By Debbie Schlussel
Stuck in a theater again today, but one of these was well worth it. My review for “Up” will be posted later tonight or early in the morning. My review for “The Brothers Bloom,” pre-written before the Jewish Shavuot holiday goes up on Friday.
In the meantime, here are the trailers. See if you can guess which one I loved.

By Debbie Schlussel
I wrote long ago about how the Presidentator’s and the Governator’s new fuel efficiency rules are bad for the auto industry and the American economy and will cause a huge job loss.
Now there’s more to back that up.
Take this for what it’s worth given that it’s written by David Shepardson, a Detroit Newsistan “reporter” whom I caught fabricating an entire story, which the Newsistan had to remove from its site after I outed him and his lazy editors. (The guy regularly sided with Al-Qaeda terrorists on trial here and tailored his “reporting”–much of it fabricated–to fit that view. Should have been fired just like Jayson Blair was.)
Keith Hennessey, George W. Bush’s former chief economic advisor, says that about 50,000 jobs will be lost by the new fuel efficiency standards.

(Arnold Drawing from Schlussel Wacky Packs Collection)

Nearly 50,000 jobs could be lost in the auto sector as a result of President Barack Obama’s decision to approve fuel efficiency requirements for the nation’s cars and trucks, according to government documents and a former presidential adviser.
At the same time, the increased fuel rules could cause full-size truck sales to fall significantly without government help, a Wall Street analyst said.
Last month, the nation’s fuel efficiency requirements were increased to a fleetwide average of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016, a stricter standard than had been considered by the Bush administration, which was planning to propose an average of 31.6 mpg by 2015, according to a final regulation the former administration was going to publish and obtained The News.
That standard would have cost 11,127 jobs over a five-year period. An analysis of a proposal similar to what the Obama administration has called for would eliminate 48,847 jobs, said Keith Hennessey, who was President George W. Bush’s chief economic adviser.
“The Obama plan will increase costs enough to further suppress demand for new cars and trucks. This will cause significant job loss,” he wrote on his blog.
Detroit’s Big Three automakers and most major foreign automakers endorsed the new fuel rules, but Hennessey disagreed. “The auto manufacturers got rolled by the Governator,” Hennessey said, referring to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
JP Morgan Chase auto analyst Himanshu Patel said Tuesday the new regulations “may most severely hurt the size of the U.S. full-size pickup truck segment.”
Patel added that the price increases as a result of higher efficiency requirements may scare away many buyers of the most-profitable vehicles for domestic automakers.
Consumers may flee “if the pickup truck of tomorrow becomes either too expensive or sheds too much machismo in an effort to became fuel efficient,” Patel wrote.

Good luck, America. Welcome to Yugo country and the Yugo state of mind. We’re fast becoming a Western outpost Soviet satellite state even though there’s no longer a Soviet Union.

By Debbie Schlussel
You know how sometimes you just have to go? And yet, you’re in the middle of a movie in the movie theater or watching a live TV show or sporting event you’re not taping. Well, if you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go, and you’ll miss part of the movie/show/game, etc.
To me, if that’s your biggest problem in life, you’re either batting 1,000 or not living (or both).
But to the people at RunPee.com, that is life’s biggest problem. To solve it, the site lists lulls in movies and TV shows so that you can avoid missing the “good parts.” And they’re considering expanding to sporting events, too.
So, here’s my question: If you have time to surf the web and read what is the right time to go to the bathroom, then you might as well just go to the bathroom.

Apparently, you’re supposed to visit the site before you head to the theater. Um, let’s see, tickets . . . check. Nope, honey, we can’t leave until I check RunPee.com to see when I can leave for the restroom during “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.”
Sad. Silly. Very silly. Life is too short to worry about something like this.
Is this really necessary?
Just go. You didn’t miss a thing.

By Debbie Schlussel
I love the hypocrisy of Harvard. The school preaches liberalism and tells us we should practice the same kind of race-based affirmative action and “outreach” to the inner city that Harvard preaches.
For years, Harvard has pimped this limousine liberal kind of thinking on America. But now that Harvard has finally reaped the “rewards” of this kind of policy, the hypocrisy of the Ivy League screams in crimson.
It’s the story of Chanequa Campbell. The woman is Black, from the inner city, poor, and friends with drug dealers, whom she brought onto the Harvard campus. We don’t know what kind of grades and test scores Chanequa had and whether they were achieved at an easy school. (She got scholarships from the New York Times and Coca-Cola, but both give minorities a “leg up.”)

Chanequa Campbell:
She Let Murderer Into Harvard Dorm, Now Cries “RACISM!”
But we know she came from the mean streets of Brooklyn’s Bedford Stuyvesant ‘hood. And if Harvard’s affirmative action policy is anything like every other university in America, and especially the Ivy League schools, then it’s a good bet Chanequa’s grades, test scores, and level and quality of her high school education don’t come anywhere close to that of the White students admitted to the school and many of the White students rejected from the school to make a place for Chanequa.
But, hey, Harvard preaches creating opportunities for inner city minorities without the qualifications, at the expense of deserving people with the qualifications who had the misfortune of being born White. Sadly, though, now that Harvard has also reaped the results of those policies, well, the school isn’t so liberal anymore.
The Harvard politics of “inclusion” are out the window. And so is Chanequa.
On May 18th, Justin Cosby, an alleged drug dealer known as Harvard students’ dope dealer of choice–not a Harvard student, was murdered by another person, Jabrai Jordan Copney–also not a Harvard student, in an attempted robbery in Chanequa’s dorm, Kirkland House. Chanequa is close friends with Copney’s girlfriend. Somehow, these malefactors ended up in a secure Harvard dorm where they could only be with a Harvard student identification electronic key card of a resident of the building (hey, like Chanequa).
Yes, this Harvard student from the Hood brought the Hood with her to Harvard. And these liberals who thought they were “down with the struggle” ain’t so “down with the struggle” now that “the struggle”–including drug-dealing, armed robbery, and murder–have been brought to Harvard Yard. Now they know what the rest of America is thinking when Harvard preaches the politics and policies that bring this kind of thing upon American neighborhoods, workplaces, and schools every single day.
This isn’t about a race. It’s about a culture. Yes, there are Black students who’ve been admitted to Harvard on their own merits, who’ve been an attribute to Harvard. Alan Keyes is among them. This isn’t about them. This is about the Chanequas who are only at Harvard (and a gazillion other schools, admission into which they don’t truly qualify for) for one reason and one reason only: their race. And the Chanequas who blame the consequences of their bad choices after they’ve been given unearned opportunity at Harvard (and colleges and workplaces around America) on one thing: their race.
That’s what Chanequa Campbell is doing right now, after a murder on campus resulted from her bad choices and behavior. She’s doing the usual: playing the race card. Crying, “racism!”
Chanequa Campbell was banned from entering her dorm room or from graduating from Harvard. Movin’ on up to the East side (or East coast Ivies) isn’t so easy after all.
She told the Boston Globe:

I am being singled out. . . . The honest answer to that is that I’m black and I’m poor and I’m from New York and I walk a certain way and I keep my clothes a certain way. It’s something that labels me as different from everyone else.

Uh, no, Chanequa. What labels you as different is that you let a murderer on campus. And a drug dealer, too. And one murdered the other in the building where you live. (Not to mention, the different admissions policy that allowed you into Harvard in the first place.)
What if a White student let in a drug dealer and a robber/murderer into a Harvard dorm and a Black student–say, Chanequa–was killed? Do you think there would be cries of “racism” then? Or would there be calls from and protests by Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to bring the evil White student to justice?
Harvard ordered Chanequa Campbell off campus on Friday and served her with a “no trespass” order, something the hypocritical liberals at Harvard would yell and scream and whine and cajole about if people in a working class area evicted someone for doing the same thing. Or if they said they didn’t want busing or the like.
It’s funny when the shoe is on the other foot. Or in this case, the liberal noblesse oblige crimson silk stocking.
If only Harvard and other institutions accepted students based on merit and scholarship, rather than the color of their skin, the type of indoor plumbing, and their ethnicity, the school would, in general, have a far more responsible student body, whose members wouldn’t just let anybody have their key to the dorm. But this is what you get, when you give people a sense of entitlement who haven’t earned it.
Campell has a history of crying racism. In the past, she whined to The Harvard Crimson that Harvard doesn’t care enough about Black History Month.

