By Debbie Schlussel
Add yet another foul-mouthed, left-wing celeb to the list of those that pollute the public airwaves.
No, I’m not talking Hanoi Jane Fonda’s recent utterance of the C-word on “The Today Show.”
I’m talking Ben Affleck’s utterance of the t-word, last night, on Jimmy Kimmel’s post-Oscar edition of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on ABC. If you don’t know what the word is, here’s a hint: It rhymes with “wits.”
Last night, just after midnight, Kimmel broadcast a video he made with Affleck in which they pretend to be lovers. It’s supposed to be a response to a gag video his girlfriend, Sarah Silverman, made declaring her relationship with Matt Damon. At the beginning of the video Affleck grabs Kimmel’s nipples and tells Kimmel that his “wits” are bigger than those of girlfriend Silverman.

Ben Affleck: “Class Act” Openly Admires Men’s “Wits”
(Hezbollah’s Nasrallah Girlie Man by David Lunde/Lundesigns)
So, apparently, you can, indeed, say the t-word on national broadcast television. Lovely. Yes–I know, I know–it was after Midnight Eastern Time, so it’s within the “safe harbors” of 11pm to 6am. But still, is it really a good thing for America that celebs and others are beginning to say the C- and T-words on national television, without any edit button.
Well, at least they have a hooker’s whole anatomy covered. Classy bunch. More proof that ballgowns and $200 haircuts don’t equal class. In fact, more of the opposite.

By Debbie Schlussel
8:43–Jon Stewart’s monologue is so unfunny, it was hard to keep track of my groans. A stupid joke about how we can’t let the audience win, relating to Iraq. Haha, funny. Where’s Joe Pesce when I need him? Yup, it was hard to keep track, but I think I laughed exactly zero times. Even most of the laughter from the audience seemed forced.
8:57—Earlier today, I said that the only Oscar nomination with which I agreed was Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Best Supporting Actor bid. But I was wrong. I also loved the animated film “Persepolis,” nominated for Best Animated Film. It tells the story–through the eyes of a young girl–of what happened to Iran when Islamists took over and how everyone’s life was ruined. Figures that it didn’t win. Damn. Instead, “Ratatouille” won. Also a great animated film (among my year’s best for 2007), but not half as good as “Persepolis.” But Hollywood can’t give an award to a film like that. Too un-PC.

