By Debbie Schlussel
If there’s something I detest more than the undue conservative worship of drug kingpin and pimp glorifier, Kid Rock, it’s that with the Obama “stimulus” package and similar programs here in the State of Michigan, the government picks winners and losers and finances fatcats with your money.
One of the most blatant examples is Bob Ritchie a/k/a Kid Rock’s new vanity beer named after–who else?–himself. Ritchie is rich beyond his wildest dreams, so you would think that if this scumbag baby daddy and former drug dealer wanted to go into the beer biz and produce a vanity beer, he could and would finance it himself. But you would be wrong.
Instead, this money-bags rapping rocker is soaking the taxpayers of Michigan for almost a million bucks to pay for Kid Rock Beer. Yes, Michigan, which is on life-support even more than the rest of the country, is cutting spending everywhere and then . . . giving it to Kid Rock’s beer venture?!

Spoiled Brat Diva Kid Rock a/k/a Bob Ritchie
Gives One-Finger Salute to Michigan Taxpayers
The tax-funded subsidy comes in the form of a $723,000 tax credit to the beer company, so it can make the risky vanity beer, courtesy of the Michigan Economic Growth Authority, which is financed by Michigan tax dollars. Kid Rock brags that the venture will create 400 jobs in Michigan and will be profitable. But if that’s the case, why can’t this multi-millionaire risk his own money, instead of soaking Michigan taxpayers in these tough times? He can well afford to spare the money for his own business venture and take the risk himself. It may seem like a tiny amount in the scheme of the Michigan budget, but that doesn’t make it right, or give us a reason why Michigan–not Bob Ritchie–should shell out the cash.
It’s simply disgusting that this rich crybaby (who is still whining about having to do real community service for his gazillionth assault) is sucking at the teat of the Michigan taxpayer.
With all of the fake breasts he hangs out with, let him extract something out of those for his private business ventures, instead of stealing from the less fortunate, non-jetsetting working stiffs of Michigan.
And, please, don’t send me e-mail about how Kid Rock plays for the troops. Those vanity gigs (which he does as much for his own self-adulation as he does for the troops’ benefit) don’t justify taking money from Michigan taxpayers.
If it did, maybe Michigan should finance Gary Sinise’s Lt. Dan Beer, too. (No, there isn’t such a beer. I made it up. But I’d buy that before I’d ever touch anything with Bob Ritchie’s alter ego’s name on it.)

By Debbie Schlussel
In case you missed “60 Minutes,” last night, Anderson Cooper covered a topic we’ve already noted on this site, the drug gangs in Mexico and their violence, which long ago seeped into our borders. The video is posted herein.
Cooper interviewed Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano a/k/a “The Lesbionic Woman,” and per usual, she talked tough. But as we’ve already noted on this site, in Arizona–both as a Governor and a prosecutor–Napolitano was a big part of the problem, not the solution. To paraphrase the opposite of a certain Roosevelt, she spoke loudly and carried a toothpick. Don’t look for that to change. That Cooper didn’t ask her about that was a glaring instance of journalistic malpractice.
As you watch this video, remember that this problem got bigger and spread further into Arizona under our new Department of Homeland Security Secretary, and while it gets even worse, she’s investigating ICE agents for doing their jobs, instead of dealing with this problem. Beheadings and other violence, not just from Muslims, but from Mexican drug gangs (who often help bring Islamic terrorists inside our borders, as journalist Todd Bensman has noted), are here. Thanks, Janet:

FLASHBACK: CHILLING VIDEO of the Day: Just Remember, This Happened Under Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano
Artwork by David Lunde/Lundesigns

By Debbie Schlussel
**** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE: Paul Harvey not always so great on Mid-East ****
We hear some people on the radio, by implication, refer to themselves as a “Great American,” when they call their anonymous listeners “Great Americans” as a compliment-fishing expedition.
But, today, a REAL GREAT AMERICAN in radio died. Paul Harvey was 90 years old when he passed away. I just heard about it on a special ABC News breaking report, and it’s not yet on the net as I write this. UPDATE: Read ABC News Radio’s statement on Paul Harvey’s death.
Harvey was a true radio legend whose voice was heard on radio for well over a half-century. A syndicated fixture in American radio, Paul Harvey was an American patriot, an important and influential conservative, and a person who stood for American values and culture the way they used to be. Like his values, Paul Harvey’s daily syndicated riffs on unusual stories in the news–stories of our escalating downward degradation and definition of deviance–were regular listening for millions of Americans.

