Oh My Goodness! A Model Rejects Dollars!

This is one of those stories that are all too common these days. The BBC headline screams: Supermodel 'rejects dollar pay'. The story hyperventilates about how supermodel Gisele Bündchen is refusing to be paid in US dollars because of concerns about the strength of that currency.

Gisele Bündchen is said to be keen to avoid the US currency because of uncertainty over its strength.

The Brazilian, thought to have earned about $30m in the year to June, prefers to be paid in euros, her sister and manager told the Bloomberg news agency.

However, Ms Bündchen, 27, declined to comment on her pay arrangements.

The BBC, not deterred by the refusal, goes on at length about the dollar. One teeny, tiny problem.

The story is bogus.

This morning a Bloomberg story got picked up by several news outlets, including Warren Buffett Watch, reporting that Bundchen had asking to be paid in euros rather than dollars due to uncertainty about the U.S. currency's future.  That would have put her in the same camp as Buffett, who's been bearish on the dollar for awhile now.

But just a few minutes ago, CNBC Squawk Box producer Stephanie Landsman spoke by telephone with Anne Nelson, Bundchen's manager.  Nelson tells us reports that Gisele wants to be paid in euros are "false."   Nelson's take: "Some idiot in Brazil reported something just to make news."

Nelson points out that Gisele lives in New York City, and thus needs U.S. dollars for her big-city lifestyle.

Biased BBC is all over that little bit of fraud.

Bündchen's manager's statement of the obvious (to anyone in possesion of half-a-brain and access to Google that is), that "Gisele lives in New York City, and thus needs U.S. dollars for her big-city lifestyle", rather gives the game away, at least for any reporter who wants to honestly report the finer details of the remuneration of a supermodel (who's not exactly a household name, at least not in this household), as distinct from reporters keen to rush into print with an anti US-dollar story.

I, frankly, have no clue who Gisele Bündchen is and would not know her if I tripped over her in the street. But suddenly, according to the BBC, she is a financial whiz with all the answers and amazing acumen in global currency trading. Yeesh.

American Victim Idol

On October 30th I asked what was wrong with George Washington University. That was in response to a report that swastikas had been drawn around campus - particularly in front of the dormitory doors of Jewish students. Recall also that only a short while before the swastika incidents that a leftist group had tried to smear campus conservatives by posting hoax anti-Muslim fliers around campus. It turns out that the latter incident has rather a lot in common with the former. Because what is wrong with George Washington University is beginning to look like an episode of a new reality television show, American Victim Idol.

A student at George Washington University has admitted drawing swastikas on her own door, university officials say:

After evaluating evidence from a hidden camera positioned in response to the swastika postings in Mitchell Hall, University Police have linked the student who filed the complaints to several of the incidents.

Following a final interview with investigators today, the student admitted responsibility for those incidents.

The student in question is an 18-year-old freshman. The GW Hatchet reports:

Using footage from a hidden video camera, the University Police Department linked freshman Sarah Marshak with the vandalism. She will now appear before Student Judicial Services and could face federal and District charges, a spokesperson announced Monday afternoon.

In an interview with The Hatchet Monday afternoon, Marshak, who had been a reporter for this newspaper, categorically denied drawing the swastikas on her residence hall door.

Marshak saw six swastikas on her residence hall door, where she lived alone.

GWU failed to take action against seven students who perpetrated an anti-Muslim hoax against Young America's Foundation last month. Marshak's hate hoax began Oct. 23, and FBI agents were called to assist in the investigation.

Robert Stacy McCain points out that it is a longing for fame on the part of the "victim" - and the quickest route to that 15 minutes is by being lauded in the press as a victim of "hate crimes". Even if you have to inflict them on yourself to make it happen. What's also going wrong at GWU is an administration that fails to stomp - hard - on cretinous people who have been caught red-handed faking hate and trying to smear others with their actions. You reap what you sow, folks. The administration of GWU failed to take action against the real purveyors of hate and have, as a result, promoted faked hate as a means to publicity and fame.

Welcome to American Victim Idol.

Laughing At The Law

The Times of London has a rather amusing little article up that will make you laugh. It is about some utterly bizarre court cases that have popped up all over the world. Professor Gary Slapper has been writing a column for the Times for some time called Case Notes. He is moving on to a new column, Weird Cases. To promote the new column, the Times asked Slapper to pull together his top 20 personal favorite odd cases from years off collecting these. There are some true classics here.