[Black people] have made significant, influential contributions to American culture and society and global well-being–and there’s no recognition. And that bothers me. There’s been no real community-wide outreach.

Wrong. There’s plenty of recognition. What color is the President of the United States? And there’s plenty of “outreach” at Harvard. The outreach is the affirmative action for minorities, which apparently allowed her admission into Harvard.
If only she was as worried about her own “outreach”–whom she let into her Harvard dorm–as she was about salving the noir chip on her shoulder.
Now, she’s getting all the recognition she deserves for her own “contribution” to Harvard: murder.

By Debbie Schlussel
Many scientists and meteorologists have already proclaimed publicly that global warming is a farce, that there’s no such thing, and that it’s a gimmick of the left to control our lives and our behavior through big government.
But even if you believe in the farce that there is such a thing as global warming, the alleged warming isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And the claim that it directly harms and kills marine life forms has just been disproven.
This week’s “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” features a study on rising water temperatures and higher amounts of carbon dioxide. The study found that this resulted in increased feeding and growth rates of starfish a/k/a Pisaster ochraceus, indigenous to America’s west coast.
Read an abstract of the study, “Elevated water temperature and carbon dioxide concentration increase the growth of a keystone echinoderm.”

Hey, now that these scientists that did the study came to a conclusion that contradicts the enviro-zealots, maybe the eco-left can resort to their usual tactics to shut them up. You know, like attacking their homes and ruining their professional reputations.
But probably not. Sadly, even though scientists Rebecca A. Gooding, Christopher D. G. Harley, and Emily Tang found that so-called global warming does not harm marine life as previously claimed by the global warming crowd, the scientists won’t let that get in the way of their own political views and they still claim that “climate change poses a serious threat to biodiversity.”
As for me, I’ll be disregarding their conclusion that doesn’t follow their research. And I’ll be watching “The Goode Family,” the ABC show I told you about last Friday, which makes fun of the eco-hypocrites and liberal activists who just can’t help themselves to the truth.

By Debbie Schlussel
Late yesterday, the feds announced something that seems petty and far too late, but it is extremely politically motivated: the indictment of former Rudy Giuliani New York City Police Chief and one-time Homeland Security Secretary nominee Bernard Kerik.
Kerik was indicted by the Obama Justice Department for lying to the Bush Administration Office of Personnel Management, the recruiters and “vetters” for the White House, when Bush nominated him for DHS Secretary.
So, why now? Well, everything’s political in Washington, especially with this administration. And the Obama minions and the rest of the greater Democrat Party want to put the final nail in the coffin of Giuliani’s career.

“The ICE Princess” Strikes Again:

Julie L. Myers Helps Obama Take Down Giuliani (& Kerik)