9:11: More groanworthy Jon Stewart utterances about Cate Blanchett playing a cow’s butt. Yet more evidence that Stewart ain’t funny or even witty. He’s only good at being sarcastic and making fun of people in canned news stories he’s thought about all day. That does not a comedian make. Sorry, folks. He’s just a cue card reader. That’s it.
9:18: Figures that the vastly over-rated Javier Bardem wins the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Feh. He played a cold-blooded serial killer with no redeeming purpose, just like the movie he was in, “No Country for Old Men.” Figures that the far more talented and funny Philip Seymour Hoffman didn’t win. I told you the Oscars stank and only liked the dark and macabre.
9:34: Is there some reason why we must sit through so many flashbacks from Oscars past? Isn’t that reserved for awards shows during a writer’s strike? Did someone not get the memo that it’s over? Also, is there really any resemblance of today’s macabre, dark, left-wing Oscars with those of the fifties and sixtes? I’m confused.
9:38: OMG, did Annie Lennox from “The Eurythmics” just win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress? It was the dreadful Tilda Swinton of the dreadful “Michael Clayton” wearing an equally dreadful black satin pillowcase. Give her an Oscar for most creative use of a White Elephant sale item as a pseudo-evening gown. Yet another androgynous “woman” wins an Oscar for a female role. Which brings me to my evergreen Oscar question: Since women–especially in Hollywood–are all about equality, why do they need to divide the awards by sex/gender? Why can’t they just give one Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor statue each and pit all candidates of both genders against each other for the award? Is there something like in the WNBA that makes women less able actors and therefore requiring a special “league”?
9:50: Ugggghhh! In showing how they tally the Oscars, we’re shown self-hating Jew Ari Sandel, who is, sadly, now a “Member of the Academy.” Nauseating. That explains why these crapola “films” get nominated and win awards. Sandel, who won an Oscar, last year, for the moral equivalency short movie, “West Bank Story,” a stupid rip-off of “West Side Story.” The spoiled son of an Israeli, Sandel told me in an interview that he thinks they should have made a film about the moral equivalency of Jewish Holocaust victims and Nazis.
So this guy is a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but they still won’t let Rob Schneider in. HUH?
10:10: So an annoying, but pretty French chick wins the Best Actress Oscar. Still less annoying than Canadian Ellen Page, the star of the completely annoying, smart-alecky “Juno” winning it. She thought she had it sewn up, with all the undeserved gushing and hype over this movie in which pre-marital sex is seen as no big whoop and the baby is neatly adopted by a pretty, wealthy, middle class woman. Oh, and the adults are all stupid, unlike the smart alecky pregnant teen. Sorry, you lost, chickie.
10:18: Jon Stewart playing Wii tennis on stage is supposed to be funny? Funny how? Like I said, where’s Joe Pesce? He’s needed.
10:31: Um, Nicole Kidman, my neighbor called, and he wants the Christmas lights he wrapped around his roof back. No, what wraps around a roof doesn’t really work as a necklace.
10:35: Highlight of the night–seeing a 98-year-old guy, Robert Boyle, who worked with the great Alfred Hitchcock on art design, get the honorary Oscar. He’s old enough to remember when Hollywood was pro-America instead of pro-Bin Laden.
10:42: Penelope Cruz is talking. Someone please get me an interpreter. Listening to this woman is probably more annoying than listening to Hillary Rodham Cankles. Oy. Make it stop.
10:45: While I loved the movie, “Enchanted,” it’s more than a little annoying that at least three of its songs are being re-enacted, since they’re Oscar nominees. Yup, the rest of the movies were so dark, they nominated everything from this one. Sad. Also sad that this charming movie wasn’t “good enough” for the Academy to nominate for any of the meaningful Oscars, but yet, its cheesy, awful songs are somehow meritorious. And no, no-one cares who won in this stupid category.
10:52: Jon Stewart, go away. And take the bloated Vinnie Barbarino with you, please.
10:53: If I see that new age Dianne Von Furstenberg American Express ad one more time, I think I’ll kill myself. What is it with the women with thick, annoying foreign accents, tonight? These are the ads of the “Superbowl for Women”? Pretty shabby.
10:57: Wow, you do, indeed, get a do-over for your Oscar thank you. The women who co-wrote the “Best Song” winner got to come back out and give the thank you speech she forgot. Um, on second thought, please no more do-overs.
10:58: Cameron Diaz . . . Official Spokesmodel for Hollywood liberal airheads (and smoked too much pot before the ceremony).
11:01: Hillary Swank. This man is wearing a beautiful dress.
11:05: Interesting but not surprising that in the litany of Hollywood stars and behind-the-scenes people who died over the last year, the one they saved for last and for which they clapped the loudest was the least accomplished and most trendy, the over-rated Heath Ledger. His death is more sad than, say, that of the great Suzanne Pleshette? Puh-leeze. Brokeback Derangement Syndrome.
11:10: More of the Hollywood emphasis on the macabre and depressing–the composer for the dreadful “Atonement” wins the Oscar for Best Original Score. But the score of this movie was painful and excruciating (including an extremely loud typewriter keystroke minuet). It was so loud, obtrusive, and obnoxious, it gave me a headache. And who the heck could pay attention to the movie, which it vastly overpowered? Not that we wanted to.
11:12: Hmmm . . . Hollywood is finally showing some appreciation for the troops, using soldiers in Iraq to introduce nominees for Best Short Documentary Film. After the way Hollywood trashed our soldiers all year long in movies like “Redacted,” it’s just a tad hypocritical. Just a tad. Get a clue, Hollywood. Show your appreciation for our soldiers by portraying them positively on the silver screen, NOT just a silly, self-important awards show.
11:14: Figures that the Best Short DocuFakery winner is about promoting lesbians adopting kids and came with a political, sob story “thank you” speech about how bad lesbians have it. Blah, blah, blah. Spare us. They have the WNBA, don’t they?
11:17: “Taxi to the Dark Side,” which is blatant, lying propaganda wins best “Documentary.” Sickening. This Fake-umentary is exactly the way Bin Laden would make it. Michael Moore must be extremely proud, even though this one wasn’t his. I screened it last week (my review will be posted on Friday). The movie is positively horrid and a pack of lies whining about Bagram, Abu Ghraib, and Gitmo prisons. You’ve heard it all before. We really don’t need to hear it again. That this got an Oscar is no surprise. But it shows, yet again, the hypocrisy of the Oscars using soldiers to introduce their movies, when they just hate American soldiers.
11:25: Damn. Annoying, liberal “Juno” won the Best Screenplay Oscar (see above for why I hate it). And former stripper Diablo Cody, the woman who wrote it, looks real damned classy with her goth hairdo and multiple tattoos, including a giant, badge of skank on her right arm featuring a readhead in a bikini. Equally as skanky, her tattoo high above her fat thights, very visible in her very-high-slitted leopard-skin “gown” that looks like she bought it off the rack at Frederick’s of Chubby Chaserland.
11:35: Figures #54,463. Self-hating, pro-Palestinian Jew Daniel Day-Lewis who stars in the very depressing, awful anti-Christian, anti-business, “There Will Be Blood,” wins Best Actor. Predictable.
Overall, veeeery boring show, this year. Snoozer.
11:47: The Oscars are, thankfully, over. And the bizarre, violent, weirdly-ending “No Country for Old Men” won Best Director and Best Picture. Yup, more Hollywood rewarding movies glorifying killing for no reason. Blood and the macabre, just like I said earlier today. No shocker there (though of the bloody, violent movies on the Oscar list, this one is, by far, the most tolerable).