6. In 2005, Marina Bai, a Russian astrologer, sued NASA for £165 million for “disrupting the balance of the universe”. She claimed that the space agency’s Deep Impact space probe, which was due to hit a comet later that year to harvest material from the explosion, was a “terrorist act”. A Moscow court accepted Russian jurisdiction to hear the claim but it was eventually rejected.

7. In 2007, a court in India was asked to decide whether a vibrating condom is a contraceptive or a sex toy. The condoms contain a battery-operated device, and, for the avoidance of doubt, are marketed as “Crezendo”. Opponents argue it’s a sex toy and thus unlawful in India, whereas the manufacturer says it’s a contraceptive and promotional of public health.

8. In 2006, a young man from Jiaxing, near Shanghai, found himself in legal trouble after failing to take advice before putting his soul up for sale on an online auction site. The posting was eventually removed by the auctioneer and the seller was told that the advert would be reinstated only if he could produce written permission to sell his soul from “a higher authority”.

There are 17 more over at the link that range from the bizarre to the hysterical. Enjoy.

The Instincts Of The Authoritarian Left

Ruth Dudley Edwards writes an empassioned plea for her fellow British citizens to wake up from their sleepwalking. They are, Edwards writes, heading into an Orwellian authoritarian dystopia with hardly a single voice raised in protest. Four year old children are having their DNA recorded in a national database if they misbehave at school. Cameras are everywhere, watching everyone. All being done with the very best of intentions, mind you. (And no, this is not the same as the US government monitoring phone calls that originate from terror suspects overseas.) 

Our ministers are not bad people. Their intentions are honourable. They wish to make us safer. But their instincts are those of the authoritarian Left. They have no sense of our history and are also incompetent.

In their complete inability to grasp the law of unintended consequences, and in their technological and administrative ignorance and hopelessness, we have ended up with the worst of all possible worlds.

New Labour, in its idiotic submission to the human rights industry and political correctness, has hamstrung the police and the security services and made the judiciary over-mighty.

Terrified by the consequent rise in crime and the menace of murderous Islamist terrorism, they proceeded to overreact by treating every man, woman and child in this country as a potential danger to society.

Is there any sane person who, if forced to think about it, would believe it right that children accused of playground misbehaviour should have their DNA samples placed permanently on a police computer along with rapists and murderers?

To those of you who indignantly reply that you are sane and see no problem with recording the entire population on a database; and, what's more, you're in favour of ID cards, since the innocent have nothing to fear; and that in these days of globalised threats we must mobilise technology to protect ourselves, I say two things.

First, that you are almost certainly and sadly a product of the debased educational system that taught you nothing about this country's magnificent history and the traditional liberties for which your forefathers fought.

And second, that even if you were right in principle, you would be wrong in practice.

This government has a long and discreditable history of botching major computer projects. Not only do they not work properly, they are susceptible to hackers and frauds and the national DNA database is proving no exception.

Already, the Home Office has admitted that almost 6,000 of the 4.5million names on the database are false, misspelled or incorrect. Computer experts always point out that the bigger the database, the less reliable the system and the more vulnerable it is to abuse.

A few months ago, a House of Lords select committee issued a stern warning about a government project called Contact-Point - another folly that so far has cost £225million and will register public and private information about all children under 18.

The committee said the "enormous size of the database and the huge number of probable users" would inevitably "increase the risks of accidental or inadvertent breaches of security, and of deliberate misuse of the data (e.g. disclosure of an address with malign intent) which would be likely to bring the whole scheme into disrepute".

In fact, the children of certain, favored politicians and celebrities are being excluded from the database because of security concerns. That says rather a lot about what the government itself thinks of the possibility that the data may be misused.

Moonbats Over The Peacock

Rosie O’Donnell in Talks to Join MSNBC

Rosie O’Donnell, who abruptly left “The View” on ABC last spring after drawing attention and ratings for her opinions on everything from the Iraq war to her co-hosts, is in serious discussions to return to television atop a new soapbox: a prime-time show on the cable news channel MSNBC, according to executives on both sides of the negotiations who have been briefed directly.

Under one scenario, Ms. O’Donnell would be given the 9 p.m. slot each weeknight on MSNBC, where she would go head-to-head with two heavyweights of cable talk: “Larry King Live” on CNN and “Hannity & Colmes” on Fox News. Her show would replace “Live with Dan Abrams,” a relatively low-rated program that only recently replaced “Scarborough Country,” which was also little-watched.

