POWIP Piece of Work In Progress

Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher Whines [UPDATED]

To some public radio guy from Detroit:

"McCain was trying to use me," Wurzelbacher said, according to public radio correspondent Scott Detrow. "I happened to be the face of middle Americans. It was a ploy.”

"I don’t owe him s—," Wurzelbacher continued. "He really screwed my life up, is how I look at it.”

Look, dude, I'm not a fan of McCain, either, but back in the day, when you decided to go to Israel as a war correspondent for Pajamas Media, you didn't seem to feel that you were being used too badly.

Mind you, Pajamas TV has been better than I expected, with Whittle, Klavan, Green, Insty and the rest, so it's not as though I'm dredging this up just to embarrass them. I still can't afford to pay for it, but if I made another $20k per year, I probably would.

UPDATE: Julie Mason feels similarly.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Replace Your Lost Cell Phone Charger for Free

From Dvice:

Travelers, if you haven't already thought of this, here's a solution to a lost cellphone charger predicament that could save the day: If you're staying at a hotel (or for you dishonest types, even if you're not), go to the front desk and ask if they have an extra [insert your cellphone type here] charger. Your chances of success are excellent, because most hotels have a huge box full of almost every type of cellphone charger in existence.

According to one hotelier with lots of experience with this: "You have no idea the size box we have of chargers left behind. 90% are idiot Blackberry chargers. This works 100% of the time, we never verify anyone stays here — we just let them go shopping for their charger. Hell, we even give people a charger if they call down to the front desk and say they forgot theirs!"

If you're always misplacing your Fleshlight while travelling, as I do, this also works for that.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Get Offa My Lawn

Mark Steyn:

I’ve been saying for months that the difference between America and Europe is that, when the global economy nosedived, everywhere from Iceland to Bulgaria mobs took to the streets and besieged Parliament demanding to know why government didn’t do more for them. This is the only country in the developed world where a mass movement took to the streets to say we can do just fine if you control-freak statists would just stay the hell out of our lives, and our pockets. You can shove your non-stimulating stimulus, your jobless jobs bill, and your multi-trillion-dollar porkathons. This isn’t karaoke. These guys are singing “I’ll do it my way” for real.

Related: South America, North Africa face off in Italy.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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On the Uses of Amy Bishop Anderson [UPDATE]

Over the weekend, there's been a lot of commentary regarding the professor who, apparently because she was denied tenure, opened fire on her colleagues at a meeting at the University of Alabama-Huntsville, killing three and wounding three, two of whom were still in critical condition as of yesterday. The accused shooter then apparently abandoned the 9mm pistol in a women's bathroom and called her husband to come pick her up. She was apprehended by police in the parking lot of the building, where she had performed her duties as a biology professor and researcher, and from which she was to depart at the end of the semester, though she had fought the original ruling for a year.

Glenn Reynolds noted that at ratemyprofessor.com, a student had claimed that she was a "socalist" [sic] who would talk about her political views outside of class. There was considerable variety of opinion about her performance as a teacher, though on the whole she received high marks. Left-leaning blogs jumped on this, citing it as an example of how right-leaning bloggers manufacture outrage by means of innuendo, and if that were all, perhaps that would be a fair assessment. (See the comments at Volokh).

Subsequently, though, it came to light that Bishop, when 20 years old and living at home with her family in Braintree, MA, killed her brother Seth, 18, with a pump-action shotgun which he and their father were licensed to use, and which they purchased from a sporting goods store after suffering a home invasion. She had managed, moments prior to that, to blow a hole in her bedroom wall with the gun, though her mother claimed she heard no blast (her father was out of the house at the time). After what some police described as a phone call from the then-District Attorney Delahunt, now a US Representative from Massachusetts, then-Police Chief Polio ordered his officers to cease booking procedures and release her, determining that the shooting was an accident. The present Police Chief of Braintree, a Mr. Frazier, recalled that some members of the department were upset with the decision in 1986/87 (the killing took place on December 6, 1986). The official police report was said to be missing, but a six-page report surfaced on the internet, alleging the two shots mentioned, whereas police involved with the incident mentioned three. The report stated that Ms. Bishop was in such an agitated emotional state that the police deemed it counterproductive to interview her at the time of her arrest. The report also indicated that in her testimony at the time Amy Bishop said the did not recall having brought the gun with her from the house. Her contention was that the gun went off as she attempted to remove the shells.

What wasn't included in the report were the circumstances of her capture, because some of the officers who were with the department at the time averred that she was captured at gunpoint after having attempted to hijack a car. As it turns out, according to the testimony of one eye-witness, she fled from her home to a local auto dealership, where she attempted to steal a getaway vehicle, stating that her husband was pursuing her with murderous intent. She went so far as to level the gun at one of the employees, which seems a rather strange omission. Between the missing official report and what is missing from the one that remains, some have seen a cover-up, particularly because her mother apparently sat on the police board of personnel at the time. The retired Chief, Mr. Polio, strongly denies any wrongdoing, though the present department says that the official file has been missing since 1988.