By Debbie Schlussel
I don’t usually agree with liberal Mitch Albom (though on Israel and, usually, Islamic terrorism, he gets it). But on the Academy Awards, he’s spot on.
Around the rest of America, you know Mitch Albom as the best-selling author and sports columnist on ESPN’s “The Sports Reporters.” But here in Detroit, we also know him for his daily radio show and columns beyond sports.
On Friday, at the beginning of his radio show, Albom had a great commentary about how the Oscars–which once nominated popular, positive movies like “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Star Wars” for awards–now only likes avant garde, dark, macabre, bloody, depressing movies. And he’s right. None of the movies America liked at the box office got nominated. Only those that were dark, depressing, and–to my mind–mostly boring get the nod.

Albom–on whose radio show I occasionally appear–has a column to the same effect, today. Although I felt his iteration of it was far more powerful on his radio show, the column is pretty good. Some excerpts:

I’m not going to watch the Oscars tonight. Normally I do. But I’ve spent enough time and money on the most depressing, dark and disturbed lineup of movies I ever can remember. I don’t need to see them get rewarded.
Am I the only one who remembers when they actually gave Oscars to movies that had happy endings? There’s not one happy ending in this lot — unless you consider an unplanned teenage pregnancy resulting in someone else’s adoption a happy ending. That’s the big payoff in “Juno.”
Otherwise, you have “There Will Be Blood,” in which a tyrannical oil baron destroys everyone and everything around him; “No Country for Old Men,” in which a serial killer destroys everything and everyone around him; “Michael Clayton,” in which greed gets nearly everyone killed, and “Atonement,” in which a false accusation ruins the lives of all involved.
Um. Remind me again.
Why do we go to the movies?
Now, I’m not a Pollyanna. . . . But lately there’s this sense that unless a movie is dark, violent and hopeless, it can’t be “real.” It can’t be “art.” It can’t truly “matter.” I put these words in quotes because it feels as if critics and awards committees define things that way. . . .
Here’s a news flash: Killing without remorse doesn’t make a story art. Cold and cynical dialogue doesn’t make a story valuable. It’s no accident the films nominated this year, for the most part, didn’t do much box office. People don’t go to the movies to see weirdness, dysfunction or twisted irony.
Most go to be entertained.
This doesn’t mean that “Spider-Man 3” or “Shrek the Third” automatically should get Oscar nominations. But those films, at the top of the box office list last year, do share a good-guys-win ending. There’s a reason people gravitate to that.
And it wasn’t always considered beneath the Academy to celebrate it. In 1973, “The Sting” won best picture, and “American Graffiti” and “A Touch of Class” also were nominated. In 1979, “Kramer vs. Kramer” won [DS: I wouldn’t consider “K v. K” a happy or meritorious flick by any stretch], and “Breaking Away” and “Norma Rae” were nominated [DS: Again, I wouldn’t call “Norma Rae” a positive or meritorious flick; on his radio show, Albom cited “Raiders” and “Star Wars,” which better make the point]. As late as 1994, “Forrest Gump” took the best picture honors. Today, it’s hard to imagine that film would even get nominated. Too many cynics would call it sweet and hopeful.
And I guess that’s what I miss. Hope. If movies were meant to reflect only the real-life worst in us, why would we need them? We could use mirrors.

Not in this column, but said on his show, is another point I agree with. He and I are in the same camp on “Juno,” the smart alecky movie that tries way too hard to be hip, and over which all of the conventional Hollywood types are gushing. A woman called in on his show to say she liked the “pro-life message” of the movie (which in my mind is questionable at best). Albom dismissed that, saying it’s just another smart-alecky movie where a teenager is smarter than every single adult in the movie. That’s my take, too.
Please, conservatives: stop reaching for straws in this crappy movie. It stank. And just because a girl didn’t get an abortion doesn’t mean it was a movie to applaud. It was not. It was simply a movie about how real authorities are idiots and losers, but teens who have sex as casually as they go to the bathroom are the moral authorities.
This movie stank, and so did pretty much all the others that were nominated.
The only nomination I agree with was Philip Seymour Hoffman as Best Supporting Actor in “Charlie Wilson’s War.” He was hilarious in that and the only redeeming part of that otherwise very crappy movie.
Amen, Mitch Albom. At least, this time.

