Schadenfreude.

UPDATE: My goodness, Rather is whining that Dick Thornburgh, Bush 41’s Attorney General about 13 years before the discredited report aired, had it in for him in the investigation CBS commissioned. Apparently Gunga Dan is capable of being objective, but no one else is.

UPDATE 2: Michelle Malkin, as would be expected, has a refresher with “top 10 news-gathering and news-vetting failures identified by the (CBS investigative) panel.”

Maggie Thurber of Thurber’s Thoughts is on from 6-7 PM tonight on WSPD in Toledo (link is to “Listen Live” page; to listen, click where it says to click).

The Toledo area’s Food Stamp Challenge, which remains set at $21 per person per week despite that number having been debunked almost five months ago by Mona Charen and yours truly, and repeatedly since then, is the topic of discussion. The WTVG story (currently the fifth story at the link) says:

Toledo area ministries want to highlight the eating reality for families on food stamps through an interesting challenge. Today, “Feed Your Neighbor” leaders challenged Lucas County commissioners to only spend up to $21 each on food for one week. Commissioners and staff should also try to buy a meal from the “Feed Your Neighbor” pantry. Commissioners have to report on their experiences at their regular meeting next Tuesday.

Lisa Renee at Glass City Jungle has the Commissioners’ release.

For easy reference, Maggie, here’s the table I have been using to make my points for months, followed by a picture from the USDA web site, where the monthly numbers came from:

Good luck; I’ll be listening in.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the Colorado couple who proved that 2 people can live on even the artificially low $21 per person per week.

UPDATE 2: Maggie has done a tremendous job of tracing it all back to the Food Research and Action Center, the organization that initiated the bogus Food Stamp Challenge and has been working to spread it nationwide.

UPDATE 3: At least one of WSPD’s local radio talkers is taking a one-week Food Stamp Challenge — and he intends to succeed.

UPDATE 4, Sept. 20: Maggie’s post this morning connects the dots from the Challenge’s sponsor, to the “progressive” PR firm, to the Toledo-area social-service beneficiaries of the Food Stamp Outreach Program, to ignorant or deceitful politicians, to the local stenographers pretending to be reporters.

The Check ‘n Go situation in DC, updated today at the Enquirer, has a local angle that NixGuy has been following (here and here, with much more at his site).

John Rabenold, a lobbyist for Check ‘n Go (CNG), is running for Representative in Ohio’s 35th District as an alleged (cough, cough, blech, retch) Republican. He has raised a substantial portion of his overstuffed campaign war chest from the payday lending industry.

Mr. Rabenold works in a shady industry that (what a surprise) attracts shady people (paragraphs are in different order than in the original article). See if you can find the interesting admission in the excerpt:

In a news release, the company (Check ‘n Go) accused (the company’s former director of operations for the District of Columbia Michael) Donovan and two other former employees who also spoke at the news conference (last week) of conspiring with the Center for Responsible Lending to tarnish the company and the payday loan industry.

Check ‘n Go claims in its lawsuit that Donovan stole confidential business information about the company in violation of an agreement he signed not to disclose such information. The lawsuit also claims Donovan misled the company into hiring him by using a false Social Security number and lying about his criminal history.

The company is seeking unspecified damages from Donovan.

The news conference that Donovan spoke at was in support of legislation before the District of Columbia City Council that would cap payday-loan interest at 24 percent a year, the same rate charged by banks and credit unions. The council approved the cap Tuesday.

“The average Check ‘n Go customer in the District (of Columbia) is continuously in debt to the company for at least a year, and it’s not uncommon to see customers trapped for several years,” Donovan said last week. “The repeat borrower is vital to our business model.

The admission is that by asserting that Donovan supplied a false SSN, CNG didn’t successfully verify Mr. Donavan’s Social Security Number before hiring him. I’ll leave it to readers to come up with reasons why and related implications.

