Michelle Obama strikes again:

“The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.”

(via Glenn Reynolds, who refers to this as “Obamanomics.”)

You can’t make this stuff up. Really:

Possible Nazi Theme of Grand Prix Boss’s Orgy Draws Calls to Quit

Few scandals in recent years have provoked as much anger and dismay across Europe as the saga of Max Mosley, the overseer of grand prix motor racing who made tabloid news last weekend in a front-page exposé and accompanying Web video showing him in a sadomasochistic orgy with five supposed prostitutes in a London sex “dungeon.”

But beyond the licentiousness of the episode, it was the suggestion of Nazi undertones in the role-playing during the session in a basement in London’s fashionable Chelsea district that led to demands for Mr. Mosley’s resignation as president of the Paris-based Federation Internationale de l’Automobile.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, they say, and they would be right [e.a.]: 

Family history has added to the notoriety: Mr. Mosley, 67, is the younger son of Britain’s 1930s fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, and the society beauty Diana Mitford, whose secret wedding in Berlin in October 1936 was held at the home of the Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels and included Hitler as a guest of honor.

 Naturally, automakers are distancing themselves from this nasty episode and this nasty man. But he isn’t having any of it [e.a.]:

Mr. Mosley, undaunted, tried to turn the tables on BMW and Daimler Benz, which manufactures Mercedes-Benz cars, with a statement that raised the specter of the two companies’ own role during the Nazi era. … His statement held to his insistence that fault lay with the way in which his actions had been reported by The News of The World, and not with the actions themselves.

And the NYT’s John F. Burns ends with the kicker:

If he recognized the irony in the son of the man who led Britain’s “blackshirts” in reproving German companies for their wartime past, Mr. Mosley did not show it.

Perhaps those commentators were right after all when they said that 9/11 signaled the end of irony.

Or perhaps 9/11 will prove to be the beginning of an era when people will once again understand irony, and satire, the weapon of resistance par excellence. One can always hope.

Every society has its status symbols. In HezbollahLand, anyone associated with martyrdom is in like Flynn:

The mother [whose son was killed in a 1988 Hezbollah operation] explained that she now has a special status among the people who now show her more respect. She is also looked after by the party and is frequently invited to visit religious sites in Syria or Iran. She repeatedly says that “a female Hezbollah official” frequently takes her by the hand when she attends a function and lets her sit-in the front row. She added, “Do not believe that the mother of a martyr is unhappy. She may cry sometimes but she is happy.” The father then turns to me and says, “Do not forget that we gain a lot of support. The Martyr’s Institution covers all our medical, housing, and school expenses.”

Bribery, corruption, intimidation, preying on the weak and needy, exploiting the religious beliefs of simple people, feeding on their anxieties and fears—that is how “charitable” organizations like Hezbollah operate: they’re mini-totalitarian societies. You give what you have—your sons’ lives—to the cause. In return, the party takes care of you and your entire clan for life.

Who’s afraid of big, bad Fox? Garance Francke-Ruta at TAPPED, that’s who. She dimwittedly believed (with the encouragement of Moveon.org) that John Edwards was actually going to take a moral stand against Fox News and shot from the lip and heaped praise on him before actually doing any reporting … or even thinking about it. Excuse me while I laugh myself silly:

A BOLD MOVE. John Edwards is the first Democratic presidential candidate to pull out of the Fox News sponsored Democratic presidential primary debate scheduled to take place in Nevada later this year, and kudos to him for doing so. None of the Democrats will get a fair hearing on that channel as it currently exists, and freezing Fox out of the loop early is a good way to make a play for fairer coverage later in the campaign season, as well as for fair treatment of the eventual nominee. Fox is biased, but it’s still enough of a news organization that a lack of access will sting mightily and could lead to newsroom reforms.

Oops! A few hours later, she realized the, um, error in her, um, judgment:

A POTENTIALLY AWKWARD MOVE. I’d like to revise and extend my remarks on John Edwards and the Nevada Fox News debate, as I’ve just received new information that casts Edwards’ decision in a rather different light.

That “new information”? Why, it’s that the

Congressional Black Caucus [CBC] Political Education and Leadership Institute plans to announce two debates in concert with Fox News,

and that the CBC has previously worked with Fox News, in 2003.

So I guess Fox News is okay now. ‘Cause the it’s okay with the CBC. And we don’t want any “intra-party” fighting now, do we?