By Debbie Schlussel
The only movie I recommend this weekend is “Vantage Point,” a pleasant surprise. The others annoyed and/or sickened the hell out of me:
* “Vantage Point“: Read my complete review. Wow, finally a movie from Hollywood in which the terrorists are Islamic and unsympathetic. The signs that they are Islamic are subtle but definite. It’s heart-pounding and thrilling once the move abandons its “Groundhog Day” replay of the same events and gets going. Dennis Quaid is always a charmer, especially when he’s one of the good guys and the hero of the story. Fifty-something never looked so good. Again, read my complete review.
* “Be Kind Rewind“: This is probably the dumbest movie of the year, perhaps the decade. Plus, I needed an interpreter to understand the Mumblish spoken by annoying Black Muslim rapper Mos Def. Gee whiz. Def plays a clerk at Danny Glover’s inner city video store. The store doesn’t rent DVDs, just videos.

An annoying nutjob, played by Jack Black, hangs out at the store. He’s so nuts that when he tries to destroy an electric power generator plant, he’s electrocuted. Suddenly, every videotape in the store is blank because of his electromagnetic properties. Def and Black decide to shoot amateur versions of major films along with a clerk at the local dry cleaners. Suddenly, the whole city is lined up to buy and view these stupid videos.
I’m making it sound way, way, way better than it actually is. Even my 8-year-old nephew would have written something more entertaining and complex. Looks like a nursery school kid wrote it, including the dialogue. And it was extremely boring. I fell asleep like three times and still didn’t miss a thing.
A complete waste of time, money, and brain cells. Be kind to yourself and skip this idiocy.

* “The Signal“: A mysterious signal that interrupts TV, phone, and radio broadcasts is turning people mad all across a major city. They are killing others. A young, working-class woman’s husband kills a number of people, as she tries to find her extra-marital lover, the man of her dreams, amidst the chaos.
At first, this looked like a cool horror thriller with no-name actors. But it soon degraded into a pointless, bloody, sick, macabre mess on the order of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” After an hour, I walked out on this piece of trash. Blecch. Skip at all cost.

By Debbie Schlussel
Although the readership of this site is a good mix of people from all walks of life and religions, enough of them are Jews and enough Gentile are those who, unfortunately, look to Jews for the final say on which Muslims are acceptable.
This story is an example of the lessons that need to be learned by both these groups. Jewish students from the University of Michigan are legitimizing the Muslim Students Association (MSA), which the Chicago Tribune identified as a vital part of the Muslim Brotherhood (Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimeen) terrorist group’s manifestation in America.
The Jewish students in this story–at the direction of University of Michigan Hillel executive director, Michael Brooks, and its rabbi, Rabbi Nathan Martin–are heading with MSA’s Muslim students to New Orleans on a joint Jewish-Muslim Hurricane Katrina relief effort.

Benedict Arnold-owitzes: U-M Hillel Rabbi Nathan Martin and Fellow Radical Jew Erica Wedes with Muslima Mariem Qamruzzaman
Not only are the Muslim students part of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist group’s operation in America, but they openly support HAMAS, Hezbollah, and other Islamic terrorist groups who’ve murdered thousands of Americans and Jews worldwide. And the parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, is the group from which HAMAS, Yasser Arafat, Al Qaeda, and Ayman Al-Zawahiri all emanated.
And the trip is a joint effort with Imam Mohammed Mardini of the American Muslim Center of Dearbornistan. An extremist and fervent ally of HAMAS and Hezbollah, He was a vocal part of CAIR-Michigan events which I attended undercover (CAIR was repeatedly identified by several FBI officials and in a recent court-filing as a HAMAS front group).
If you are a Jew who donates to the “Allied Jewish Campaign, the “Jewish Federation,” the “United Jewish Communities,” “the University of Michigan and/or “B’nai Brith Hillel Foundation,” you are enabling these terrorists because all of these organizations donated money and support to this propaganda effort to legitimize extremist Muslims who support murderers of Americans and Jews by giving them the kosher seal of approval.
According to The Detroit Newsistan and its resident pan-Islamist propagandist Gregg Krupa:

Along the way, they are trying to raise money for the trip. They have received support from the Jewish Federation of Detroit, the Jewish Community Relations Council, the Muslim Student Association, the Jewish student organization Hillel and the American Muslim Center in Dearborn.
Rabbi Nathan Martin of Hillel in Ann Arbor strongly encouraged the students to participate in work in New Orleans, and Imam Mohamad Mardini of the American Muslim Center, a mosque in Dearborn, also will travel with the students and participate.

