By Debbie Schlussel

Say a prayer for the late patriot Tony Fein and his family.  As a soldier, he did not die in battle or even from war-related injuries.  But he bravely served our country in Iraq for over three years, and his story is heart-wrenching, nonetheless.  He couldn’t seem to catch a break.  And, yet again, we’re shown that life is fleeting as are dreams, even when you do things right and work hard.

Fein, an Iraq War veteran, finally got his dream to play in the NFL at age 27  . . . but only in the pre-season.  He played for the Baltimore Ravens, but was cut by the team in their final cuts in September.  He died on Tuesday, never having had the chance to entertain interest in him from the Canadian Football League.

Tony Fein, an Iraq war veteran and NFL rookie linebacker who played with the Baltimore Ravens during the preseason, has died of unexplained causes after collapsing at a friend’s house in what his agent said appears to be “an accidental situation.” Fein, 27, an undrafted rookie free agent from Mississippi, was lying face down and unconscious, vomiting and barely breathing when medics arrived . . . .

Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

DebbieSchlussel.com has learned that Robert Schoch, the Special Agent in Charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for Los Angeles, is under investigation for alleged embezzlement and/or misuse of ICE funds used in undercover operations.  Mr. Schoch and the Los Angeles Deputy Special Agent in Charge, Jennifer Silliman, were escorted from the ICE federal offices in Long Beach, California, and their badges and guns were taken from them (standard procedure when an agent is under investigation and put on leave).  They were both put on administrative leave pending a continuing investigation.  A search warrant was reportedly executed on Agent Schoch’s home, and sources say his computers from both his LAX and Long Beach offices were seized.

Normally, this would be inside baseball stuff.  But Schoch was slated by Obama Administration officials running ICE to be Director of Investigations of ICE, meaning that he would be running and overseeing all ICE investigations worldwide.  His appointment to that position was imminent, even as he was reportedly being investigated by ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility and, reportedly, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles.  The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing at ICE. . . and doesn’t care.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

So, Barack and Michelle Hussein Obama have chosen “art” to decorate the White House.  Seven out of 47 artists they chose are Black, but that’s not the issue.  It’s that their choices range from the stupid to the downright divisive.  That includes the choice, “Black Like Me No. 2,” which focuses on segregation and racism.

Reader Duane Says This Should Be the New White House Art

They include pieces by seven black artists, including one by Glenn Ligon, a conceptual artist who explores issues of politics and race in works made of text, photos and neon.

A vertical piece selected by the Obamas was “Black like me N°2,” a riff on a 1961 book by white journalist John Howard Griffin who darkened his skin and then wrote about his experience as a “black” man in the racially segregated US south.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

You heard it here first.  Last week, I told you that Glenn Beck–a lightweight whose research (like Sean Vannity’s) is, um “borrowed” (the whole Van Jones story was stolen from the Gateway Pundit blog)–was gaining on Sean Hannity because Beck’s dumb statements, phony drama, and annoying antics have a lot of gullible takers.  (It’s sickening that he repeatedly promotes repeat criminal and Hezbollah-supporter Darrell Issa on his show.)  I said that Vannity was desperate because he knew he’d soon be toppled from his reign as #2 conservative talking figure (after Rush).  That’s why Vannity brought anti-Semite Jim Traficant on his show on Yom Kippur, knowing he’d be anti-Semitic, pretending he didn’t, and prompting him by asking about Israel at the beginning of the interview.

Beck Killing Vannity in Ratings Contest

But it’s not enough.  The anti-Semites won’t buoy him.  Glenn Beck whipped Vannity in the TV ratings for the week.  (And, even more heartening news, Nickelodeon beat them both.  Not that I like liberal claptrap Nick, but I like that kids TV beat these two phonies.  Kids like watching kids’ TV more than adults like watching adult kids on TV.)

In fact, Beck’s ratings are so good (he got just under 300,000 more viewers in daytime when far less are watching TV than Vannity got in primetime), that I hear the brass at FOX News are looking at moving him from early evening/afternoon in some markets to prime time.  The problem is, they’ll have to move someone.  Vannity is lucky in that he’s a major kiss-ass of FOX News Senior VP of programming Bill Shine and got him the job.  And the relationship is mutual:  Shine is a major kiss-ass of Vannity, right back.  Sometimes, they drive into New York together from Long Island.  Still, Roger Ailes is the boss, and he wouldn’t hesitate to move Beck into Vannity’s valuable night-time slot if Beck continues to cream Vannity.  Beck’s higher ratings are more valuable in advertising rate revenue in primetime than they are in his current day part. And they won’t move Bill O’Reilly, who still averages well over three million viewers and remains the top-rated cable news host. That leaves Vannity or Greta Van Plastic Surgeryen.

Vannity is worried. Big-time.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

I’m a very artistically-inclined person.  In my formerly spare time, I used to make all kinds of crafts and art and have since I was a kid.  When I was 12, I had a business selling silk-screened sweatshirts and t-shirts of designs I drew and etched.

But the pop art in today’s Wall Street Journal is really something.  And it’s BIG BUCKS.  That’s because it’s made with balloons, and balloon twisting takes mastery and skill.  It isn’t the kind of stuff the clown made at your birthday as a kid.  It’s an interesting article about price wars and lawyers.  Who knew that ballooners and ballooning were so cut-throat . . . and so skilled and amazing?  I do not, however, agree with the balloonists that their pop art is similar–or even approaches–real art, like that in the European Renaissance.