The danger that Mr. Rabenold’s primary “interest” as State Representative will be protecting his industry from meaningful regulation of its usurious practices should be evident to anyone. It’s a risk the voters of the District should not be taking — regardless of the possible appeal of his other issue positions. Even if he abstains from relevant votes, as promised in his meeting with an SOB screening committee a month ago, his years as an aide and as a lobbyist will give him insider influence on others’ votes that he doesn’t deserve.

As to Rabenold’s issue positions, I think the most telling point made by Matt about the screening interview was this:

Mr. Rabenold appears not to have given ….. a whole lot of thought in to what he’d like to accomplish if he won the election.

My take: The lack of thought is likely related to his payday lending industry-driven agenda. Apparently, little else is important.

Mr. Rabenold’s opponent, Eric Minamyer, on the other hand, has a blowaway bio. This is what what I said in June 2005 when I attended a Second Congressional District debate (Minamyer finished fifth in a field of 10, in a race ultimately won by Jean Schmidt):

(Minamyer) Read off a no-brag, just-fact resume of solid accomplishment that made you want to crawl under the chair (pew in this case) and wonder what you’ve been doing all your life: A non-professional elected politician for 16 years (now 18 — Ed.); 33 years in the Navy or Naval Reserve; served in Gulf War I, Afghanistan, OIF, with two near-death experiences; Inspector General; Hamilton County Deputy Sheriff; Lawyer.

Oh, by the way, Minamyer is solid on common-sense conservative issues, is prolife and pro-traditional marriage (but I’m being redundant). When he’s “on,” he is a very compelling speaker; I rated him second-best in the group of 11 candidates at the bipartisan June 2005 forum mentioned earlier (I gave the top rating to Tom Brinkman and third place to Jean Schmidt).

So, let’s see:
- Eric Minamyer, three-war vet — versus John Rabenold, payday lender.
- Minamyer, the longtime public servant — versus Rabenold, the lobbyist.
- Minamyer, with an agenda for improvement — versus “not a whole lot of thought” Rabenold.

Mr. Check ‘n Go needs to be Check ‘n Gone.

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UPDATE: Among the things Nix has to say today –

Oh now this makes me feel MUCH better about the payday lending industry. Not only do they rip people off, they hire convicts without so much as a background check! Nice.

With any luck, Donovan can get some decent legal representation, these guys do not want to go to the discovery stage of a lawsuit.

Interestingly enough Mr. Rabenold is not defending his company anymore. Did he lose his job as corporate spokesman?

UPDATE 2: Mr. Rabenold’s breezy assertion that he will abstain from votes relating to the business he works for has troubling implications that need to be thought through.

A representative’s conflicts of interest should be very rare, not frequent. Rabenold is in effect telling 35th District voters that they will have no say in the Statehouse on any matter relating to financial services industry regulation. After all, Mr. Rabenold, who has said that he will continue to be a CNG executive but will no longer be a lobbyist(!), should recuse himself from matters relating to his bank and credit union competitors. At the extreme, if matters relating to financial-industry regulation are folded into the state’s biennial budget, it seems that Mr. Rabenold would be compelled to abstain from that too. In fact, anyone favoring a bill subject to a close vote will put something relating to financial services into his or her bill if they think Rabenold will oppose it, to prevent him from voting.

All of this has the potential to leave a 35th District “represented” by Mr. Rabenold with little or no meaningful voting representation. So what am I missing?

UPDATE 3: Nix updates with a great riposte to a comment defending CNG.

Yesterday (first item at link), I suggested that Don Luskin was right in hoping that the Fed would limit its rate cut to 1/4 of a point. Despite the stock-market surge, I believe that in the long run we would have been better off with that instead of the half-point reduction that occurred. The likelihood that inflation will rise to unacceptable levels has increased.

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A “History” Teacher Asks 14 Year-Olds to Renounce Their Citizenship (HT NewsBusters) — Someone really ought to check up on “teacher” and “Citizen of the World” Mike Brooks of Chico, California, “teacher” in question, votes in the next election. He should be waiting for the next “World” elections to cast his ballot.

