Steve in Manhattan

You’d think that, given what’s going on in Mumbai, people might focus on something other than getting one of those four cheap bigscreen TVs that Wal-Mart uses for bait.  You’d be wrong:

A Wal-Mart worker died after being trampled when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island store Friday morning, police and witnesses said.

The 34-year-old worker, employed as an overnight stock clerk, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.

Are you fucking kidding me?

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Graphic: the amazing Tidmus.

Once again Stinque presents Bad Law Professor of the Week. Today we offer Jack Landman Goldsmith for your consideration. Believe it or not, this clown teaches at Harvard, where he is the Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Law.  And today he has an editorial in the WaPo.  Let’s dive right in.

There has been much speculation about how the Obama administration will deal with what many view as the Bush administration’s harsh, abusive and illegal interrogation program. Some have called for an investigation by Congress or the Justice Department, possibly leading to criminal sanctions. Others think such investigations are infeasible or would smack of political retribution, proposing instead that a bipartisan commission look into the matter.

These are all bad ideas. They would bring little benefit, and they would further weaken the Justice Department and the CIA in ways that would compromise our security. (I worked at the Justice Department from 2003 to 2004 on issues that probably would be subject to new investigations, so readers should consider my views accordingly.) (emphasis supplied)

This has to be the most blatant attempt at a CYA in the history of opinion journalism.

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Perhaps it is a good day to blog:

She’s usually one of the most opinionated women in the nation, but Ann Coulter’s going to be keeping her mouth shut for the next few weeks. 

The 46-year-old was forced to get her jaw wired shut after taking a nasty tumble last month, reports the New York Post’s Page Six.

Though she’s on the mend, the injury’s making it difficult for Coulter to record the audio version of her latest tome, The New Ann Coulter.

If Sean Hannity loses his voice it’ll be the best day ever.

Ann Coulter’s Jaw Wired After Fall [wowOwow]

hat tip: Prommie

You’re going to get fucked, and you’re going to like it.

Bloomberg:

Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. government is prepared to lend more than $7.4 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers, or half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, to rescue the financial system since the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.

The money that’s been pledged is equivalent to $24,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. It’s nine times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Office figures. It could pay off more than half the country’s mortgages.

The Dear Leader also promises to get in on the action:

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I’d like a simple explanation.  I’d like to be able to hang it all around Phil Gramm’s neck.   But, as is so often the case, it’s a lot more complicated:

Citigroup insiders and analysts say that Mr. Prince and Mr. Rubin played pivotal roles in the bank’s current woes, by drafting and blessing a strategy that involved taking greater trading risks to expand its business and reap higher profits. Mr. Prince and Mr. Rubin both declined to comment for this article.

When he was Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration, Mr. Rubin helped loosen Depression-era banking regulations that made the creation of Citigroup possible by allowing banks to expand far beyond their traditional role as lenders and permitting them to profit from a variety of financial activities. During the same period he helped beat back tighter oversight of exotic financial products, a development he had previously said he was helpless to prevent.

But wait – there’s more!

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The Instapundit has a new column up at Forbes and, as you’d expect, it sucks.

“War is the health of the state,” wrote Randolph Bourne, horrified by World War I and its excesses. And that phrase has been used by libertarians and opponents of state power ever since, as a reason why war is a bad idea.

Certainly the experience of World War I–and, in America, the dramatic expansion of state government power under Woodrow Wilson, as documented in Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism–supports that argument. But subsequent history makes me wonder if war is really as healthy for the state as some other things that get less attention.

When you have to cite The Pantload in the second paragraph, you’re in trouble.

But when the next national crisis struck–the Depression, under FDR–the U.S. got a massive expansion of government that, unlike Wilson’s, has remained with us to the present day. FDR’s policies may have extended the Depression, but what is clear is that when the Depression was over, the New Deal remained. There was no return to normalcy afterward.

Fuck me running – it’s that Amity Shlaes FDR-extended-teh-Depression shit again.  Can’t the wingnuts just admit it’s been debunked debunked debunked?

More fucktardery after the jump.

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