Stand By for Heaven: Paul Harvey, a REAL Great American in Radio, RIP
Post-9/11, Harvey came under fire from the Council on American-Islamic Relations for recognizing that the true national security problem America faces is not terrorism, but Islam. He correctly said that Islam “encourages killing” and noted the relationship between Islam and violence. Sadly, ABC Radio forced him to issue a statement saying that “Islam is a religion of peace,” but you know he didn’t believe it. (Robert Spencer wrote a good summary on this.) Harvey was always a conservative and always pro-American and pro-Israel . . . before conservatives embraced that. **** CORRECTION, 03/01/09: Apparently, that’s not correct. See “J”‘s comment, below, on Paul Harvey’s anti-Israel sentiment. ****
President Bush awarded Harvey the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and while it was well-deserved, it was long overdue for this great patriot and model American man.
Harvey tried TV, but he couldn’t make it in that field. Instead, he stuck with and continued to succeed in a medium whose obituary was, as Mark Twain would say, greatly exaggerated, and remained a tremendous influence on a significant, but shrinking, portion of the American public listening to newstalk radio.
Though his approach seemed old fashioned to me, it was an “old-fashioned” style for which we are all nostalgic and which I grew to appreciate and like a lot–like your avuncular grandfather or great-grandfather looking at a world gone awry in amazement that it keeps getting worse. His values were conservative in a country ever growing more and more uncivilized and out of whack.
He didn’t have to wantonly call other people “Great Americans” to get confirmation that he was one, himself. Instead, he began his broadcasts by simply saying:

Hello, Americans. This is Paul Harvey.

More from his bio:

Mr. Harvey moved to Hawaii in 1940 to cover the U.S. Navy as it began to concentrate its fleet in the Pacific. He was returning to the United States from that assignment when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Paul Harvey enlisted into the Army Air Corps, where he served until 1944.
After leaving the corps, Mr. Harvey moved to Chicago, where in June 1944, he began broadcasting from the ABC affiliate WENR-AM. He quickly became the most listened-to newscaster in Chicago.
Paul Harvey reached audiences way beyond the windy city in 1951, when he began his coast-to-coast “News and Comment” on the ABC Radio Networks. On May 10, 1976, Mr. Harvey began another series of programs on the ABC Radio Networks entitled “The Rest of the Story”, which delve into the forgotten or little known facts behind stories of famous people and events.
Today, Paul Harvey “News and Comment” and “The Rest of the Story” can be heard every Monday through Saturday. Paul Harvey News is the largest one-man network in the world, consisting of over 1200 radio stations, 400 Armed Forces Network stations that broadcast around the world, and 300 newspapers.

In my book and that of many Americans, his loss will not be replaced. He is one of the people who helped continue to make America great. He was a true gentleman, who always conducted himself with dignity and class.
I, for one, will miss Paul Harvey’s standard phrase that doesn’t sound the same when it’s done by his fill-ins . . .

Stand By for News.

Paul Harvey, a REAL Great American, Rest in Peace.

And Now You Know the Rest of the Story. Good Day.

Paul Harvey Gets Medal of Freedom from President Bush
**** UPDATE, 03/01/09: My friend, conservative author and writer “J,” writes that Paul Harvey wasn’t always so great on the Mid-East:

Maybe his voice–and dramatic pauses–stopped evincing dislike, distrust, and dismay at Israel before you started listening to him in earnest, but there’s no question that Harvey believed America’s special relationship with Israel was unwise for America. That vocal sneer he’d get when talking about West Bank skirmishes or something was unmistakable. And if I’m not mistaken, he gave off the same vibe about Gulf War 1. Whether he evolved or not, I don’t know, but Harvey began and remained, for sure through Vietnam, an unabashed America Firster. I bet he shared a lot more in common with Ron Paul than he would’ve wanted anyone to know.

I stand corrected.

By Debbie Schlussel
No big blockbusters out this weekend (next weekend is “The Watchmen” weekend), just a couple of indie, smaller releases:
* “The Class” (Entre Les Murs): It figures that this movie was a nominee for best foreign language film (along with “Waltz with Bashir“–read my review) at this year’s Academy Awards. It’s one of the most boring movies on earth. Have insomnia? See this. It’s in French, with English subtitles.
On the other hand, it’s an insight to what’s coming to America, if we continue to allow Muslim immigrants and illegal aliens to come to our shores.