The plot continued to thicken, though, when the FBI released information stating that she and her husband, James Anderson, had been questioned regarding a couple of pipe bombs sent through the mail to a one-time professor of hers with whom she had quarrelled, and from whom she had anticipated getting a negative performance review, in 1993, while a graduate student at Northeastern (she had by that time graduated from Harvard). Among the materials discovered in their investigation was the draft on her computer of a novel about a young woman who had killed her brother and decided to become a great scientist as a form of recompense. According to one anonymous "friend of the family" interviewed by The Boston Herald, she was also "obsessed with" Obama and far-left in her political outlook.

Be that as it may, it's clear that contrary to the liberal narrative, this is a game played by both sides. The Sparkman hanging that Stacy covered was a good example of the dynamic in action, as was the Holocaust Museum shooting. Reynolds has every right to bring any bit of evidence to people's attention that he wishes to, though one would hope that people would not take stretch speculation too far on the basis of slender evidence. It is fairly certain, at any rate, that had Napolitano's office released the kind of report it did about a right-wing threat regarding the left, if Cass Sunstein expressed the kinds of views he has about the First Amendment from a right-leaning perspective, and had the FBI and local police scrutinized a pro-choice group in Madison, WI, the way they had the pro-life organizations, they would be screaming bloody murder. And they'd be absolutely right to do so.

Three people are dead, two clinging to life, and the woman leaves behind four children. I'm not sure what her political leanings have to do with this; there's simply not enough information. But whatever the case, the facts themselves will be dispassionate---however they are used.

You can read a paper co-authored by Bishop on the comparative toxicity of SSRIs here (pdf).

UPDATE: Donald Douglas's excellent post on this subject is here.

Many thanks to Atlantic Wire for the kind link.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Oh, Magoo, You’ve Done It Again

Biden's motorcade involved in 3-car pile up in Vancouver. Peggy Fleming receives minor injury as guest.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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All Points Bulletin – Where is Rocketman?

Has anyone on these intertubal pipes seen or heard from Rocketman?

Dan and I have reached out to his known email address - and to no avail.

At what point do we become concerned?

$10 reward for information leading to his howabouts.

Hypothesis: Rocketman and Troll meet in dark alley. Rocketman prevails and turns himself in.

Enoch_Root

AKA. Bobby Donn Brubaker (the most popular man in Mesa, AZ), the Umbrella of Terror, Jack Ketch.

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He’s Got Game

Some time ago, I started reading The Obsidian Files, a blog concentrating on Game and other topics, written by a self-proclaimed dandy [and who doesn’t like a sharp-dressed man?]

You may have heard about Game recently from various articles that just happen to coincide with the run-up to Valentine’s Day [oh, remember that tomorrow is President’s Day! It’s important!]. The way it’s often cast is that Game is what alpha males have, and must be explicitly taught to beta males, such that these men are successful in their interactions with women.

In any case, Obsidian has attracted more than a few women to his blog as commenters, and he decided that we needed to be educated as to what Game really is. Many times, women go to blogs such as Roissy in DC, and say “Oh, Game is just about being an asshole to women; just treating women as a piece of meat; bitch bitch bitch, moan moan moan”. Obsidian gave us a reading list, and I decided to read the book on the list written by someone who has written professionally about a variety of topics – Neil Strauss, aka Style, and his book: The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists.

Meep

Meep is a member of the Irish Catholic mafia, having a suspiciously high number of green-eyed, red-haired friends. While she doesn’t have red hair herself [except when she goes into the sun (rare for any vampire)], she does have green eyes. She’s a raving Papist and is a life actuary on the side [i.e., she counts dead people]. An amateur pain-in-the-ass [willing to go pro!], she likes covering retirement, mortality, math, and education issues.

Obama Standing by Brennan . . . Because?

I'm not sure there's anyone I link to more than Jennifer Rubin:

In a speech on the Senate floor, Sen. Jeff Sessions skewers John Brennan for suggesting that we would lose no intelligence by Mirandizing terrorists and that there really is no difference between the military and civilian tribunals. (As a rhetorical matter, this is a silly argument for the Obami to make, of course. They accused the Bushies of shredding constitutional rights, and now there is no difference between the two?) Well, this is the corner in which the Obami now find themselves — making specious arguments that knowledgeable people can easily swat down.

Read the whole thing.

Obama and company probably think they can get away with this, considering Pelosi wriggled out of her trouble in lying about what the CIA had informed her of regarding enhanced interrogation. Ah, but things have changed since then, and this is a loser.

The problem here, which Sessions, Mukasey, Burck, and Perino (as well as countless others) have spotted, is that the Obami let their lefty lawyers’ ideology go unchecked, interfering with the primary duty of the administration, namely to gather information and prevent further attacks on Americans. That is inexcusable. No amount of fakery or misdirection by Obama’s advisers can conceal that.

B-b-b-b-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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