The Melted Steely Knoll Troll and the Mouth That Roared Lies together at last. Obviously, MSNBC is trying to corner the moonbat market.

The Big Democrat Mystery

Mickey Kaus notes the same EJ Dionne article that I did and asks a question: Where is the Democratic split over illegal immigration?

What's changed? Well, President Bush–the main politician doing the GOP-splitting–is leaving the scene. The Republican electorate seems to have decisively turned against his illegal-immigrant semi-amnesty. Result: No more split! But the powerful GOP anti-legalization sentiment was obviously latent even in 2006. The MSM just chose not to notice.

Anti-legalization sentiment has also been manifestly latent among Democratic voters–including, but not limited to, unskilled workers whose wages have been suppressed by immigrant competition. What's odd, then, is that the Dems now aren't split. They're only terrified! The Dem presidential candidates who might appeal to anti-legalization opinion–and thereby split the party–all seem paralyzed by their desire not to offend Latinos.

Hmm. The last successful Democratic presidential candidate defied his party's dogma on a central issue (welfare) at the risk, it was thought, of offending key interest groups (blacks, liberals). Is there no current candidate willing to do the same on immigration? You'd think someone in the 2008 field would make the move, just for strategic reasons. … John Edwards may be edging there: On ABC's This Week he came out against N.Y. Gov. Spitzer's illegal-immigrant driver's-license plan. But he only did it sotto voce, after prompting, and after emphasizing his support for "comprehensive" reform (i.e. legalization). …

He's right, but the Democrats have hemmed themselves in on this issue. A properly tuned message on immigration should include language that draws the low wage workers on board. They know that their wages and chances are being suppressed by the flood of cheap labor. Immigrants who came to this country legally should be (and by all indications are) furious at those who broke the rules. There are natural fractures in the voting bloc that Democrats believe they own.

High fence. Wide Gate. Hearty welcome for those who play by the rules. It'll work - but the Dems can't use it.

Stupid Publicity Stunt Of The Day

A shopping mall in Britain has managed to set up a publicity stunt by claiming to be cracking down on fat, jolly old elves for Christmas.

Santa is being told to shift the pounds before Christmas - because the obese saint is failing to set a "good example" for children.

The traditional children's hero, best known for feasting on mince pies left out on Christmas eve, has always sported a bulging midriff.

But shopping centre bosses are giving the well-wisher his marching orders - to the nearest gym - to tackle the increasing problem of obesity.

The revelation comes after a medical report earlier this month stated that by 2050 more than 50 per cent of Brits will be obese.

Bluewater shopping centre in Greenhithe, Kent, has even gone one step further and set-up a Santa boot camp.

Fiona Campbell-Reilly, spokeswoman at the shopping centre, said: "Santa has been around for years, but society has changed and our Santa needs to reflect this.

"Bluewater's Santa Boot Camp is getting Santa in shape and setting a good example to children who idolise him.

"He will still be the same lovable jolly man, but will be fitter and healthier."

Sounds nannyish enough to be plausible in the vast politically correct wasteland of Britain. But it's a stunt. They made a video which shows it is being done as a way of getting attention - and free advertising.

Hey! Some Great News About The Writer’s Strike!

The lack of writers now that they are out on strike has caused a number of talk shows to go into reruns. But there is an up side to it! Without writers, Steven Colbert has has to drop out of the Presidential race.

"I want to say to my supporters, this is not over," Colbert said. "While I may accept the decision of the Council, the fight goes on! The dream endures! … And I am going off the air until I can talk about this without weeping."

In reality, "The Colbert Report" was going off the air because of a strike by Hollywood writers that began Monday. Many talk shows were expected to be shown in repeats during the strike.

Gee, what a shame.

Frustrating Times

The Wall Street Journal points out that Democrats are feeling frustrated - and that voters are becoming frustrated with them.

WASHINGTON — The way in which Senate Democrats wavered and then consented to the confirmation of Michael B. Mukasey as attorney general reflects the party's broader struggle to make headway on its national-security agenda, despite President Bush's unpopularity.

On questions such as Mr. Mukasey's stance on waterboarding, warrantless wiretapping and the war in Iraq, Democrats have been stymied by Republicans in Congress and the White House. That has sparked frustration among supporters, especially those on the left, who anticipated that last year's congressional takeover would force some policy changes.