(Julie Myers Bag Lady Photoshop by David Lunde/Lundesigns)
Giuliani is thinking of running for Governor of New York, and polls show he could win. Just two weeks ago, polls showed Giuliani picking up steam and likely Democrat opponent Andrew Cuomo losing that steam. And the Democrats want to finish him off. With this trial going on in the background, it could keep him out or, if he chooses to run, hurt him tremendously as a “parallel” opposition campaign. Giuliani was the one who got the Bushies to nominate Kerik initially. And even though there is absolutely no evidence he knew of Kerik’s double life, some Republicans tried to hang him with Kerik when he was running for President in 2008.
Republicans like Julie L. Myers, the incompetent, unqualified former Bush Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) a/k/a “The ICE Princess.” As I noted when Giuliani was running for Prez, Myers was the apparent source of a Washington Post story attempting to savage his integrity. She was an official at the White House Office of Personnel Management and claimed to have interviewed Kerik. She claimed to the Post that she authored memos against Kerik and impugning Giuliani.
It’s funny to hear this fraud-ette, who extensively lied to OPM in her own right, when she picked herself as ICE chieftess at DHS. And that’s not to mention the extreme conflict of interest and improper conduct completely in violation of many rules governing the conduct of an attorney. Sadly, no indictment for “The ICE Princess.”
But in any event, this spoiled brat–the niece of retired General Richard Myers, who worked the Bushies hard to get her a plum job for which she was woefully unqualified–has given herself a way to return, once again, from “nobody” status in Kansas City, where she lived on a paid vacation from last May to December courtesy of the American taxpayer. Again, sadly, no indictment for this kind of conduct.
But Myers will be a key witness–or wants to be, to resurrect her empty, unmemorable career–if her leaking to the Post at the beginning of the Presidential race is any indication. Again, she claimed to the Washington Post to have written the memos asserting that Kerik lied and impugning Giuliani.
And now she will assert herself in creating yet another of her many messes in taking down the GOP’s best chance to retake New York. Hmmm . . . is she on the Cuomo payroll now? She might as well be.
But, don’t worry, despite her usual sleazy role in all of this, Julie L. Myers, the former “ICE Princess,” and eternal miserable excuse for a human being, will find a way to continue to get the unearned respect of the bozos at FOX News and the Lou Dobbs Show on CNN. It’s kind of ironic: the key witness against Kerik in an indictment for lying to the government, is a woman who’s lied to the government at every instance and never held to account. I hope Kerik fights this, goes to trial, and savages her on the stand the way the U.S. Senate and the House Homeland Security Committee never had the guts to.
Sad but true, this opportunist with zero talent took down very few illegal aliens while the problem festered on her watch and she enjoyed being chauffeured around by ICE agents fetching her Diet Cokes on their dime and extended tax-funded vacation trips to South America.
But now she may finally take down something. And write her unnoteworthy political epitaph with it.
I hope Julie L. Myers enjoys her star turn as the key witness. It will be the last time she’s the star of anything. And the first and only time she’ll be the key to anything.
***
Here’s the key excerpt of the Washington Post story from 2007, which I noted on this site at the time. The identity of the source of this “heroic” portrayal of Julie Myers to the Washington Post is quite obvious: Myers, herself. Remember, at that point (April 2007), Giuliani led the Republican horserace for the White House by a mile, and Myers was working for someone who wanted him taken out . . . another candidate from whom Myers was seeking another plum job for which she wasn’t qualified, like perhaps her blind supporter for the ICE job, John McCain:

The White House had the perfect person to question Kerik about his relationship with [federal indictee Lawrence] Ray: Julie Myers, who arrived in the White House personnel office in November 2004 and had worked in the same U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn that prosecuted Ray. She flagged the relationship and other concerns about Kerik for her White House colleagues, sources said [DS: Sources? More like “source” a/k/a the self-promoting Julie L. Myers, herself]. She aggressively questioned Kerik about Ray and other affiliations. He bristled at her tone, sources said.
In an interview last week, Ray said he had told the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office as early as 1999, as he tried to stave off indictment, that he had incriminating information about Kerik. After his guilty plea in 2001, Ray said, he told the FBI that Kerik had agreed to help Interstate Industrial and its owners, the DiTomasso family, try to win city business despite their alleged ties with organized crime. At the time, Kerik solicited and received gifts from company sources, including $165,000 in renovations for his apartment.
“They knew 100 percent of it,” Ray said. “There was no way they didn’t. I was driving the ball on that.”
Kerik told the White House that the allegations were untrue, sources said. “He was told many times, ‘Be honest,’ ” said one person familiar with the process. Myers, presidential personnel director Dina Powell [DS: An Egyptian woman from Texas and one of Bush’s pandering “voices” to the Muslim world] and others raised concerns in the West Wing, according to the sources. They were “very, very adamant about how serious the vetting needed to be,” one source said.

Yes, Julie Myers telling someone to be honest. Hilarious. Maybe one day, she’ll tell that to her mirror and actually take the advice. On second thought, nah. She’s Julie Myers. And, now, she’s playing for Team Obama.

By Debbie Schlussel
Had to go screen these two movies, this evening. Watch the trailers. Can you guess which one I liked? Find out at just after Midnight, early Friday Morning, this week and next, when my reviews post. (Reviews this Friday will be posted in my absence in observance of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot [“Pentecost”].)
“Drag Me to Hell,” out this Friday, May 29th:

“My Life in Ruins,” out the following Friday, June 5th:

By Debbie Schlussel
As I’ve said over and over and over again, they can’t be peaceful amongst themselves or even amongst individual Shi’ite and Sunni sects (let along between those sects). Yet, we expect Israel and ourselves to make peace with and be “tolerant” of them. The absurdity and irony is so thick you can cut it with an Islamic beheading sword.
FYI, Dagestan is a region of southern Russia.