For the purposes of this story, you need to know that Jewish Federation a/k/a United Jewish Communities a/k/a Allied Jewish Campaign is the unrepresentative, self-appointed establishment and spokesman for Jewish communities in most major cities across North America. With billions of dollars, it is also the largest and most powerful. In most cases, a fraternity and sisterhood of wealthy left-wing Jews appoint themselves and their friends to run these organizations in each major city. It is also, at least in Detroit, a bloated bureaucracy with hundreds of employees and programs.
For the purposes of this story, you also need to know that Hillel is the national Jewish organization that is the self-appointed community for Jewish students on college campuses across America. It gets millions of dollars from Jewish donors nationwide and is more powerful than any other Jewish group on most college campuses. That power, though, is fading, as Hillel continues its far-left emphasis on reaching out to extremist Muslims, rather than focusing on Jewish religious and communal life, and as it continues to harass and persecute Jewish students who challenge that focus. (I know this personally, because as a University of Michigan student, I watched as far-left University of Michigan Hillel executive director Brooks persecuted and harassed me and almost two decades later, did the same to pro-Israel students on campus who invited me to speak.)
This is not the first time Michael Brooks has pulled this kind of baloney. A couple of years ago, he wanted to turn the University of Michigan Hillel foundation building into a mosque. He invited the Muslim Students Association, which needed a place to pray, to hold their regular prayers at Hillel. When Jewish students and major donors–including Mandell Berman, the Jewish philanthropist whose name sits atop the building and who donated most of the funds to build it–protested, Brooks was forced to give up on the idea. Or did he?
The Detroit Newsistan reports:

The students often pray together, and they will visit two synagogues and a mosque in New Orleans, and witness a bar mitzvah and Shabbat (Sabbath) services. They often begin meetings by gathering in pairs, a Muslim with a Jew, to talk and reflect about events in their lives since their last meeting.

Where, exactly, are they “praying together”? I’ll tell you where: inside the Hillel Building. That’s also where the joint extremist Muslim/Jewish trip to New Orleans originated and the address to which the solicited funds for the trip are going:

Get Involved
The Jewish and Muslim students are scrambling this week to close the gap in their financing efforts.
To contribute, mail a check made out to “Hillel, University of Michigan, Jewish Muslim ASB Trip” to U-M Hillel [DS: Address redacted by me–I won’t help them raise money for this absurd trip of concentration camp inmates and their Reich captors].

But no worries. The trip won’t include any recognition that one group supports almost every active terrorist group on the planet:

There is no talk about things like the Second Lebanon War of 2006, or the siege of Gaza. And the students explain it simply: There are a myriad of other forums to delve into the roiling political milieu of the Middle East.
These students say they are about faith. . . .
“It is going to be the norm, one day. We really will do away with some of these obstacles that keep us apart,” [says Imam Mardini.]

And the students on this trip are extremely ignorant:

Lizzie Lovinger, a 19-year-old sophomore from Farmington Hills, says the motivation from her faith is clear.
“There is a pretty big idea in Judaism: You should love your neighbor as you love yourself,” Lovinger said, first using the Yiddish words for the phrase and then translating. “In the Detroit area and in Ann Arbor, Muslims are definitely our neighbors, in every sense of the word and it is important that we remember that it is our duty in life to be treating people as we would want to be treated.”

Um, Ms. Lovinger, that’s Hebrew, NOT Yiddish. And it refers to your Jewish neighbor, NOT your Muslim enemy. The same Judaism also says, again in Hebrew,

If someone comes to hurt you [DS: referred to as a “Rodef“], destroy him first.

Our religion does not contain anything about “turning the other cheek.”
And these Jewish students are from anti-Israel, self-hating Jewish groups:

Miriam Liebman, 21, of Farmington Hills says she was driven by her faith to be active in community groups.”It’s just something I have thought about, as part of me being Jewish, since high school,” said Liebman, a senior, who has taken Arabic classes, spent a semester in Egypt and joined the Union of Progressive Zionists, a student group that seeks peace and justice in the Middle East.
“It’s all culminated in the point that I feel the need to do something like this,” Liebman said, “to make those things be more a part of my own Jewish community, to do something within that framework of cooperation with Muslims.”

Progressive Zionists is a left-wing anti-Israel group of self-hating Jews. Here’s a tip: Any time a Jewish group talks about “peace and justice in the Middle East,” it usually means they like to attack Israel and enable with shawarmeh-eaters of the Mohammedan variety. It’s not “peace and justice” for Israel they are concerned about. In the concentration camps, they called these Jews, “coppos.”
If you are a Jewish donor, do NOT give your money to Hillel. Do not give it to the Jewish Federation/United Jewish Communities. Do not give it to the Allied Jewish Campaign. If you do, you are funding the legitimization of not only the Muslim Brotherhood, but all of the other terrorist groups–including HAMAS, Islamic Jihad, and Al-Qaeda–that it supports.
I report. You vote with your checkbook.
And to those–Gentile AND Jew–who look to the mainstream Jewish establishment for their “discernment” on Islam and which Muslims are acceptable, I hope this story tells you that you’ve made a huge mistake.
It’s time to stop playing Rodney King to the enemies who’ve openly said they are bent on our destruction and have openly demonstrated it. “Can’t we all just get along?”
Can a mouse and a python just get along? They are unified only when one is eaten alive by the other.
“Can’t we all just get along?”
No, we cannot.

