1918 News Server

From Socialite Life; Fitness and collagen devotee Lisa Rinna is going to display her plumped-up bronzed parts in all of their glory for Playboy.

Former Dancing With the Stars contestant, Lisa was asked by Extra to confirm or deny the rumor that she was planning on posing for a photo spread for the mag. To this, Rinna replied, "I'm the worst liar on the planet; I can't lie, so...I think that could be a yes."

Granted, she's a mother of two and 45-years-old, but as you can see from these bikini pictures of Rinna frolicking on the beach, everything on her seems to be pretty firm and in place. Now, if she could just get those lips to look right...

From Politico; If there is a strategy of maintaining relevance after leaving office, then Newt Gingrich has mastered it.

Few voices outside the two presidential campaigns rang louder than Gingrich’s this past election. He led the shouts of “drill here, drill now,” the chiding of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the defense of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

This being the YouTube election, Gingrich’s clip of “3 Ways to Lower Gas Prices” has amassed more than 2.7 million views on the site, about a half-million more than John McCain’s "Celeb" ad tying Barack Obama to Paris Hilton.

Last week, Gingrich went after the RNC, criticizing its effort to link Obama to the Gov. Rod Blagojevich scandal. Gingrich’s Republican-on-Republican violence grabbed headlines and energized the blogosphere. [read more]

From NY Times; TEXT messaging is a wonderful business to be in: about 2.5 trillion messages will have been sent from cellphones worldwide this year. The public assumes that the wireless carriers’ costs are far higher than they actually are, and profit margins are concealed by a heavy curtain.

Senator Herb Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin and the chairman of the Senate antitrust subcommittee, wanted to look behind the curtain. He was curious about the doubling of prices for text messages charged by the major American carriers from 2005 to 2008, during a time when the industry consolidated from six major companies to four.

So, in September, Mr. Kohl sent a letter to Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, inviting them to answer some basic questions about their text messaging costs and pricing.

All four of the major carriers decided during the last three years to increase the pay-per-use price for messages to 20 cents from 10 cents. The decision could not have come from a dearth of business: the 2.5 trillion sent messages this year, the estimate of the Gartner Group, is up 32 percent from 2007. Gartner expects 3.3 trillion messages to be sent in 2009. [read more]

From National Ledger; If you think about Jay Leno and auction you likely would think more along the lines of a car auction. Instead, a new auction is up for the snot of buxom Hollywood celebrity Scarlett Johansson. The actress blew her nose into on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Wednesday and now wants you to buy it.

WhyFame.com explains, "Scarlett Johansson is not one to waste. Maybe that's why the "Match Point" star and wife of actor Ryan Reynolds is selling her used tissue on eBay for charity. It's gross, but true. During an appearance on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," she told Leno that her "Spirit" co-star Samuel L. Jackson had given her his cold." [read more]

From National Ledger; American idol is gearing up for new season and they need to recreate the spark that made them the best reality TV program. the show has become stale for some and the judges really need a shake up. Enter Kara DioGuardi. The Grammy-nominated songwriter Kara DioGuardi is going to Hollywood.

The award winning producer, who says she's "a straight shooter", has joined Paula Abdul, Simon Cowell and Randy Jackson as a judge on American Idol. Will it help the show. Lat season saw the best talent in some time with David cook winning the competition and David Archuleta grabbing the runner up. Still, ratings were off and the show knows it needs changes. [read more]

From the Insider; "The Insider" confirms Andy Dick was arrested early Wednesday morning in Murrieta, CA on suspicion of possession of drugs as well as sexual battery.

According to the Murrieta Police Department press release, "a 17-year-old female victim and several witnesses told police that as Andy Dick left the establishment, he approached two females outside the bar. Dick walked up to the 17-year-old female victim, grabbed her tank top and bra and pulled them down and exposed her breasts. He then was escorted by several of his friends to a truck which was stopped by arriving police officers in a nearby Sam’s Club a few moments later. [read more]

From Associated Content; According to Ramazan Baydan, model 271 brogues are seeing an increase in sales at the Baydan Shoe Company. This is a result of the recent shoe-throwing incident that took place as President George W. Bush gave a press conference in Iraq. Due to the television audience that saw the incident, it is now being reported that the type of shoe thrown (Model 271 Brogues) are increasing in sales dramatically, and Ramazan Baydan is being forced to hire on new workers to meet the orders being placed for the shoes.

During a press conference that President Bush was having with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a reporter in the audience took off one of his model 271 brogues and threw it at the podium where the President was addressing the audience. Before officials on site could stop him, the reporter was able to throw a second shoe as well, both times causing the President to duck out of the way of the flying shoes. The incident made news not only in Iraq, but around the world, and has quickly been the punch-line to many jokes about the President, and the reporter as well. [read more]

From NY Times;

Below is a retraction from the NY Times. This is the kind of thing that mainstream journalists are always saying doesn't happen in their newsrooms, only in the blogoshere...

