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(Photo from The Swamp)

GOP chairman Michael Steele was a guest on CNN’s “D.L. Hughley Breaks the News” last night. Here’s the takeaway:

• Steele does an admirable job for most of the interview. He made most of his points to a skeptical audience without watering down the message.
• However, he completely drops the ball by failing to challenge Hughley and Chuck D on some of their more hateful comments – comparing the GOP Convention to Nazi Germany and generally mocking Rush Limbaugh. It was cringe-inducing:

I think Steele was simply trying to sidestep the most incendiary comments, choosing to focus on his talking points – he set the agenda and controlled the interview to a large extent. In that respect, he did a solid job (watch the entire interview below for some perspective). But in the end, the only thing the MSM will take away are the two clips above and Steele should have known that.

The Whole Interview:

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If there was an Academy Award for Coolness, 79-year old Clint Eastwood would’ve won hands down. Then again, if the Academy Awards had any credibility left, Gran Torino would have been nominated for Best Picture.

From Yahoo India (Editor’s Note: We are really outsourcing EVERYTHING these days, huh?):

The Dirty Harry star insists that he should be able to tell harmless jokes about nationality without fearing that people may brand him “a racist”.

“I find that ridiculous. In those earlier days every friendly clique had a ‘Sam the Jew’ or ‘Jose the Mexican’ – but we didn’t think anything of it or have a racist thought. It was just normal that we made jokes based on our nationality or ethnicity. That was never a problem. I don’t want to be politically correct.

The only thing that would’ve made this better is if Eastwood then told a joke about a pissed off, old guy. But hey, this is a start.

A PopCON reader sent this in… It is a flyer from a Jamba Juice location in Manhattan. I’m not sure what it means, but it looks scary.

Praise Obama!

Express clothing stores are carrying the latest fashionista knockoff of the kaffiyeh. Behold:

From Wikipedia: “Traditionally worn by Palestinian peasants, the keffiyeh became a symbol of Palestinian nationalism during the Arab Revolt of the 1930s. Its prominence increased in the 1960 with the beginning of the Palestinian resistance movement and its adoption by Arafat.”

Granted, the pattern on the Lurex Plaid Square Scarf doesn’t quite match the kaffiyeh’s traditional patterns, but it is similar to the infamous “Anti-War Woven Scarf” that was once peddled by Urban Outfitters:

kaffiyeh

"At Express, we are innovators. We find inspiration and trends from all over the world and interpret them in a way that is uniquely Express." - Michael Weiss, CEO/President

"It fits perfectly! Now, let us go to Hot Topic. Maybe they have bomb belts."

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(Source: Drudge Report)

Yahoo (via AP) is reporting that $238 million in Porkulus money will be used to retrain newspaper employees to master the Interwebs:

“Journalists will likely study new ways of telling stories and new ways of delivering content, and perhaps get some training in using software.

Ad sales people will look at different ways to connect consumers with advertisers, treating the Internet as a one-on-one medium rather than one serving a mass audience, as is the case in print.

Rob Karwath, executive editor of the News Tribune, said he hopes the grant will help his newspaper come up with new products that deliver news and advertising to readers and methods to get more feedback from customers.”

In other words, newspapers aren’t economically sustainable and now we are subsidizing them.

Source: Big Hollywood Blog

National Review has published a list of the 25 best conservative movies over the past 25 years. It’s an interesting list, but I would include Idiocracy on there and I’d certainly bump Gran Torino, Team America and Red Dawn into the Top 10.

Read The Best Conservative Movies on National Review

Forget Madoff and Stanford. Forget GM, bailouts and Porkulus bills. This takes the cake:

“The NYT is reporting that Citibank wired 27 million dollars to various accounts from around the world from an account owned by the National Bank of Nigeria. The money was wired based on bogus wiring instructions sent to Citibank as part of an elaborate scheme by a Nigerian citizen living in Sinapore, according to the article.” (Source: SECLaw.com)

If this is true – and it could very well be the ultimate comedic con job by The Onion, SNL, etc. – it is just amazing. AMAZING!

If you aren’t familiar with Nigerian “419″ scams, you can read more about them at 419.com and Wikipedia.

More here: CitiBank Gets Caught in Nigerian Scam

This is from IUSB Vision Weblog. The videos speak for themselves. Watch the first video and then skip to 2:40 in the second video for a primer. Then visit IUSB for more details:

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It’s not often that a network with the letters “NBC” gets it right. I’m waiting for Chris Matthews to distance himself from this unsanctioned patriotism: