetherness.”

During a series of standing ovations, she said that the attempt on her life had only made her more resolute. “Weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, courage and fervour was born,” she said.”I speak not for myself but for those without a voice.”

Unable to safely return to Pakistan, she started at a school in Birmingham in March after medical treatment there during which doctors mended parts of her skull with a titanium plate.

I think she should be condemning the Taliban. Let's hear it.

Don't be all "Imagine" on us, okay. You've got to stand up to evil, and you've experienced it like few others.

Also at the New York Times, "Malala Yousafzai, Girl Shot by Taliban, Makes Appeal at U.N."

University of California at Critical Juncture for Napolitano

I'm still processing the mindlessness of this appointment.

It's astounding. This lady fails upward.

At LAT, "Janet Napolitano would take UC helm at a critical time":

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will be assuming the presidency of the University of California's system as it emerges from several tough financial years and is under increased pressure from elected leaders to increase graduation rates and make greater use of technology.

"We're coming out of a recession so there's an opportunity to be strategic," said Timothy P. White, who was the president of UC Riverside before being named chancellor of the California State University system last year. "It's an absolutely fascinating and important time in higher education."

After years of raising tuitions in the face of increasingly heated student protests, including one in which UC Davis students and alumni were pepper sprayed, regents will keep undergraduate tuition the same for the second year in a row and are expected to approve hikes affecting only about 800 graduate students.

UC has an annual budget of $24 billion, 230,000 students, 191,000 faculty and staff members, five medical centers and three national laboratories.

The system is under pressure from Gov. Jerry Brown to increase graduation rates. He proposed, and then backed off of, tying future funding to improving graduation rates. About 60% of UC students who enter as freshmen graduate within four years and about 83% of them graduate within six, according to a UC report.

Napolitano, who will begin her term in September if her nomination is approved as expected next week, will also have to help steer the system through a potentially complicated technological transition. Brown has proposed increasing the number of online classes — something the public supports, according to polling, although many academics have been resistant.

"Technology is going to be one of her biggest challenges," White said.

Here's something that relates, "UC programs in lieu of affirmative action show limited success":

UC has struggled to enroll more blacks and Latinos since a state ban on race-based admissions, an issue central to a recent Supreme Court case.

Actually, the system's perverted the prohibition on affirmative action in a million ways, and they still can't make up for the abject failure of minorities at the K-12 level.

And see Heather Mac Donald, at City Journal, "Multiculti U."

It's messed up all around.

Yay Regents of the University of California! I'm sure Napolitano can turn things around (not). She'll be a fundraising whore and that's about it ---- although, maybe that's good.

New York's Hempstead Union Free School District Disciplines Employee Who Compiled Misspelled Summer Reading List

Well, it could happened anywhere, I guess.

At WSJ, "Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gypsy'? School Book List Fails Spell Check: Hempstead Summer Reading Recommendation Rife With Errors":

When the Hempstead Union Free School District put together a summer reading list this year, students and parents were introduced to some unfamiliar new titles.

Among them: "The Canterbury Tale," by Geoffrey Chaucer; "The Lovely Bone," by Alice Sebold; and, most notably, F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gypsy."

School officials in the Long Island community said Thursday that they had disciplined an employee who made the dozens of spelling errors and typos in the 13-page list outlining recommended summer reading for students.

Alicia Figueras, the district's spokeswoman, said at a news conference that the district apologizes for what she called an isolated incident.

"I would like to announce that disciplinary action has been taken against the personnel who made the unfortunate clerical errors while compiling the list," she said.

The district declined to identify the employee, provide his or her title or say how he or she was disciplined.

RTWT.

Well all make typos, especially me.

But I think there's more to this story than the school district's letting on. But you'd need a FOIA request to get the full story out of these derps. Sheesh.

Welcome to the Hive Mind

This is great.

Liberal flow chart on social issues... #tcot #truth pic.twitter.com/vhXU84fyTL

— Gregory Moore Jr (@gregorymoorejr) July 13, 2013

Riverside Couple Accused of Animal Cruelty, Gets Death Threats

Well, you're nothing these days unless you've got people threatening your ass.

At NBC News Los Angeles.

Couple Says They’re Getting Death Threats Over ‘Joke’ Facebook Photo http://t.co/sESl9bINGY

— CBS Los Angeles (@CBSLA) July 13, 2013

Well, It's a Slow Game After All

When folks compare sports, the oldest complaint about baseball is that it's often boring, with a lot of really lackadaisical, er, action.

Well, here's proof, at WSJ, "In America's Pastime, Baseball Players Pass a Lot of Time":

In any given year, roughly 70 million people will attend major-league baseball games. A lucky handful will be treated to something unforgettable: a no-hitter, a walk-off grand slam, a player stealing home. Many more fans will see towering home runs, late-inning rallies and diving catches. But there is one thing every single fan who buys a ticket is 100% guaranteed to see: a bunch of grown men standing in a field, doing absolutely nothing.


Baseball is remembered for its moments of action, and it is no secret that such moments are fleeting. But how much actual action takes place in a baseball game? We decided to find out.

By WSJ calculations, a baseball fan will see 17 minutes and 58 seconds of action over the course of a three-hour game. This is roughly the equivalent of a TED Talk, a Broadway intermission or the missing section of the Watergate tapes. A similar WSJ study on NFL games in January 2010 found that the average action time for a football game was 11 minutes. So MLB does pack more punch in a battle of the two biggest stop-and-start sports. By seven minutes.

The WSJ reached this number by taking the stopwatch to three different games and timing everything that happened. We then categorized the parts of the game that could fairly be considered "action" and averaged the results. The almost 18-minute average included balls in play, runner advancement attempts on stolen bases, wild pitches, pitches (balls, strikes, fouls and balls hit into play), trotting batters (on home runs, walks and hit-by-pitches), pickoff throws and even one fake-pickoff throw. This may be generous. If we'd cut the action definition down to just the time when everyone on the field is running around looking for something to do (balls in play and runner advancement attempts), we'd be down to 5:47.

We chose three very different games to get a fair sampling of variation. The first game was as close as we could find to an average game in terms of batters faced and length of game—a 3-2 Twins win over the Tigers on April 3 that clocked in at 3:01 for nine innings. (The average MLB game this season is three hours and three minutes, according to the firm Stats LLC.) Then, for balance, we decided to throw in a slugfest—the Indians 19-6 victory over the Astros from April 20 at 3:45 and a pitchers' duel, the Nationals 1-0 victory over the Reds on April 26 that lasted 2:08. The sample conveniently included both leagues and six different teams.

So where did all the time go? The missing 160 or so minutes? The answer: Huge chunks of inaction that absolutely dwarf everything else that goes on in the game...

Continue reading.

And baseball beats football for action? It's counterintuitive, no doubt.

Maria Sharapova for Porsche Design

Amazing!

At London's Daily Mail, "Life in the fast lane! Maria Sharapova flashes her long legs... as she poses on the hood of a bright red Porsche 911 Carrera."

KTVU Anchor Tori Campbell Read the names Off the Teleprompter and Didn't Bat An Eye

That's from London's Daily Mail, which picks up on the "Ho Lee Fuk" story.

See, "Outrage as news station is duped into reporting false and racist names for the Asiana crash pilots... as it emerges an NTSB INTERN was behind the prank."

Look, even X's Exene Cervenka's pissed:

Fail: KTVU Uses Fake Names For Asiana Flight 214 Crash Crew http://t.co/nq267ySch8 via @viralread KTVU gave names, NTSB CONFIRMED names.
— Exene Cervenka (@exenecervenka) July 13, 2013

More:

NTSB: Fake Asiana pilot names originated with KTVU, intern was acting in "good faith" when he confirmed names - http://t.co/9xkVbufRLU
— Matthew Keys (@MatthewKeysLive) July 13, 2013

And check Memeorandum.

Van Nuys Tagger Hits $2.3 Million Lear Jet

Well, if you're gonna go for it, might was well go big!

At NBC News Los Angeles:

Tagger hits $2.3M Lear Jet parked at Van Nuys Airport, police say. http://t.co/NaEUseB1Vb pic.twitter.com/1HdSvzkueg
— NBC Los Angeles (@NBCLA) July 13, 2013

Jury Deliberations Continue in #Zimmerman Trial

At LAT, "Jury weighing George Zimmerman's fate adjourns for the night."

Plus, the lovely Judge Jeanine Pirro discusses the case, with Laura Ingraham on last night's O'Reilly Factor:

Jennifer Nicole Lee Topless in Miami

I've posted on this lady quite a bit.

Maybe she's upping the wow! factor.

At Egotastic!, "Jennifer Nicole Lee Bikini Pictures Falling Off to Beat the Heat."

Democracy Now!'s Barrett Brown Puff Piece Ignores Hacker's Threats Against the FBI

I watched this Democracy Now! segment last night, but the headline at the video alone indicates how Amy Goodman and crew ignored Barrett Brown's threats against FBI Agent Robert Smith.

You gotta love it, "Jailed for Sharing a Web Link? Prosecution of Barrett Brown Could Set Chilling Precedent."



And here's the title of the entire 20-minute segment, "Jailed Reporter Barrett Brown Faces 105 Years For Reporting on Hacked Private Intelligence Firms," available here and here.

And these people consider themselves real journalists? Shoot, they're almost right up there with KTVU San Francisco.

Seriously, Robert Stacy McCain did the key reporting on Barrett Brown's epic personal self-destruction. See, "‘Anonymous’ Spokesman Barrett Brown Arrested After Bizarre Video Meltdown," and "‘The Kook Who Knew Too Much’: Heroic Fantasy, Paranoia and Barrett Brown." Check the "Barrett Brown" search results as well. The FBI came down hard on him at precisely the time he posted a YouTube video making threats against Agent Smith. It's a little more complicated than "sharing a web link," no?

The fact is, the left's "reality-based community" lives in an un-reality make-believe world of fantasy and lies. The extreme romanticism surrounding the NSA surveillance scandal only explains part of this. Simply, anything that fits the leftist narrative will be pumped up unceasingly, with no corroboration of the facts. Confirmed low-level hacker and all-around idiot ass-wipe Barrett Brown gets pumped up there along with the likes of Daniel Ellsberg for really bringing it to the man! 

The lulz. Stop. They hurt.

Girls as Young as 13 Get Free 'Plan B' Contraceptives in New York City Schools

Actually, this isn't a new story.

Fox News reported on this last September, "NYC schools to dispense morning-after pill without notifying parents."

What's new is that this made the front-page of today's New York Times, "Ready Access to Plan B Pills in City Schools":

She was only 16, with big dreams — too young, she thought, to have a baby. Yet she had had sex without protection, and she could see those dreams evaporating. Terrified, she found her way to the basement of her school, Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn, where the nurse’s office was tucked away.

First the nurse weighed her and checked her blood pressure. Then she relayed the information to a doctor and made sure it was all right to give the girl Plan B One-Step, the morning-after pill. The nurse checked to see if the girl’s parents had returned the opt-out form that was supposed to have gone home at the beginning of the year. They had not, so she was free to take the pill.

Taking a pill out of a locked cabinet, the nurse handed it over with a cup of water and waited for her to swallow it, the girl recalled. After that first time, the girl took Plan B at school two or three more times. She said her mother had not signed the opt-out form, because she had wanted to have sex and so had never given it to her. “My mom, she doesn’t even know they have this stuff,” the girl, a junior from Coney Island, said.

Last month, the Obama administration seemingly changed the landscape of access to emergency contraception across the country when, in a reversal, it agreed to allow the best-known pill, Plan B One-Step, to become available to all ages without a prescription. Until recently, only those 17 and older could buy it over the counter.

But New York City had long ago come to an accommodation with the idea that girls as young as 13 or 14 should have easy access to the pill.

Through a patchwork of nurses’ offices and independent clinics operating in schools, students can now get free emergency contraceptives like Plan B One-Step in more than 50 high school buildings, generally in neighborhoods with high teenage pregnancy rates. Girls needing the drug have been able to get it immediately under the supervision of doctors or nurse practitioners with prescribing ability. School clinics began dispensing the pills several years ago, and in the 2011-12 academic year alone, about 5,500 girls received them at school at least once, according to the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

“Most teens go to school,” Deborah Kaplan, the department’s assistant commissioner for maternal, infant and reproductive health, said, explaining the city’s decision to make Plan B available in schools, as part of a bigger sex education campaign.

New York is not the only city to take Plan B right to teenagers; similar school-based health centers either prescribe or administer the contraceptives in Baltimore; Chicago; Oakland, Calif.; and all over Colorado, among other places. But New York’s ambitious push on Plan B is striking in light of its history with contraceptives in schools. Two decades ago, a decision to distribute condoms in schools without parental consent was one of several controversial moves that ultimately cost Schools Chancellor Joseph P. Fernandez his job.

Now, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has power over schools, and his administration can make such decisions without public debate. Even today, however, providing Plan B to minors remains a sensitive issue. In the 13 schools where the contraceptives are handed out by a school nurse after phone consultation with a doctor, parents must be notified of the program and given a chance to opt out, a provision that originated with a court ruling related to the condom protests in the early 1990s. (In 40 schools where an independent provider, which is typically a hospital or local health clinic, provides the pills, no parental consent is required.)

Across the United States, half of all school-based health clinics are prohibited from handing out any contraception, including condoms, by school, district or state regulations or laws, according to a survey by the School-Based Health Alliance, based in Washington.

Critics of the use of the pill have argued that it encourages sexual activity among teenagers and that parents ought to thus have a strong say in whether their children should have access to it. “Teens who are otherwise going to think twice about sex are going to say, ‘This is always going to be available to me,’ ” said Anna Higgins, director of the Center for Human Dignity of the Family Research Council.

“The moral and physical consequences to this premature sexual behavior are very real,” Ms. Higgins added, “and they need to be addressed by the person who knows the child and who loves the child best, which is the parent.”

Only 3 percent of parents in the 13 schools sign the opt-out form, according to the health department. Dr. Angela Diaz, director of the Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center, which runs clinics in three Manhattan high schools (where opt-out forms are not needed), said some parents tacitly condoned the program because it was so hard to talk to their children about sex.

“They wish that their kids would talk to them, but given the reality, they’re happy there is a place where they can be helped,” Dr. Diaz said.

That's basically just giving up your children to the state. The parents are giving up responsibility for their child's well-being to the schools, who don't care about the values or propriety of 13-year-old children having sexual intercourse. And of course, no doubt many young girls simply become pregnant, and thus you have children having children.

The regressive left loves all of this, of course. Indeed, access to all the sex enablers are part and parcel to the left's social justice program. You build generations of Democrats dependent on government. Who cares if you destroy untold numbers of lives in the process?

Sickening.

Still more at the link.

Horrific! Runners Gored at Pamplona Running of the Bulls 2013

Happens every summer, with gory results.

At London's Daily Mail, "Horrific scenes on the streets of Pamplona as three men are brutally gored in bloodiest day yet of this year’s Running of the Bulls."

Video c/o Blazing Cat Fur.

Captain 'Sum Ting Wong'

OMG, this is just way too much, via iOWNTHEWORLD, "‘Sum Ting Wong’ ‘Wi Tu Lo’ ‘Ho Lee Fuk’ and ‘Bang Ding Ow’."

ADDED: More information at Blazing Cat Fur, "Epic KTVU Fail: Anchor Reports Pilot Names Including ‘Sum Ting Wong’ and ‘Wi Tu Lo’."

Plus, Politico's Seung Min Kim is freakin' pissed off on Twitter: "BULLSHIT apology." More here, here, and here. I don't think she's done ranting. Definitely an epic racist fail at that network.

6:15pm PST: More weird all the time, but the NTSB confirms KTVU's claim of confirmation of the pilots' names. See, "NTSB statement on erroneous confirmation of crew names":

Earlier today, in response to an inquiry from a media outlet, a summer intern acted outside the scope of his authority when he erroneously confirmed the names of the flight crew on the aircraft.

#TrayvonMartin's Everything Is Free Sale! — #Zimmerman Has to Pay!

Hilarious!

Via Theo Spark.

Plus a #TrayvonMartin roundup here.

And more from Stranahan, "As Zimmerman Jurors Deliberate, Angry Protests Outside Courthouse."

Progs Stay Classy in Texas

Here's the background, at USA Today, "Texas Senate on track to pass tough abortion rules."

And at Life News, "Texas Senate Committee Passes Pro-Life Bill Banning Abortions After 20 Weeks."

And seen on Twitter:

Real bricks (not foam ones) being confiscated from the peace-loving abortion crowd by DPS. Nice. #stand4life
— Melissa Clouthier (@MelissaTweets) July 12, 2013

Ever wondered why Texas Democrats haven't won a statewide election in 20 years? pic.twitter.com/bCTalqCJfQ | @BeccaJLower @SteveWorks4You #tcot
— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) July 12, 2013

Shorter #ladyproblems pic.twitter.com/jTcVE40tMw
— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) July 12, 2013

Added:

Bricks and Tampons Intended to be Thrown at Pro-Life Lawmakers Confiscated by Police http://t.co/dseyTN1434
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) July 12, 2013

More, from the Other McCain, "Texas Democrat Party Aborting Itself to Oblivion: No Life, No Future, No Hope."

Victoria's Secret Angels Barbara Palvin, Candice Swanepoel and Erin Heatherton

Some more lovelies while we're waiting.

At Londons' Daily Mail, "Victoria's Secret Angels Barbara Palvin, Candice Swanepoel and Erin Heatherton celebrate summer in sizzling new campaign shots."