The Return of the Conservatives “Reasons to Homeschool” counter is running at full throttle.

Warner Todd Houston at NewsBusters wonders if this story will get wider coverage. The Associated Press “covered” the Jay Bennish story in March of last year by portraying an indoctrinating teacher as a victim, so who reports on the story, if anyone, will matter.

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As yet another Haditha Marine has murder charges against him dropped, Pennsylvania congressman John Murtha cuts and runs into an elevator (HT Michelle Malkin) to avoid answering a question about whether he will ever apologize to those he preemptively smeared (see YouTube vid for the “in cold blood” characterization, and a reference to a previous statement(s) to that effect by Murtha).

Even if one Marine ends up guilty of something, that won’t change the fact that John “Is the trial over?” Murtha (Update — irony caught in the comment below by Large Bill) smeared everyone accused — including those who were ultimately not charged.

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Your chance to buy Belgium has passed.

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Thank you, Michael Medved:

Few opinions I’ve expressed on air have produced a more indignant, outraged reaction than my repeated insistence that the word “genocide” in no way fits as a description of the treatment of Native Americans by British colonists or, later, American settlers.

But none of the warfare (including an Indian attack in 1675 that succeeded in butchering a full one-fourth of the white population of Connecticut, and claimed additional thousands of casualties throughout New England) on either side amounted to genocide. Colonial and, later, the American government, never endorsed or practiced a policy of Indian extermination; rather, the official leaders of white society tried to restrain some of their settlers and militias and paramilitary groups from unnecessary conflict and brutality.

….. Moreover, the real decimation of Indian populations had nothing to do with massacres or military actions, but rather stemmed from infectious diseases that white settlers brought with them at the time they first arrived in the New World.

….. Obviously, the decimation of native population by European germs represents an enormous tragedy, but in no sense does it represent a crime.

The notion that unique viciousness to Native Americans represents our “original sin” fails to put European contact with these struggling Stone Age societies in any context whatever, and only serves the purposes of those who want to foster inappropriate guilt, uncertainty and shame in young Americans.

Read, and save, the whole thing.

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Thank you, Catholic Church:

The Catholic Church has released a new policy document saying physicians have an obligation to provide comatose patients with food and water. The policy has a bearing on patients like Terri Schiavo, who was killed when courts granted her former husband the right to revoke her food and water.

….. The CDF (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) response, approved by Pope Benedict XVI, says providing food and water is “an ordinary and proportionate means of preserving life,” and, as a result, “obligatory” in most circumstances.

Terri Schiavo’s family is pleased. The pronouncement serves as a stinging rebuke to US prelates who were silent when it counted.

From Northamptonshire, UK:

Published Date: 14 September 2007

The last time ex-military paramedic John Hamilton saw his comrade Jack Booth, he was holding him down to stop him lashing out in pain while his legs were sawn off in a life-or-death operation.

Having assisted with dozens of similar procedures under appalling conditions in the jungle camp’s makeshift hospital in Thailand, he thought no more about his patient.

That was until this week, when the 90-year-old from Northamptonshire received an unexpected phone call during a two-week respite break in Blackpool.

Mr Hamilton said: “I picked up the phone and a voice said: ‘You’re the bugger who chopped my legs off. I’ve been trying to find you for years.’

“I didn’t know quite how to react but it’s fair to say I was gobsmacked.

“I hadn’t a clue who this man was but he certainly remembered me.”

Mr Booth would never forget the day in 1943 when he was offered a stark choice after one of his legs became severely infected with a bamboo thorn wound and the other with an insect bite.

He was forced to endure the agony of the double amputation just to survive.

The 89-year-old is now a resident at the same British Limbless Ex-Service Men’s Association (Blesma) home where Mr Hamilton went to stay two weeks ago while his wife, Sheila, was in hospital.

Once Blesma staff heard of the amazing co-incidence, they arranged for the two veterans to get in touch and the pair agreed to meet on Tuesday.

Go here for the rest of the story.