By Debbie Schlussel
Yesterday, on his nationally syndicated radio show, the great Rush Limbaugh cited me and the Obama video posted here, which shows that Obama is such a rip-off artist that he’s ripping off Denzel Washington playing Malcolm X in the Spike Lee movie. The transcript:

Authentic Barry or Spike Lee?
RUSH: Here’s what I was going to tell you. Debbie Schlussel has posted on her website today — we’ve linked to it at RushLimbaugh.com — there is a YouTube video that somebody, really crafty, put together, and it is sort of scary, striking, but once again this hits at the lack of authenticity of Obama. There are lines that Obama is using that are almost verbatim from Spike Lee’s movie Malcolm X. I mean, there are countless other — yes. I kid you not.

Thanks, Rush! And MegaDittoes. Bill O’Reilly also linked to me, too (probably cribbing off Rush).

By Debbie Schlussel
If your budget is tight, as it is with me and so many other Americans, you might find this interesting. Maybe you already knew about it, but it’s new to me: “Salvage Grocers.”
We all know that there are dollar stores with closeouts, but that’s not what this is about. Apparently, there are many new chains popping up which sell goods that have just recently expired in terms of the “sell by” date, or which have a dent or slight damage to packaging. The foods are still good–we’re not talking about perishables like meat and dairy products–and the bargains sound incredible. It’s like a better, expanded version of the “day old bread” prices at the bakery. But there are some drawbacks, and you have to be a vigilant shopper:

When food prices began to jump last year, Dan McCauley started making weekly trips to SharpShopper, a no-frills discount store here that sells food makers’ surplus goods. On a recent weekday afternoon, the 50-year-old’s haul included two bags of Archway cookies for just $1 and two cases of Vitamin Water made by Kraft Foods Inc. for 25 cents a bottle.
Mr. McCauley didn’t mind that the “best if eaten by” date on the cookies was two weeks old. “A cookie is a cookie to me,” said the vocational-school teacher and married father of two. He says he has slashed his family’s grocery bill by 25% since he began buying more food at SharpShopper and less at Giant, a conventional grocer. . . .
Shoppers like Mr. McCauley are boosting sales at surplus or “salvage” grocers, a little-noticed segment of the food industry, at a time when U.S. consumers face the highest rate of food inflation in almost two decades, along with steep gasoline prices and a sputtering economy. . . .
Surplus grocers sell “closeouts,” which include products that manufacturers have discontinued, seasonal items that are outdated and goods that are near the date when manufacturers expect freshness to wane. Many such grocers also sell products that were damaged in transit but remain edible, such as a dented box of Cheerios. Prices tend to be significantly lower than those at conventional stores and big discounters like Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
Amelia’s, a chain with 11 surplus stores in eastern Pennsylvania, saw its sales jump 17% last year from a year earlier, says Mike Mitchell, president of the company. . . . “When the economy gets tight, we tend to attract new customers,” says Mr. Mitchell. “Groceries are one place where people can do things to save a lot of money.” . . .
Similar grocers in other parts of the U.S. report sales increases. Scott Godes, co-owner of So Low Grocery Outlet, a store in a low-income neighborhood in Minneapolis, says sales jumped 30% last year.
Grocery Outlet Inc., a Berkeley, Calif., operator of 131 surplus stores in the western U.S., has seen a steady increase in same-store sales since last fall, says Melissa Porter, vice president of marketing. Annual sales exceed $600 million at the closely held company. “We see a lot of new faces we haven’t seen before,” Ms. Porter says. “People are feeling poorer right now.” . . .
Surplus stores mainly draw middle- and lower-income shoppers, and many accept food stamps. They also attract people who just like to find good deals.
Take Joanna Stein, a 54-year-old retiree. On a February afternoon, she drove about 12 miles from her home in Exton, Pa., to an Amelia’s in Coatesville, hunting for bargains. Among her finds: four bottles of organic balsamic vinaigrette made by Kraft, all for $1. The bottles had a best-if-used-by date of Dec. 21.
Ms. Stein used to work in the food industry and says that products generally taste fine well beyond such dates. . . . Ms. Stein says she likes shopping at stores like Amelia’s because “you never know what you’re going to get.” . . . The chain is an authorized dealer for such food giants as Kraft, Kellogg Co. and Tyson Foods Inc. The stores also carry store brands made for retailers in other regions of the country. Amelia’s, for example, carries ice-cream bars made for Publix, a chain in the Southeast.
Shopping in salvage stores can carry risks. In 1999, Alabama’s agriculture commissioner found persistent problems with outdated baby food and formula sold at some salvage stores.
Shelley Hoober, a 56-year-old shopper at the Leola, Pa., SharpShopper, says she exercises caution when selecting products, noting that she bought a box of surplus cereal that turned out to be infested with bugs. “You have to really watch the dates,” she says. . . .
[On the other hand,] “It’s like Christmas every time,” says Leanne Silber, owner of Discount Food & More, a small . . . store in Pownal, Vt. . . .
Ms. Silber says her store is attracting more residents of her town of 3,400 since food prices surged. “I think people are becoming less worried about a crushed box and more about their bottom line,” she says.