These dashed expectations are one reason polls give Congress an approval rating lower than Mr. Bush's. The difficulties faced by Democrats on these issues look certain to complicate the party's bid to expand House and Senate majorities and regain the White House in 2008, a wartime election in which national security will be a major issue.

Democrats acknowledge the difficulty in speaking up for civil liberties while maintaining a tough stand on homeland security and terrorism.

"On issues of wiretapping or torture or any of the other tools used to fight terrorism, it's a complicated message to sell," says Stephanie Cutter, a Democratic strategist in Washington who worked on John Kerry's presidential campaign. She says Democrats in Congress and their supporters have "faced a bit of an awakening that they're not getting everything they wanted."

On Friday, two senior Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Charles Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California, rescued President Bush's pick to lead the Justice Department when they announced their plan to vote for his confirmation when it comes up for a vote tomorrow.

While the left may be frustrated with Democrats over all that, I suspect something else is at work with the unaligned voters in the center. They are watching a group of politicians who are failing to deliver on many things, including cleaning things up in Congress. They are seeing the same pork laden spending and they are seeing tax increases and the threat of enormous new taxes in the near future. They are not happy with what they are seeing. They are seeing the Democrats in control of Congress try over and over again to sneak amnesty for illegal immigrants through and they really do not like that.

The Democrats wailed that Iraq was lost but the recent good news makes them look bad to the average voter. After the 2006 elections I said that the voters did not give the Democrats a mandate to lose a war, but they went right ahead and tried anyway. The voters have been vehemently opposed to amnesty and firmly in favor of closing the borders. The Democrats simply ignored the public and tried to slide the DREAM act through.

This is going to have real repercussions in 2008. I rather suspect that the conventional wisdom is going to look pretty unwise in a year.

Replacing BDS With RDS

Philip Klein notes the rapidly increasing level of hate being directed at Rudy Giuliani by the American Left. It shows all of the signs of a new variant of Bush Derangement Syndrome. Call it Rudy Derangement Syndrome or RDS. The left is going bonkers on Giuliani lately even to the extent of Keith Olbermann and Arianna Huffington flat out lying about something Giuliani said - despite having a video clip that showed exactly what Giuliani actually said. That's pretty deranged.

The Giuliani hate fest has also infiltrated the airwaves, where Keith Olbermann has made bashing Rudy a daily feature on his show. Last Monday, an Olbermann segment entitled "Rudy Giuliani: The next Dick Cheney?" was about Mr. Giuliani's penchant for "secrecy" and "proclivity for executive power…"

This was followed up on Tuesday with a segment that began with a graphic featuring Mr. Giuliani, President Bush in the background and the words "Bush on Steroids"–a reference to John Edwards's comment that Mr. Giuliani shares Mr. Bush's love of "crony capitalism."

The segment revealed, just as with Mr. Bush, the media have no problem broadcasting factual errors when targeting Mr. Giuliani. Mr. Olbermann misquoted Mr. Giuliani as saying that Democrats wanted to invite Osama bin Laden to the White House. In actuality, Mr. Giuliani didn't say Osama, he said Assad, as in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, one of the leaders whom Barack Obama did in fact say he would be willing to meet with in Washington with no preconditions within the first year of his administration. Making the incident even more absurd, Mr. Olbermann ran the video clip of Mr. Giuliani's remarks on his show, and it was clear that Mr. Giuliani said "Assad." How clear? The transcript appearing on the official MSNBC Web site for Mr. Olbermann's show had Mr. Giuliani saying "Assad" in the video clip.

Nevertheless, Mr. Olbermann asked his guest Arianna Huffington to comment on whether the former mayor was being hyperbolic or lying.

"Well, he's lying and also every day he reveals more and more of himself," Ms. Huffington said. "And you can see that he really has the soul of a thug and the disposition of a tyrant."

Ms. Huffington repeated the false Giuliani-Osama quote, and later in the interview, she added: "He's kind of channeling Rush Limbaugh. He's making the lunatic fringe mainstream."

And Mr. Olbermann wondered, "Has it reached a level yet where we should be considering examining whether or not this is compulsive lying that there is something endemic to [Giuliani]? Or [is] this specific purpose-driven lies?"