A French public school teacher loses control of his classroom, as Muslim troublemakers–both Black and White–from North Africa act up and exalt their ignorance upon the rest of the class. It was written by the real-life teacher and stars his real-life students, based on their real-life experience. We see how most of these students’ parents can’t speak French and are complete unabsorbed into their population. Some of them get deported, and the idiotically liberal teachers feel bad for these aliens and take up collections for them. The insolence of the students is headed up by a troublemaker named Suleman, but we’re suppoed to feel sorry for him because his father might send him back to Mali if he’s expelled. I say, get packing.
Political correctness, thuggery, ignorance, and hip-hoppery run the classroom and its teacher, not the other way around. We already have a lot of this here. Expect more with illegal aliens. Islam and polite western civilization don’t mix.
FOUR MARXES

* “Two Lovers“: An aging Jewish couple is selling their business to a younger Jewish couple, as they worry about their troubled son, Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix). He once tried to commit suicide and seems to be going nowhere. They want him to date and marry the lovely daughter of the Jewish couple that’s buying their dry cleaning business, and secure a good future for him. But he’s drawn to the beautiful but wild, nutty, and aimless blonde gentile woman (Gwyneth Paltrow) in the apartment building, who uses him–and, as you could guess, doesn’t change, despite pretenses and promises otherwise.
He dates the Jewish chick, but obsesses for the blonde, who wants someone else and plays him. It’s the age old story of someone wanting someone who plays them repeatedly and predictably and doesn’t really want them. On another level, I reject this self-hating hypothesis presented by liberal Hollywood Jews–that Jewish women are less sexy and desirable, the lesser alternative choice. Interestingly, in this movie the less desirable Jewish chick is played by the Jewish Vinessa Shaw, whereas the “hotter” (in the movie’s eyes) chick is played by the half-Jew, Gwyneth Paltrow.
The one thing I liked about this movie is that they touch on an issue not well-known outside the Jewish community, and less-known within it, as intermarriage plagues Judaism at a rate of higher than 50%. It’s the Tay-Sachs disease test that most Jews get before marriage. The usually fatal disease is more common in the Jewish community than other populations, and many Jews get tested to make sure they are not both carriers of the gene. If both are, the chances that they will have kids who have the disease and will die–and the couple have to re-think whether they will marry, if they want to have kids. We learn that Leonard was engaged to the love of his life, but both tested positive for the dominant gene, and the relationship collapsed.
The story told in this movie, while mildly entertaining, was unoriginal, predictable, and sad. And the movie was cold. A far superior, more cheerful and warm version of this movie was in 1988’s “Crossing DeLancey,” which I highly recommend (my dad took me to see it and we both loved it). This movie also has slight echoes of the original 1972 version of “The Heartbreak Kid.”
ONE-AND-A-HALF REAGANS

By Debbie Schlussel
As longtime readers know, I’ve been on the case of the movie “Crossing Over,” which I call “ICE The Movie,” for a long time. I have and read the original script–before they removed the Muslim honor killing scene after protest from Muslims–and I’ve received written threats from Writer/Director Wayne Kramer’s lawyer and the lawyer for the Weinstein Brothers’ studio (The Weinstein Company). I posted the honor killing scene exclusively on this site, despite the Weinsteins’ and Kramer’s lawyers’ threats.
As I also noted, the movie–starring Harrison Ford as an ICE agent (and at 66, he’s a little old for the role, since ICE agents must retire by their 57th birthdays)–sat on the shelf for nearly two years, repeatedly delaying its debut date. It’s that bad. And its defamation of ICE is legion, as is the way the movie gets ICE policy wrong. I’ve discussed all of that on this site. Note the reference to the “immigration gestapo” in the movie trailer below.

As I also discussed on this site, I believe that writer/director Wayne Kramer–a Jewish South African immigrant–committed immigration fraud, just like Gavin–a Jewish South African immigrant (who was changed to a British immigrant, after I wrote about this)–a character in this movie. Kramer said, in a New Zealand interview, that the movie is largely autobiographical and that he lived it every step of the way, and then claimed–in his lawyer’s threatening letter to me that it wasn’t. Still waiting for a gutsy ICE agent to start investigating Kramer, as I’m confident–based on his statements regarding himself and the movie–that he, indeed, lied to stay here and become a citizen.
Today, “Crossing Over” debuts in limited release (in New York and Los Angeles), and its getting trashed by even liberal movie critics, including the Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern, USA Today’s Claudia Puig, and AP’s Christy Lemire. Having read the script, I concur.
And–as I’ve noted on this site–aside from the script and movie comprising crappy propaganda against our enforcement of immigration law, it’s pan-Islamic propaganda. I only wish we did enforce the law that strictly. But, unfortunately, we don’t–as the movie claims–deport hijab-encrusted Islamic kids who write and read essays to the class about how we should sympathize with the 9/11 hijackers and see them as humans and fathers.
In fact, as I’ve also noted repeatedly on this site and in the New York Post, top ICE officials–like then ICE Chieftess Julie L. Myers a/k/a “The ICE Princess” and Michigan/Ohio ICE Special Agent in Charge Brian Moskowitz a/k/a “Abu Moskowitz”–regularly feted organizations who openly support Islamic terrorism.
Watch this scene of an ICE raid from “Crossing Over,” as well as the trailer for the movie, posted below. Even those lie, because, in fact, it’s ICE policy never to separate an illegal alien mother who is the sole caregiver, from her child–a main storyline in the movie, which results in the mother’s death. Would never happen. Just like most of the events in this movie (other than the Citizenship and Immigration Services employee–Ray Liotta–exchanging promises of a green card for sex from an illegal alien; that’s happened lotsa times, sadly). Read more of the defamatory, lying script of this movie here.