With our abysmal economy in Michigan, the time is ripe for these stores here in the Detroit area. And sadly, the time is right for the rest of the country, too.
The TJMaxx of food.

By Debbie Schlussel
This story disgusts me to no end. Sadly it was hidden at the back of the local section of today’s Detroit Free Press, where few will see it.
It should be front page news all over the country that two American women who’ve had great lives are traveling to Switzerland to testify before a United Nations commission on racism that America is racist. Everyone should feel the contempt that I feel for these two ungrateful hags who are planning to dispute the Bush report submitted to the United Nations’ Commitee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. They’re going to tell representatives of Commie Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua (the same Nicaragua, where Ortega’s Sandinistas set fire to the Managua Synagogue, then seized it for a Palestinian youth club; the same Nicaragua where there is now a heavy Iranian presence that he’s welcomed) that America is racist?! Sickening.

The Anti-American Givens Twin Bitches
The women say that America discriminates against American Indians and Arabs and Muslims. American Indian tribes have millions. Much of it is misspent by corrupt tribal and reservation authorities. Remember how Jack Abramoff got his millions, which he laundered through the pan-Islamist Grover Norquist? It came from Indian Tribes. Hello . . . ?
Arabs and Muslims are among the highest income groups in America; despite open support for terrorism, their most radical leaders are regularly invited to the White House for Presidential Falafel; they have a special department of the Justice Department Office of Civil Rights just for them, while I can’t get the DoJ to prosecute Hezbollah death threats against me.
This story about twin traitors, who have it way too good, will nauseate you, as it does me:

As Fay Givens and Kay Givens McGowan packed their suitcases this week, the twins looked like any other business travelers setting off for Detroit Metro Airport. But the richly beaded and woven colors of the vests they wore belied the true purpose of their trip.
The Downriver sisters, who are part Cherokee and Choctaw, arrived in Switzerland this week where they are to address the United Nations’ Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. As representatives of the National Indian Youth Council, the pair plans to dispute a U.S. report about prejudice in the United States declining.
“Let’s start with equality. Let’s start with when you have power and prejudice combined, it often results in racism. We can talk about equality, but we have to make it real. … It’s time to end the lip service,” McGowan said. “We have institutionalized racism in this country” that must end.
At the committee’s three-week session in Geneva, government representatives from Fiji, Italy, the United States, Belgium, Nicaragua, Moldova and the Dominican Republic will present reports about their antidiscrimination initiatives, as the 1969 International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination requires.
UN-recognized organizations such as the National Indian Youth Council will be allowed to give their own analyses of particular countries’ efforts.
The sisters were scheduled to speak Thursday and today.
“Indians are at the bottom of every social-economic indicator in America — lowest education attainment, highest poverty rate, highest high school dropouts, a suicide rate four times the national indicator,” McGowan said.
McGowan of Grosse Ile [DS: Grosse Ile is an exclusive island city on the Detroit River, with several multi-million dollar homes] is a cultural anthropologist and a professor at Marygrove College in Detroit. Givens of Trenton serves as executive director of American Indian Services, a Lincoln Park social services agency.
“The United States will be saying one thing under the Bush administration,” McGowan said. “It’s a shadow report on all racial discrimination — racial profiling, health care disparity … the treatment of Arabs and Muslims in this country.”

Hmmm . . . America is so racist that this pair of hags lives the good life, travels the world, and chooses to stay in this country. Just one thing to say to this twin pair of walking treason:
Go To Hell, Bitches. Oh, and leave “racist” America. Please.
As my friend, Sirius Patriot Channel 144’s Mike Church (on whose show I do movie reviews every Friday at 10:30 a.m. ET) said, “Maybe they’re speechwriters for Michelle Obama.”

By Debbie Schlussel
Both of these sinister-looking individuals have admitted to spying in America.
One is a coach in a private sport. The other was a CIA and FBI agent in our government with the highest security clearance.
One spied for his team to win in private competitions between millionaires owned by billionaires, involving men in colorful outfits and tight, short pants who throw and catch an oblong ball covered in (synthetic) pigskin. Not a single person has ever been murdered by the organization on whose behalf he was spying.
The other spied on behalf of an Islamic terrorist group that has killed more Americans than any other terrorist group, save Al-Qaeda. (Oh, and that group is willing to kill if you put pigskin anywhere near it).