The Coordination Center of North Caucasus Muslims has linked the murder of Ahmed Tagayev, deputy head of the Dagestani Muslim Spiritual Board and head of the public organization called Za Nravstvennost (For Ethics), to his professional activities, and in particular, his opposition to radical Islam.
The mufti linked Tagayev’s murder to his professional activities, “as he was strong opponent of Wahhabism.”

“Religion of Peace”

The Coordination Center of North Caucasus Muslims will soon hold a meeting, where it will raise the issue of how to protect Islamic clergy from extremists, he said.

Correction: Islamic clergy are extremists. They just want to be protected from rival extremists.

Tagayev was killed in Makhachkala on Monday.
This is not the first such incident in Dagestan. In November 2008, an attack was made against the Dagestan mufti’s advisor, Sultan Sultanmagomedov, and his driver. Both sustained shrapnel wounds from the explosion. Urmagomed Gajimagomedov, a servant from a local mosque and a vocal opponent of extremists, was killed in October 2007.
There are up to one hundred of subvertionists and around 1,500 Wahabis in the republic, Dagestan’s Interior Ministry said last autumn.

Don’t kid yourself and believe–as claimed by the Interfax news agency in this artic–that Tagayev, the Deputy Chief Mufti of Dagestan, was some sort of moderate merely because he opposed Wahhabist Islam and was shot by them.
The guy was extremist as most Muslim clerics are, just not on the same extremist side as the Wahhabis are. Most strains of Islam are extremist, and most are opposed to each other.
Like I said, they can’t get along with each other, but we’re supposed to get along with them.

By Debbie Schlussel
Muslims, particularly in Philadelphia but also on Islamic chat sites, are using this video as an attempt to bring more Muslim violence–including against cops–to the streets of America. Note the “inspiring” speech intertwined within, that of Abu Abdullah ranting outside the Finsbury Park Mosque, Muslim religious hangout for the shoe bomber and Zaccarias Moussaoui. The video was posted by a 33-year-old Black Muslim named Naasr, who worships at Philly’s 52nd Street Mosque. He has a young 3-year-old son he’s indoctrinating with this crap (see second video). It’s sad to hear “Eye of the Tiger” as the background music for this crap. Somehow I don’t think that “Survivor” wrote the song for the “Religion of Peace.”
Charming:

By Debbie Schlussel
**** UPDATE: I checked with Janet in consumer affairs at Kettle, and she said the flavoring packets in this kit are NOT KOSHER, that only the chips in the kit are. The rest of Kettle products are certified kosher. ****
Memorial Day Weekend is generally considered the first official holiday weekend of the summer season. Yes, I know summer isn’t officially upon us until late June, but the “summer season” is upon us. And you know what that means? Potato chips.
Because they’re loaded with fat and calories, I almost never eat potato chips. But every once in a while, if there’s an interesting new flavor, I like to try it.
Now, though, Kettle Brand has a limited edition “Create a Chip” kit for you to create your own potato chip flavor. At $14.99 (or $24.99 for two) including shipping, it’s a little pricy, and I haven’t tried it because I’m not that much of a chip connoisseur. (For my Jewish readers, the Kettle website says all Kettle products are certified kosher, and the Kettle site features a “Kosherized chip,” by a consumer named Azarya F. from New York.) [UPDATE: Not Kosher, see UPDATE section above.]

Still, for my gentile readers, it sounds very cool. The kit comes with four 1-ounce bags of unseasoned chips and seven packets of flavorings and seasonings, including lemon butter, caramelized onion, roasted tomato, cheddar, vinegar, sweet chili, and sour cream and chive. You can add your own flavorings. The Kettle Create a Chip site says that the kit also comes with a few bags of some of the best original flavors consumers have created.
You can purchase the potato chip kit online at KettleChipChallenge.com. The site features a number of interesting and unusual recipes for flavored potato chips that Kettle kit users have created in the Kettle “Create-a-Chip Challenge”. The one that sounds coolest to me is “Louise’s Choc Chili,” which is chili chocolate potato chips with a hint of lime.
Perhaps the chips you create will be worth the calories.