“Crossing Over” is scheduled to reach nationwide release around the U.S. by the end of March, but I wouldn’t bet on that. Like I said, having read the script, I can tell this is FOUR MARXES-PLUS cinematic screed.

By Debbie Schlussel
Not much to add here, except to remind you that the Octomom who is slurping at the taxpayer teat is a Palestinian with tons of money for plastic surgery and lip injections. Watch and laugh your butt off.

By Debbie Schlussel
Yesterday, I told you about courageous Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Special Agent in Charge for Seattle Leigh H. Winchell.
Agent Winchell sent out an e-mail to all of his agents and employees congratulating them for doing their job well, after a successful raid of an illegal alien employer–conducted by his ICE agents–came under fire from Department of Homeland Security chief Janet Reno, er . . . Napolitano a/k/a “The Lesbionic Woman.”
Many readers have contacted me asking for Agent Winchell’s address to write him. E-mail Leigh Winchell and thank him for standing up for his agents and bolstering the morale of those who enforce our nation’s immigration laws despite “friendly” fire from their politically correct new “leader” at the top.

Courageous Seattle ICE Special Agent in Charge Leigh H. Winchell

By Debbie Schlussel
As you may have heard, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are under attack from Department of Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano a/k/a “The Lesbionic Woman” for actually doing their job, enforcing immigration law, and raiding employers who don’t abide by it. She’s now investigating the ICE agents.
Napolitano may look like a man and think she is one. But, today, ICE Special Agent in Charge Leigh H. Winchell sent this e-mail, below, to all Seattle area ICE agents and personnel, showing her where the real cojones lie (look for him to get transferred to the ICE SAC Office in Pakistan). That’s hot. This guy, Winchell’s got guts–the right kind of chutzpah–and cares about the morale of his men. I like that. That’s sexy.
Special Agent Winchell, you’re my new hero (write to me when you get transferred to Antarctica; Also note that the press release he sends was written by one of Julie Myers’/”The ICE Princess”‘ old crony employees, incompetent former ICE press chick Jamie Zuieback, now working for the Repubs on the House Judiciary Committee apparently):
HOT! . . .

Courageous Seattle ICE Special Agent in Charge Leigh H. Winchell
NOT . . .
Artwork by David Lunde/Lundesigns

From: Winchell, Leigh H
To: ICE-OI-VSE-SAC-DG
Copy to: Rutt, Robert P; Kibble, Kumar C (DHS); Weber, Robert
Sent: Thu Feb 26 10:00:04 2009
Subject: FW: Napolitano’s Investigation of Investigators is Beyond Backwards
To all SAC [DS: Special Agent in Charge Office] Seattle employees,
By now you have all experienced or heard of the issues that have been made out of some very fine work by our Blaine and Seattle offices when conducting the worksite case in Bellingham two days ago. I want to tell you all how very proud I am of the manner in which you operated during this enforcement action. You did nothing wrong and you did everything right. From ASAC to agent, all the bases were covered, and covered very well. I cannot control the politics that take place with these types of situations, but I can remind you that you are great servants of this country and this agency. I am proud to be your SAC and I know that this distraction will not keep you from fulfilling your wide ranging duties as ICE agents. I also know that you have the support and gratitude of our leadership in ICE HQ.
I thought you would like to see this press release from the House Judiciary Committee.
Leigh
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 26, 2009
CONTACT: Jamie Zuieback, (202) 225-6906
Smith: Napolitano’s Investigation of Investigators is Beyond Backwards
Washington, D.C. – House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith (R-Texas) today questioned Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s decision to investigate a law enforcement action by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to ICE, the Bellingham operation resulted in the arrest of 28 illegal immigrants and is part of an ongoing worksite enforcement investigation.
Ranking Member Smith issued the following statement regarding Secretary Napolitano’s decision to investigate the investigators:
“Let me see if I have this straight: ICE agents arrest a criminal illegal immigrant gang member, discover he had worked illegally with other illegal immigrants at a manufacturing plant, begin an investigation of the employer and arrest the illegal immigrants to get more facts . . . and the Secretary orders an investigation of ICE?
“I am surprised that Secretary Napolitano, a former federal prosecutor, either fails to understand or chooses to ignore the fact that in workplace immigration enforcement cases, the best evidence for a criminal prosecution of the employer often comes from the illegal immigrant workers themselves.
“This sounds like good police work, not something to investigate. Secretary Napolitano’s decision is beyond backwards. It is an insult to the dedicated ICE agents whose daily work makes our country safer and enables American citizens and legal immigrants to get available jobs in our economy.
“The Secretary is on the wrong side of this issue. She should be standing up for U.S. citizens and legal immigrant workers, not the illegal immigrants who take their jobs.”