One might ask the same about Mr. Olbermann. Even though the Associated Press issued a correction to its story that misquoted Mr. Giuliani following a report on AmSpecBlog, as of this writing, Mr. Olbermann has not corrected his erroneous segment. His spokeswoman did not return three calls or an email sent from The American Spectator asking whether the news channel planned to correct the error, and if not, to explain its corrections policy.

Accusing someone of lying by telling a lie doesn't exactly prove your point, does it? There are many other examples of the left's suddenly frenzied Rudy hate-a-thon. As Klein points out, the steady spew of hate actually helps Giuliani square things with the Republican base. So the tactic is highly counterproductive for the left.

Al Qaeda Recruiting 15-Year Old Brits: MI5

The head of Britain's MI5, Jonathan Evans, reports that al Qaeda is recruiting teenagers to carry out terror attacks in that country. It is a pretty stark warning.

“As I speak, terrorists are methodically and intentionally targeting young people and children in this country. They are radicalising, indoctrinating and grooming young, vulnerable people to carry out acts of terrorism,” he said in an address to the Society of Editors in Manchester.

He added: “This year, we have seen individuals as young as 15 and 16 implicated in terrorist-related activity.”

Mr Evans, 49, has taken up where Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, his predecessor, left off during her time as head of MI5. She, too, warned of the intensive efforts made by al-Qaeda to recruit support for its cause in the UK, and disclosed that her service was aware of and watching 1,600 terrorist suspects.

Mr Evans who has spent much of his career in MI5 in counter-terrorism, revealed that that figure had now jumped to “at least 2,000”.

“We suspect that there are as many again that we don’t yet know of,” he admitted.

An ugly situation.

The Center Of Our Discontent

Over at Real Clear Politics, Michael Barone points out what should be obvious to politicians by now: immigration reform is a central issue defining voter discontent with the direction the country is moving in. Barone didn't say that, incidentally. Democratic strategists James Carville and Stanley Greenberg did. Open border advocates routinely smear opponents and call them racist. Barone points out that this is simply not true.

But if you listened to the opponents, you heard something else. They want the current law to be enforced. It bothers them that we have something like 12 million illegal immigrants in our country. It bothers them that most of the southern border is unfenced and unpatrolled. It bothers them that illegal immigrants routinely use forged documents to get jobs — or are given jobs with no documents at all.

You don't have to be a racist to be bothered by such things. You just have to be a citizen who thinks that massive failure to enforce the law is corrosive to society.

That was apparent to me as I listened to a focus group of Republican voters in suburban Richmond, Va., conducted by Peter Hart for the Annenberg School of Communications. One voter after another complained that the immigration laws were not being enforced. None of them made any derogatory remarks about Latino immigrants — two said they admired how hard they work. They don't want to see Latinos banished from this country. They want the immigrants here to be legally here.

Which leaves Democratic politicians and political candidates out on a pretty flimsy limb. Most of them reflexively back a comprehensive bill, and some of them (like Bush and a number of Republicans backing such a bill) have dismissed opponents as racists.

Most Democrats have also been backing bills extending various benefits to illegal immigrants, like the Dream Act for college education for illegals brought over as children. There are appealing arguments for such bills. But most voters reject them. And most voters certainly reject driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. That was one of the issues that led to the recall of Gov. Gray Davis in California in 2003.

The Republican presidential candidates have taken note. Only John McCain, a longtime backer of a comprehensive bill, stands apart, and he concedes that voters are demanding tougher enforcement. In the special congressional election in Massachusetts on Oct. 5, the Republican was able to hold the Democrat to 51 percent by stressing immigration as one of his two top issues.

Immigration reform is taking center stage. Carville and Greenberg, quoted by Barone say: "The centrality of illegal immigration to the current discontent about the direction of the country may be taking us back again to a welfare moment." That is going to hurt candidates, like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama who back Eliot Spitzer's licenses for lawbreakers initiative. The Washington Post may gleefully point out that voters want change, but they may - in fact are, I suspect - missing the change the voters really want.

The vast majority of Americans - regardless of political affiliation - welcome immigrants to this country. So long as they come here legally. The vast majority of Americans - regardless of their position on other political issues - want secure borders. Politicians are ignoring that at their own risk. There may indeed be a vast discontent among voters that demands a change in direction for the country. But it may not be the change the Washington Post and the media expect.

A high fence, a wide gate and a hearty welcome for people who play by the rules. That simple. That powerful. That American.