† All The News That’s Fart To Print: French dogs apparently can’t be curbed, and their owners apparently can’t be bothered to pick up their pup’s poop so the government of Toulouse - which spends a third of its sanitation budget to pay 100 sanitation workers to scoop the stuff up – has teamed up with fertilizer producer Agronutrition SAS on research aimed at getting dogs to do their business in designated areas, Bloomberg News reports:

France has 8.8 million dogs, according to the Societe de Protection des Animaux. At an average of 22 pounds a year each, they produce about 194 million pounds of stools, some in public spaces, costing the country millions to clean up, according to Toulouse Deputy Mayor Jean-Michel Fabre. …

As Fabre tells it, Toulouse’s scatological action plan to clean up the mess and turn squalor into dollars began when he in 2009 created France’s first “Office of Tranquility.” The city’s official grievance bureau in its first two years received more than 600,000 calls.

“The majority of the people complained about dog merde,” Fabre says. “We have seven dog parks, but the dogs refused to use them.” …

“Everyone was looking in the wrong direction for an answer,” says Fabre, who began his veterinary career working with goats in Africa. “It’s not the dog owner who chooses the place his dog will poop. It’s the dog who makes the decision and it required a lot of deep thought and analysis to get the dog owners of Toulouse to realize it.”

[Agronutrition microbiologist Hicham] Ferhout says the initial tests getting 34 female beagles to poop as directed were 100 percent successful and that field experiments at seven sites throughout Toulouse are scheduled to begin this fall.

“The attractor is a mélange of dog feces, urine and sex pheromones,” Ferhout says of the product that comes in easy-to- scatter pellets or in a colorless aerosol spray.

If the product works, dog poop would be easier to collect and “detox” with a type of fungus called endomycorrhiza and then turned into fertilizer or energy. At least that’s the plan.

† Updates To Previous Posts (Every Bubble Bursts Eventually): Another example of the Obama administration's "progress," is backing off cuts to Medicare Advantage private insurance plans that covers millions of seniors who are concentrated in “politically contested states, including Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada, Minnesota and Colorado,” The Associated Press reports:

In a policy shift critics see as political, the Health and Human Services department has decided to award quality bonuses to hundreds of Medicare Advantage plans rated merely average.

The $6.7 billion infusion could head off service cuts that would have been a headache for Obama and Democrats in next year's elections for the White House and Congress. More than half the roughly 11 million Medicare Advantage enrollees are in plans rated average. …

The shift "may represent a thinly veiled use of taxpayer dollars for political purposes," wrote Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan. Camp chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees Medicare. Hatch is his counterpart as ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee.

Seniors are among the deepest skeptics of the new health care law. A recent AP-GfK poll found that 62 percent disapprove of Obama's handling of health care, as contrasted with 52 percent approval among Americans overall. The poll also found that seniors are more likely to trust Republicans than Democrats on health.

† Updates To Previous Posts (penultimate item, Is Obama’s Birth Certificate Fake?): Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) vetoed a bill that would require presidential candidates to present a birth certificate to get on the ballot in the state:

I never imagined being presented with a bill that could require candidates for President of the greatest and most powerful nation on earth to submit their ‘early baptismal or circumcision certificates’… this is a bridge too far. This measure creates significant new problems while failing to do anything constructive for Arizona.

Meanwhile, according to his press secretary, Kyle Plotkin, Gov. Governor Bobby Jindal (R-LA) would be willing to sign a state House bill that requires candidates for federal office to file an affidavit confirming their U.S. citizenship along with an “original or certified copy” of their birth certificate.

† Updates To Previous Posts (Hunting Hokies): Gov. Brewer also refused to sign a bill that would have made AZ the second state after UT to allow guns on college campuses because it was "so poorly written" and failure to define "public rights of way" and the inclusion of state schools, where firearms are prohibited by federal and state laws, Reuters reports.

† Updates To Previous Posts (seventh item, Does The U.S. Need An Election Monitor?): Ahead of challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg by 7,316 votes out of 1.5 million cast, incumbent WI  Supreme Court Justice David Prosser doesn’t think a recount is necessary and will waste taxpayer funds. But tell that to Kloppenburg, who has asked for a statewide recount – overburdened taxpayers be damned.

† Updates To Previous Posts ((Islamo)Fascist Fashionistas): Noting that “Vogue Paris raised eyebrows with a recent issue that featured the burqa in an Arabian-style editorial shoot” and “a slew of prominent celebrity designers … have reinterpreted the abaya (an Islamic cloak) and the burqa for their recent runway shows,” FOX News wonders: “is turning these conservative Islamic garments into a fashion statement a novel idea or simply tasteless?”:

Los Angeles-based fashion business expert, Anne Riley-Katz, said that using Islamic dress in the glitzy world of the fashion/entertainment arena could be viewed in either a positive or negative light.

“It’s risky in the regard that it might be construed as offensive -- both in terms of trivializing traditional Islamic dress and may be seen by Westerners as glamorizing what is considered the oppression of women in Islamic culture,” she said. “The flip side of that is that some, perhaps designers themselves, might see it as an attempt to integrate elements of Islamic culture into the Western view; a visual way of melding cultures and generating acceptance.” …

Indeed, the Paris Vogue editorial features lanky models with each of their faces covered by a stylized burqa, yet they’re wearing high heels, tiny skirts and hot pants. …

But at least here in the U.S., fashion experts are doubtful that local boutiques will start selling such “accessories” as the burqa for women’s day-to-day wear.

“I doubt that the burqa would really find its way to the average western woman, whether it be Main Street, Idaho, or the designer boutiques of Fifth Ave. or Rodeo Drive,” celebrity stylist Phillip Bloch tells us. “The use of the burqa on runways and for fashion sense is merely to incite, to intrigue and to evoke a sense of mystery.”