Nada Nadim Prouty:
Spied on FBI/CIA on Behalf of Hezbollah Terrorist Group

Bill Belichick:
Spied on NFL Teams on Behalf of New England Patriots Terrorist Group
Guess which of these SpyGates is the subject of an extensive, ongoing investigation by at least one U.S. Senator?
Guess which one of these SpyGates has not been investigated by any member of Congress or the U.S. Senate?
This is your brain. This is your brain in the United States Government. Any questions?

By Debbie Schlussel
**** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE ***
Mazel Tov [Congrats], America. Hollywood is finally giving us true terrorists who are unsympathetic. Hollywood is finally giving us good guys who are good and bad guys who are Islamic terrorists without an excuse or any redeeming value.
In “Vantage Point,” out Friday, the terrorists are Islamic, and they are evil, cold-blooded killers. I like (almost) any movie that stars the sexy and talented Dennis Quaid (except the two he did with global warming and counter-counter-terrorist agendas), but this movie has the complete package. Finally, Hollywood is giving us “truth-in-terrorism.” And it’s an exciting thriller.

That’s Hot
Boy was I ever wrong about “Vantage Point.” And boy am I glad I was. As readers will recall, I wrote on this site that the trailer for this movie made it look like this was, yet again, another movie in which Muslims were not actually the terrorists, but good and victimized people mistaken for terrorists–yet another movie in which the Westerners are the bad guys.
But it was the exact opposite. The President (William Hurt) and the U.S. Secret Service Agent (Quaid) who is the hero in this movie are, without reservation, the good guys. The terrorists are Muslim and they are the bad guys. There is nothing presented in this movie to justify the mass carnage they produce.
FINALLY.
While the presentation that the terrorists are Muslim is somewhat subtle (the hotel locker of a homicide bomber is opened to show us his wife in a hijab–CAIR will love that!) and we are told at the beginning that they are a Moroccan terrorist group, it’s quite obvious who they are. And the head terrorist is played by a real-life Arab Muslim.
The plot: The President is in Spain with world leaders at a counterterrorism summit. They are there to announce a new initiative against terrorism. The President’s veteran Secret Service agent (Dennis Quaid) who took two bullets for him and saved his life, is finally rehabilitated and returns to the President’s Protective Detail for the first time. He is a little unsure.
He sees what he thinks is a man in a window at the event where he is guarding the President. Suddenly, the President is shot. But who did it? That depends on your vantage point. We watch as Secret Service agents led by Quaid chase after suspects and watch video through exciting chases and action.
There are a lot of cool twists in this movie, which I can’t disclose because I don’t want to spoil it. But lets just say this, I wrote a column against the Arab Secret Service agent who caused problems on a plane just after 9/11. He’d been picked through Bush’s “Islam is Peace” affirmative action program to serve on his detail. I warned about that. That’s not what happens in this film. But after you see the movie, you will know what I’m talking about, and why it’s a concern.
At first, you will probably find “Vantage Point” annoying. We see the exact same several minutes played over and over several times from the vantage point of each of the characters. That part is like “Groundhog Day,” and it’s really annoying. People at the screening heard me ask, “Where’s Bill Murray?” and laughed. Yes, at first, this movie is slow and boring and seems repetitive. But it quickly picks up and turns into a great movie after all. Definitely worth seeing. I liked it a lot.
This is vintage Quaid. He is hot, sharp, and heroic in this flick–although there is a chase scene that is kind of unbelievable. And it’s hard to see anyone–let alone a guy in his fifties–withstand so many bombings and crashes and still walk away so easily.
But I like Quaid. He’s a great actor, and somewhat of a relative conservative in Hollywood. The native Texan told USA Today that he’s torn between voting for John McCain and Barack Hussein Obama (while most of Hollywood is solidly pro-Obama). And in 2003, in an appearance on “The View,” he defended Augusta National’s all-male membership against Martha Burk’s protests. I’ve met him (my friend Tom is the drummer for his band, “Dennis Quaid & The Sharks), and he’s a great singer, piano player, songwriter, avid golfer, and a nice guy (if a bit on the manorexically-thin side).
Definitely go see this heart-pounding thriller. It’s good. Here’s the trailer:

**** UPDATE: The one really inaccurate part of this movie is at the beginning, in which the producer of GNN (the CNN proxy in this movie) news coverage of the counterterrorism conference gets mad, when her reporter tries to insert leftist spin about those who hate America and why we deserve terrorist attacks. Like they ever get upset about that!–as we know, they encourage it. In this movie, the producer censors it out. Yeah, right.