Read the article and check out the slideshow of incredible balloon designs (my fave is “Airmerican Gothic”).  A fascinating excerpt:

Over the past decade, many such entertainers stopped clowning around and specialized in balloons. In 1999, the first balloon-twisting convention, called T-Jam, was held in Austin, Texas. The profession has grown since. Up-and-comers like Mr. Fudge can learn the fundamentals from instructional books, Web sites and DVDs such as Don Caldwell’s “Livin’ La Vida Latex.”

Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

Recently, the “Islamophobia” merchants at CAIR were all up in arms about an alleged attack on a Muslim woman that they claimed was based on her ethinicity and was a hate crime.

But police and prosecutors say there’s–as in the case in most CAIR shriek-fests–no evidence the attack was ethnically motivated (and BTW, Islam is not an ethnicity, CAIR–it’s an intolerant cult).

Nabih Ayad, Dawud Walid: CAIR’s Student Loan Deadbeat, Criminal Honcho Won’t Take No For an Answer

And–shocker!–CAIR won’t take no for an answer on their hyped up “Islamophobia” causes.  So, their lawyer, Nabih Ayad–who uses several aliases and still won’t pay over $120,000 in student loans!–is demanding that the Department of Justice waste your tax payers and “investigate.”  Also threatening to “monitor” the situation is Michigan CAIR Executive Director and perpetual crybaby Dawud Walid a/k/a Delano Anthony Willis, Jr., who has his own long rap sheet, including bringing weapons to a school and carrying drugs.  Yup, these two have no shame and no dearth of chutzpah.

The attorney for two Muslim teens attacked last month aboard a school bus is asking the U.S. Department of Justice to step in after Washtenaw County prosecutors decided not to file ethnic intimidation charges in the case.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

On Monday Morning, I was one of the first to cover Rush Limbaugh’s bid to be a part owner of the NFL’s St. Louis Rams.  After I wrote about it, the followers in the rest of the conservative blogosphere and Drudge served up the stale news much later.

I figured the mainstream liberal sports media would diss Rush’s bid, and I was correct.  It’s interesting how the media covers this story compared with lefty James Carville’s Chairmanship of the New Orleans Superbowl 2013 organizing committee, or the fact that Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney is openly pro-Obama and got an ambassadorship (to Ireland) as payment for that prostitution.

Take today’s USA Today.  Limbaugh is described by “reporter” Skip Wood as “controversial” and “polarizing,” and the story raises the issue of whether such a figure should be allowed to own an NFL team.  The word “intrigue”–as if there’s some sort of trickery to buying an NFL team–is also used, implying something sinister.

The controversial public figure released his declaration Tuesday with few details, citing a confidentiality agreement with Goldman Sachs, the investment firm the Frontiere family has hired to review the assets of her estate. . . .

Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

Call it the “brooch strategy for world domination.”  It’s a bizarre fantasy of a really annoying, has-been woman who harmed America internationally, a decade ago, and is desperate to stay “relevant” and out there.  I’m talking about Madeleine Albright’s silly new picture book, “Read My Pins:  Stories From a Diplomat’s Jewel Box.”  A better title:  “Pinhead Diplomacy.”

I’ve never believed, unlike the conventional wisdom, that someone’s internal plumbing is cause for great praise and awe.  And that includes when that plumbing becomes Secretary of State.  Especially when the chick involved has a weird obession with believing that world leaders actually care about her jewelry.  Here’s a hint:  they don’t.

When she was picked as the first “female” U.S. Secretary of State, it was a bad omen.  Including Albright, we’ve had three “female” Secretaries of State–all of them extremely liberal, very anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian, and all way out of their very shallow depth–disastrously so (not to mention all of them, quite masculine and not at all attractive).  Yup, that includes Albright, Condoleeza “Condi Clueless” Rice, and, now, Hillary Clinton.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

If you didn’t see David Letterman’s return to his late night show, last night, for the first time after he made revelations about his staff concubinage resulting in attempted extortion and blackmail, here’s what you missed:

Me, me, me, I’m the victim, victim, victim, Me–I’m the victim, I embarrassed my staff “inadvertently.”  Blame Sarah Palin.

PUH-LEEZE.  Yup, I counted Letterman using the “victim” word three times regarding himself.  Then, he apologized for embarrassing and involving his staff, “which I did inadavertently.”  Uh, really?  He “inadvertently” unzipped his pants and had sex with multiple female members of his own staff?  Did they put a gun to his head and rape him?  Oh, and then, Letterman ended his riff on the topic by apologizing “once again to the former Governor of Alaska.”  I have no love for the dysfunctional, hypocritical Palin phonies.  But dragging Sarah Palin into this is ridiculous.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

Last week, I reviewed Paul Karcher’s great thriller, “Papercut:  The Apophis Conspiracy,” which is also advertised on this site (and can be bought here).  As I noted, the book–written at least two years ago–details a plot in which Arab countries, the Chinese, Russia, and other American enemies secretly get together to destroy the American dollar, devaluing it to nothing, and at the same time, killing our markets and causing chaos.

Well, life imitates art. Apparently.

Paul Karcher Foretold Arab/Chinese/Russian Plot to Severely Devalue US Dollar

The UK Independent’s (extremely anti-Israel liar) Robert Fisk reports today that the Arabs, Chinese, Russian, French, etc. are plotting exactly what Karcher foresaw in his novel. (Beware of Fisk, though. He’s a known liar.)

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.

Read the rest of this entry »