WonderfulPessimist.com

A New York Times reporter has resigned amid charges of plagiarism, bringing to mind the Jayson Blair incident of 2003. The reporter in question this time is Wall Street and financial reporter Zachery Kouwe, who’s sure to be needing the best under eye creams for some time to come.

The latest plagiarism allegation is only the latest black eye to the so-called “newspaper of record” for the United States and, some might say, the world. Yet considering it’s Pinch Sulzberger’s Times, there’s not much to be surprised about, here; after all, when Blair was uncovered, it was Sulzberger who blamed NYT readers, rather than taking personal responsibility for the hire and the amount of time Blair’s abuses went undiscovered.

It will be interesting to see who Sulzberger blames Kouwe on. Maybe Bill Gates?

You know, more and more people are pursuing their degrees online these days, and I’ve noticed something that makes the online degree programs at Western Governor’s University unique: they are more affordable than most. Whether you’re going for your bachelors or your masters degree online makes no difference because it’s still affordable.

I was looking at their tuition rates and they do something quite unique: they charge students on a per-semester basis, not on credit hours. And at under $3,000 per six month term, that’s almost as affordable as when I went to college back in the second half of the 1980s.

In fact, I may have paid more, since I paid on a credit-hour basis. Getting a good degree is hard enough; getting one affordably these days is even more difficult. Western Governor’s University is a great solution on both scores, it seems.

The grand experiment by NBC – moving late night king Jay Leno into prime time in order to cut back on costly dramas and save money – is now officially a failure. Sure, the network probably won’t change course this season; mainly because they would need five hours of prime time programming to take the place of Leno, and the network has very few hits waiting in the wings. This season.

But if the sale of NBC to Comcast goes through, as expected, perhaps things will change; if NBC orders an unusually high number of dramas to pilot this spring, you can bet Jay won’t be in prime time five nights a week next fall. Go, Comcast! Send this idiots who killed NBC on some permanent Orlando vacations.

White House Communications Director Anita Dunn admitted in a speech in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic that the Obama administration had actively worked to control the media, rather than allow reporters genuine access to the president, David Ploufe and other administration officials.

Here’s an excerpt from her speech:

“Very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn’t absolutely control. One of the reasons we did so many of the David Plouffe videos was not just for our supporters, but also because it was a way for us to get our message out without having to actually talk to reporters,” said Dunn, referring to Plouffe, who was Obama’s chief campaign manager. We just put that out there and made them write what Plouffe had said as opposed to Plouffe doing an interview with a reporter. So it was very much we controlled it as opposed to the press controlled it. Whether it was a David Plouffe video or an Obama speech, a huge part of our press strategy was focused on making the media cover what Obama was actually saying as opposed to why the campaign was saying it, what the tactic was. … Making the press cover what we were saying.”

Such brash arrogance can only be displayed outside of American soil, though the day is coming when that will change, too, I’m sure. For now, President Obama sits in comfortable modern furniture in the White House, but if the press is honest with itself at all… even they will eventually turn on Obama.

I heard about Michael Moore’s impending new file, Capitalism: A Love Story, in which he declares capitalism evil and then mislabels government-run everything (which the rest of the world calls socialism) as “democracy,” and I had this nice, insightful response all written and ready to roll.

And then I thought: Why bother? Anyone who still believes Michael Moore is anything but a complete ass is probably working in the Obama Administration and is hopelessly lost anyway.

So, screw it. I’m not going to give Moore any more of my bandwidth for his latest anti-American propaganda. The fat man has sung, and it’s you, Mikey. Now go apply your best eye cream and go to beddy-bye.

I can think of eight GOP congressional reps who really don’t want their jobs anymore; they made that obvious by kissing Nancy Pelosi’s ring (and rear) to help the Obama climate change bill – which includes the economically-toxic cap-n-trade legislation – pass the House vote.

Despite 44 brave Democrats crossing Pelosi to oppose the bill, eight idiot Republicans also crossed party lines to support the toxic legislation. So here’s the GOP hit-list for the next round of US Congressional elections, the eight RINOs who need to be cleansed from the system. They are:

• Rep. Mary Bono (Calif.)
• Rep. Michael Castle (Del.)
• Rep. Mark Kirk (Ill.)
• Rep. Leonard Lance (N.J.)
• Rep. Frank LoBiondo (N.J.)
• Rep. John McHugh (N.Y.)
• Rep. David Reichert (Wash.)
• Rep. Christopher Smith (N.J.)

Remember those names in November of 2010, people. If they aren’t ousted by their local GOP, vote for the Dem opponent. At least then, you’d know you’re getting a liberal, rather than a turncoat. Send all eight of them into Congressional retirement; they’d probably be better off selling Wilmington NC real estate.