As The Stiletto previously observed, fashion designers have dipped into this well more than once over the years, and none of the sources quoted in the article claimed that this is a “novel” idea.

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item, Now Is Not The Time To Talk About Race): Marilyn Davenport, an elected member of the Orange County Republican Central Committee, apologized for an E-mail she had sent out that included a photo depicting President Barack Hussein Obama and his parents as chimpanzees bearing the caption, "Now you know why no birth certificate," The Associated Press reports:

"To my fellow Americans and to everyone else who has seen this email I forwarded and was offended by my action, I humbly apologize and ask for your forgiveness of my unwise behavior. I say unwise because at the time I received and forwarded the email, I didn't stop to think about the historic implications and other examples of how this could be offensive," Davenport's apology read.

"I am an imperfect Christian lady who tries her best to live a Christ-like honoring life. I would never do anything to intentionally harm or berate others regardless of ethnicity. Everyone who knows me knows that to be true."

Davenport, who was not present at the meeting, represents the 72nd Assembly District in Orange County on the committee, which is made up of volunteer officials elected for two-year terms. The group is tasked with fundraising, campaigning and debating policy for the Republican Party.

The county's GOP chairman, Scott Baugh, told about 75 GOP members that despite Davenport's "sincere apology," he still condemned her actions and believed she should resign because her presence on the committee would remain controversial and provide a distraction.

One of Davenport’s colleagues, Tim Whitacre, said that the 74-year-old "petite grandmother” who has a heart condition, was terrified by the angry calls to her home and is “hunkered down at home, scared, afraid for her safety."

Meanwhile in his defense of Davenport “Dilbert” cartoonist Scott Adams points to all the images depicting President George Bush as a monkey:

If your only context is what the Internet says about this story, you assume it’s a typical racist act by a Republican who is already guilty by association. But if I add the context that Googling “George Bush monkey” gives you over 3 million hits, and most of them are jokes where President Bush’s face is transposed on a monkey, you see what’s really going on. Democrats and advocates of civil rights are using the media to further an agenda at the expense of a woman who was probably so non-racist that the photo in question didn’t set off her alarms as being a career-ending risk.

Unfortunately, Mediaite reporter Tommy Christopher is completely ignorant of the history of ant-Irish bigotry in this country, else he could not have written this:

Here’s the thing. President Bush was a white dude, so calling him a chimp, while not very nice, doesn’t evoke dehumanizing racial stereotypes that have historically fueled murder, rape, and enslavement. President Obama is a black man, so picturing him as a chimpanzee does evoke dehumanizing racial stereotypes that have historically fueled murder, rape, and enslavement. Scott Adams can Google President Bush until Dilbert’s tie straightens out, and he’s never going to find a legitimate analog to this insult.

Bush is a white dude who had Irish forebears, and the “legitimate analog” that Christopher seeks is that the Irish were routinely depicted as monkeys in newspaper and magazine cartoons - and one cartoon even depicted an Irish man and a black man as being equivalent. Here's the thing. At one time, the Irish weren’t considered white, and they weren’t even considered fully human. Christopher should Google the cartoons of Thomas Nast and his contemporaries and educate himself. Oh, and Christopher owes Adams an apology.

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, The TSA Emperor Wears No Clothes: Part II): New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd describes the "gate-rape" of a family member:

One of my relatives, a distinguished federal official, recently sent a letter of complaint to the T.S.A. about her experience submitting to a body search at Washington’s Reagan airport after the scanner reflected the shadow of the ostomy bag she wears on her abdomen.

Fearing that would happen, she had printed out the notification card on the T.S.A. Web site, as she wrote, “so as to discreetly inform the T.S.A. agent of my medical condition. The agent would not even look at the card. ... The screening agent then did a hand search of my groin, breasts, under the waistband of my slacks and around my ostomy bag. ... Does having an ileostomy now make you a terrorist suspect?”

She has been rethinking how long she wants to work for the government in a job that requires a lot of air travel and says she would consider joining a class-action lawsuit against the T.S.A.

† Updates To Previous Posts (seventh item, Rearranging The Deck Chairs): Johnson & Johnson's first-quarter earnings fell 23 percent from last year, but revenue losses from numerous product recalls was blunted by a weaker dollar and higher drug sales, The Wall Street Journal reports:

For the first quarter, J&J said it earned $3.48 billion, or $1.25 a share, down from $4.53 billion, or $1.62 a share, a year earlier.

The latest quarter included charges of $271 million for costs associated with litigation and a recall of hip-replacement parts, while the year-earlier period included a litigation gain of $910 million. Excluding these items in both periods, earnings rose to $1.35 a share from $1.29 a share.

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, 10 Reasons Michelle Obama Should Be Proud – Really Proud – Of America): This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on Ron Guy, a driver for the Toledo Area Regional Paratransit Service who found a roll of $20 bills totaling $1,220 on one of the seats and made sure it was returned to its owner. The Toledo Blade reports:

“I never even thought about keeping it,” Mr. Guy said.

“I wouldn’t have felt right about keeping that money. No way.”

“I’m really proud of him,” said Jon Elston, director of paratransit services for the Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority.

“We serve a community of people that have disabilities and sometimes need extra help. We want Ron to be our standard of customer service. We want to go the extra mile for our passengers.”

Mr. Guy’s passengers were developmentally delayed individuals he had transported from a Toledo community center just before he found the cash.

The money was returned the next day to the female passenger who lost it. Mr. Elston said he believes she had just cashed her monthly disability check and the cash probably fell out of her coat during the trip home.

“That’s her whole month’s income,” Mr. Elston said. “She wouldn’t have been able to pay her bills.” …

Elston will propose a formal commendation for Guy at the next meeting of the transit authority’s board of trustees.