Earlier this morning, we posted a letter that carried the name of Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, sharply criticizing Caroline Kennedy.

This letter was a fake. It should not have been published.

Doing so violated both our standards and our procedures in publishing signed letters from our readers. [read more]

From ars technica; Whenever a new, relatively unpopular technology hits the streets, you can always count on teenagers to try and exploit it for their own gain. Such is the case with speed cameras, as high school students in Maryland have begun playing the "Speed Camera Pimping Game," wherein they attempt to punk the not-so-accurate cameras by creating faux license plates that can be traced back to peers and teachers they have it out for. The trend has parents and law officials worried, and it raises even more questions about the cameras' usefulness.

Students at Montgomery High School in Maryland have discovered that they can duplicate the license plates of their archenemies by printing a Maryland plate template on a sheet of glossy photo paper and digging up a handy license plate character font, according to a parent speaking to The Sentinel (via /.). This may sound like a janky craft project at first, but these cameras are not sensitive enough to pick up the differences between these paper license plates and the real things. The students then tape the faux plate over their own and purposefully speed in order to be caught by the speed camera, causing the real owner of the license plate to receive a $40 citation in the mail. [read more]

From AP; Eartha Kitt, a sultry singer, dancer and actress who rose from South Carolina cotton fields to become an international symbol of elegance and sensuality, has died, a family spokesman said. She was 81.

Andrew Freedman said Kitt, who was recently treated at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, died Thursday in Connecticut of colon cancer.

Kitt, a self-proclaimed "sex kitten" famous for her catlike purr, was one of America's most versatile performers, winning two Emmys and nabbing a third nomination. She also was nominated for several Tonys and two Grammys. [read more]

From RedState; Remember when the Bush Administration was preparing to take office eight years ago, warned us that we were entering a potentially recessionary period and got castigated by Democrats for supposedly “talking down the economy”?

Sure you do.

Apparently, it was bad to do that kind of thing back in 2000. But it is perfectly all right to do it in 2008. The Newsbusters article makes it clear that Barack Obama is also “talking down the economy” but he doesn’t get any kind of media grief whatsoever for it.

Double standards? Clearly. And the incoming Administration’s efforts to “talk down the economy” have increased thanks to Joe Biden:

[Biden's] take? It’s bad. Bleak. Awful. He told the [George Stephanopoulos] that he’s worried about the economy “absolutely tanking.”

“The economy is in much worse shape than we thought it was in,” Biden told Stephanopoulos. “There is no short run other than keeping the economy from absolutely tanking. That’s the only short run.”

[read more]

From Strategy Page; Many Pakistanis now believe that the recent Islamic terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, was the work of the Israeli Mossad, or the American CIA. Such fantasies are a common explanation, in Moslem nations, for Islamic terrorist atrocities. Especially when women and children, and Moslems, are among the victims, other Moslems tend to accept fantastic explanations shifting the blame to infidels (non-Moslems).

Conspiracies are not unique to the Moslem world, but they are much more common there. After the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, many Moslems again blamed Israel. A favorite variation of this is that, before the attacks on the World Trade Center, a secret message went out to all Jews in the area to stay away. Another variation has it that the 19 attackers (all of them Arab, 15 from Saudi Arabia) were really not Arabs, but falsely identified as part of the Israeli deception. In the United States, some Americans insist that the attack was the work of the U.S. government, complete with the World Trade Center towers being brought down by prepositioned explosive charges. While few Americans accept this, the Moslem fantasies are widely accepted in the Moslem world. Even Western educated Arabs, speaking good English, will casually express, and accept, these tales of the Israeli Mossad staging the attacks, to trick the U.S. into attacking Afghanistan and Iraq. Americans are shocked at this, but the Moslems expressing these beliefs just shrug. [read more]

From CNN; A lawyer who served in the Clinton administration and more recently was an adviser to California's lieutenant governor pleaded guilty to a child porn charge in a San Diego federal court Monday.

Wade Rowland Sanders admitted to having 600 images of minors on his computer, including a video depicting "several prepubescent females engaged in sexual conduct with an adult male and performing oral sex on one another," according to a statement from U.S. Attorney Karen Hewitt.

FBI agents raided Sanders' home last May after they suspected his home Internet service account was used to download several pictures and a video showing underage girls having sex with adult men, according to an investigator's sworn statement. [read more]

From Victor Davis Hanson at Real Clear Politics; The probable appointment of Caroline Kennedy, the 51-year-old daughter of former President John Kennedy, to fill Secretary-of-State nominee Hillary Clinton's New York Senate seat is both laughable and yet a parable for our bankrupt times.