While appearing to bend to pressure from the West, Israel PM Binyamin Netanyahu publicly accepted in concept the idea of a Palestinian state existing alongside Israel; however, the leader attached some preconditions that nearly assured Israel’s security under such a plan, such as that Palestine could have no standing military with which to attack Israel, and that the Palestinian state would have to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Of course, this prompted a rejection of any peace talks by Palestinians, who are unwilling to accept anything short of total surrender and vacating of the land by all Jews as acceptable terms for a negotiated peace. So let President Obama assume victory if he wishes; at least President Netanyahu knows the real score, even if he’s more in need of a diet pill than our chief executive.

With the controversial, election-fraud-ridden victory over the weekend of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who won a second four-year term as president with an alleged 63 percent of the boat, it’s clear that Mr. Ahmadinejad has at least one lesson to share with Minnesota’s Al Franken: if you’re going to steal an election result – go big!

Franken’s ACORN-assisted election result is controversial because the election fraud perpetrated in his name was too modest, giving him a win of only a couple hundred votes. If Franken truly wanted to be Minnesota’s next undisputed U.S. senator, he would have fielded an Ahmadinejad-like win that put to rest all doubts that the fix was in.

Meanwhile, digital camcorders may be recording election fraud in Iran and Minnesota, but guess where the footage has the best chance of getting the camera man killed? Look to the west, young man…

The newest challenger to Google would rather figure out the answers itself rather than point you to another site; WolframAlpha is the name of this site, and it launches this week amid hoopla that it’s a Google-killer. Can the awkwardly-named site really challenge Google’s dominance?

I wouldn’t bet any Orlando vacations on it. After all, Google is far more than just a search engine, these days. It boasts a list of sites and services so vital to the Internet that it’s just silly to think a simple search engine can replace it.

Only if WolframAlpha does all that, too, will it even stand a chance.

All the KVM switches in the world can’t protect US President Barack Obama from differing with Israel’s newly-elected conservative president, Binyamin Netanyahu, a Middle East Reaganite if ever there was one. Yet despite espousing policies up and down the line at odds with Netanyahu’s agenda, Netanyahu is displaying uncommon political courage by traveling to the US this week to meet with Obama.

The collision course of values was set early in Obama’s White House campaign, when Barack claimed he would sit down with terrorists “without preconditions” and when he was praised in a European interview by Jessie Jackson, who claimed that if Obama won, “the era of Israel-first foreign policy will come to an end.”

Since Netanyahu is coming to Washington with an agenda that is topped by stopping Iran’s march toward becoming a nuclear power, rather than peace with the Palestinians, it will be interesting to see which man blinks first.

The world needs more time spent on creating a Mesothelioma treatment than on this, but Iran just added layers of meaning to the word irony as they have demanded a UN response to recent Israeli threats of military strikes against Iranian military installations, including nuclear facilities.

In a show of raw arrogance lacking any sense of irony, Iran – the country whose president makes almost daily threats against Israel – asked the UN to step in and stop Israel from “making threats.” Somehow that must be a New Math problem… for me, it just doesn’t add up.

Of course, it’s the old double-standard dealio: Iran can say anything it wants – while building nuclear facilities against UN mandates, by the way – but if Israel so much as breathes wrong, it’s time to get all pissy?

C’mon, Iran, stop acting like a “charming only when adults are looking” little girl and man up to your own needless and endless threats against Israel first, before pointing out Israel’s threats. Clearly, this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black…

I bought my first George Foreman grill back around the time they were first introduced to the market. It was a tiny, one hamburger affair with a bun warmer, and I found it a great little tool for healthy cooking because of how conveniently it disposed of the fat.

However, after getting married, I didn’t keep it because it was just too small. Well, recently, I had a chance to acquire a new one for use my me and my wife. It’s a brand new, larger model with a digital readout and removable, dishwasher-safe grill plates, and all I can say is, the product, like George, has only improved with age.

With me being a bit overweight and struggling with high blood pressure, healthy living has become the new obsession for my wife and I, and any tool we can find to make pursuing good health quicker and easier is always welcomed in our household.

That’s what makes the G-Broil Supreme a great choice now that I’m married. The grill is big enough to hold two decent-sized skinless chicken breast fillets, which means my wife and I can eat at the same time, rather than one of us eating a cooled-down fillet while the other eats a piping-hot one.

That sort of equilibrium certainly helps in a marriage, and thus the G-Broil Supreme is the new welcomed tool in our household kitchen lineup. My wife has already used it frequently in the two weeks or so that we’ve had it, and as much as we love quesadillas, we are already using our new Foreman Grill for more often than we have our terrific quesadilla makers.

The G-Broil Supreme grill from Foreman Grills is one product that’s in our kitchen to stay, and just using it or watching my wife use it reminds me of the long and impressive career and never-say-quit attitude of George Foreman himself. That kind of inspiration is always welcome when battling the battle of the waist line and high blood pressure. Whether one is interested in merely healthy cooking, or a more complete healthy living approach is the goal, this is a great tool to accomplish either.