###

Right on. If only Zuieback could have written and expressed herself this way when her incompetent bud, Julie L. Myers, was running things in a fashion similar to The Lesbionic Woman.
Three cheers for Leigh Winchell. It’s great to see someone in a position of authority not play politics and praise his law enforcement personnel for doing their jobs and doing them well.
As one of his agents writes me:

. It is nice to see management stand up for the American people to enforce immigration laws despite politics.

Right on.
And by the way, Leigh, write me from your new job as ICE attache in Gaza City.
This guy should be running ICE instead of yet another lawyer.
By the way, Leigh, can we trade Abu Moskowitz for you? We could use you here in Detroit.

By Debbie Schlussel
I’ll probably get attacked by every single politically correct liberal and conservative on the planet, but this photo is just dyin’ for an apt caption. Mine is the obvious one:

The Blind Leading the Blind: One Against His Will, the Other Against Our Will

Stevie Wonder with Barack Obama
What are your captions?

By Debbie Schlussel
In recent years (perhaps, decades), I’ve found George Will to be less conservative and more dull.
But his latest column is an exception. Will has an interesting piece riffing off of the Hoover Institution’s Mary Eberstadt, who argues that “food is the new sex.”
By that, she means that whereas rampant sex is now the word of the day (see baby mamas and baby daddies everywhere, including the home of a would-be Veep), we’ve transferred our previous morality and puritanical mores on sex to food.

Porn Star Paris Hilton in Fast Food Burger Ad
I would agree with that, except that if we had so much morality on food, why are the majority of Americans obese and a good percentage of them morbidly obese–now more than ever? In fact, the majority of yelling and screaming we hear from “food victorians” is against thin models. At the same time, fat clothing and lingerie stores continue to prosper. There’s Torrid–where you can buy thong underwear in size 24–and there are now many laws protecting fat people and making it harder to discriminate against the volunarily slovenly and calorically-gifted. Our society encourages this stuff.
And as people have gotten less disciplined in giving in to their base urges on sex, they’ve also done the same with food. It’s an overall lack of discipline and judgment.
What Will and Eberstadt really should have said–or perhaps, meant to say–is that it’s the liberals who’ve transferred their morality from sex to food. After all, the same crowd that comprised the feminists and free lovers of the sixties and seventies are the same aging hippies who populate the ranks of the food police and make up the clergy of new age medicine, vegetarianism, and raw foodism.
Still there is merit in what they say, if you consider it with that qualification:

Put down that cheeseburger and listen up: If food has become what sex was a generation ago – the intimidatingly intelligent Mary Eberstadt says it has – then a cheeseburger is akin to adultery, or worse. As eating has become highly charged with moral judgments, sex has become notably less so, and Eberstadt, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, thinks these trends involving two primal appetites are related.
In a “Policy Review” essay “Is Food the New Sex?” she notes that for the first time ever, most people in advanced nations “are more or less free to have all the sex and food they want.” One might think, she says, either that food and sex would both be pursued with an ardor heedless of consequences, or that both would be subjected to analogous codes constraining consumption. The opposite has happened – mindful eating and mindless sex. . . .
In 50 years, Eberstadt writes, for many people “the moral poles of sex and food have been reversed.” Today, there is, concerning food, “a level of metaphysical attentiveness” previously invested in sex. . . .
Eberstadt says two generations of social science have produced clear findings: “The sexual revolution has had negative effects on many people, chiefly the most vulnerable; and it has also had clear financial costs to society at large.”
Today the “all-you-can-eat buffet” is stigmatized and the “sexual smorgasbord” is not. Stigmas are compasses, pointing toward society’s sense of its prerequisites for self-protection. Furthermore, as increasing numbers of people are led to a materialist understanding of life – who say not that “I have a body” but that “I am a body.”