Consider aristocratic entitlement. Ms. Kennedy apparently spends a great deal of her time divided between her Park Avenue Upper-East-Side Manhattan townhouse and her hereditary estate on Martha's Vineyard. She has had no real experience with the ordinary lives of New Yorkers, either a few dozen blocks away in Harlem (despite a sudden ad hoc lunch last week with the Rev. Sharpton at a soul food diner) or the state's rural towns to the north. [read more]

From FOX News; Al Franken's campaign says it expects the reconciliation of withdrawn challenges next week to result in a 35-50 vote lead for Franken in the Minnesota Senate race.

"The work left for the state canvassing board to do next week - the re-allocation of withdrawn challenges - is work we have already done in our internal count, because that count has always assumed that all challenges will fail," Franken's campaign attorney Marc Elias said at a press conference Saturday. "On Tuesday, I will stand before you with that work completed. Al Franken will have a lead of between 35 and 50 votes. And, at some point not too long after that, Al Franken will stand before you as the Senator-Elect from Minnesota."

The Franken campaign's internal count before the state canvassing board began its work of reviewing challenges was based on the assumption that all challenges would fail. [read more]

From Reuters; Actor and former presidential candidate Fred Thompson is getting his own radio show.

Westwood One said Monday that "The Fred Thompson Show" will debut March 2, replacing "The Radio Factor With Bill O'Reilly," which ends its six-year run February 27. O'Reilly announced his decision to step down from the show this month, saying the workload for his radio and TV duties had become too much.

In his show, Thompson will share his conservative views on politics, topical issues and pop culture stories as well as conduct guest interviews and take listener calls. The two-hour show, broadcast from the Westwood One studios in Washington, will air live from noon-2 p.m. weekdays. [read more]

From Hot Air; The NY Times says, Wonderful? Sorry, George, It’s a Pitiful, Dreadful Life...

‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife. It is also a nightmare account of an endless home renovation…

Not only is Pottersville cooler and more fun than Bedford Falls, it also would have had a much, much stronger future. Think about it: In one scene George helps bring manufacturing to Bedford Falls. But since the era of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ manufacturing in upstate New York has suffered terribly…

What a grim thought: Had George Bailey never been born, the people in his town might very well be better off today.

From Human Events; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to re-write House rules today to ensure that the Republican minority is unable to have any influence on legislation. Pelosi’s proposals are so draconian, and will so polarize the Capitol, that any thought President-elect Obama has of bipartisan cooperation will be rendered impossible before he even takes office.

Pelosi’s rule changes -- which may be voted on today -- will reverse the fairness rules that were written around Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America.”

In reaction, the House Republican leadership is sending a letter today to Pelosi to object to changes to House Rules this week that would bar Republicans from offering alternative bills, amendments to Democrat bills or even the guarantee of open debate accessible by motions to recommit for any piece of legislation during the entire 111th Congress. These procedural abuses, as outlined in the below letter obtained by HUMAN EVENTS, would also include the repeal of six-year limit for committee chairmen and other House Rules reform measures enacted in 1995 as part of the Contract with America. [read more]

From examiner.com; Get your Festivus poles out (yes, you can actually buy one) because today, Dec. 23 has been dubbed as the official Festivus holiday. The holiday was made famous by Daniel O’Keefe, a writer for the show Seinfeld, but actually originated decades earlier by his father, as a celebration of his first date with his wife.

Here’s some fun facts on the history of the holiday, according to Wikipedia:

Although the original Festivus took place in February 1966 as a celebration of O'Keefe's first date with his wife, Deborah, many people now celebrate the holiday on December 23, as depicted on the December 18, 1997 Seinfeld episode "The Strike".

According to O'Keefe, the name Festivus "just popped into his head."

The holiday includes novel practices such as the "Airing of Grievances", in which each person tells everyone else all the ways they have disappointed him or her over the past year. Also, after the Festivus meal, the "Feats of Strength" are performed, involving wrestling the head of the household to the floor, with the holiday ending only if the head of the household is actually pinned

The original holiday featured far more peculiar practices, as detailed in the younger Daniel O'Keefe's book The Real Festivus, which provides a first-person account of an early version of the Festivus holiday as celebrated by the O'Keefe family, and how O'Keefe amended or replaced details of his father's invention to create the Seinfeld episode.

Here’s the hilarious clip from that fateful and iconic Seinfeld episode that introduced this holiday into our lives:

[read more]

From Instapundit; The Hartford Advocate writes:

Sen. Chris Dodd never stood a chance at the Democratic nomination, much less the presidency. But that didn’t stop the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee from fleeing Washington during the prelude to the biggest banking collapse of our lifetime and moving his family to Iowa for the caucuses. Once Dodd did finally come to earth (and back to D.C.), we learned he’d received special low-interest mortgage deals from Countrywide Financial, a company that made huge profits off predatory subprime loans and which his committee was supposed to regulate. Dodd first said he’d make public the details of the loan, then backpedaled and stonewalled reporters seeking answers. Dodd’s up for re-election in 2010 and his approval rating’s sunk below 50 percent. After a year like this, he might find winning another term a rocky ride.

He still won’t release those documents.