† Romney: The Sequel: Former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) is rolling out his second stab at the presidency with “a message singularly focused on … jobs and the economy,” The Washington Post reports:

Romney and his advisers … believe that the economy will decide the outcome of the election and that the president has yet to convince voters that his economic policies have worked. They argue that Romney’s long experience in the private sector - his tenure as an elected official was just four years — makes him the Republican best positioned to challenge the president on how to fix what’s wrong.

“This election is going to be a referendum on President Obama and his handling of the economy,” said campaign spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom. “He didn’t cause the economic recession, but his policies have prolonged it and deepened it in some respects. We wondered what it would be like to elect a president who has no experience. Now we know.” …

Romney believes his private-sector experience - only businessman Herman Cain in the GOP field can claim as much - will give him credibility on economic issues.

Yeah, well, Reuters reports that critics complain that while “Romney has promoted his business experience, but critics complain about his record as a corporate raider for a private equity firm in the 1980s” and that “his performance on employment was mixed at best as Massachusetts governor.”

Hence, this observation in The WaPo article:

Connecting with working-class voters is a test Romney will have to prove he can pass. In polls of Republicans, he runs best among the college-educated and far less well among those without college degrees. Though he has shed his tie at many campaign appearances, he still retains more the look of the boardroom than the assembly line.

Editorial Note: For a reminder of why Romney will fall short (again) revisit this post (second item). The Stiletto thinks her criticisms of Romney are as valid now as they were then.

† Don’t Know Much About History, Don’t Know Much Foreign Policy: When President Barack Hussein Obama signed the Westminster Abbey guestbook and dated his comment “24 May 2008,” The Stiletto assumed that - like every other American - he wished it were three years ago when, bad as the economy was, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it is at the halfway mark into his only term as president™: 
 

But leave it to Conan O’Brien to figure out what the real problem was – Obama was still hung over from his trip to Ireland the day before: 

† Boobs And Brains Not Mutually Exclusive: In the latest example of "boobism" - the last acceptable form of anti-woman bias, Chicago attorney Thomas Gooch complains that the deck is stacked against him in a small claims dispute over a used car, because his opponent “is using an unfair tactic” by having a well-endowed woman sit next to him counsel's table "to draw the attention of the jury away from the relevant proceedings," The Associated Press reports: 

He asks Cook County Circuit Judge Anita Rivkin-Carothers to order the woman to sit in the gallery with other spectators.

In responding to the pretrial motion, attorney Dmitry N. Feofanov said the woman is his paralegal assistant and contends Gooch cites no "good faith legal argument" why she can't sit at counsel's table. Feofanov, who in the past has described himself as a "consumer protection lawyer," asked Rivkin-Carothers to impose sanctions on Gooch for his motion.

Gooch who "personally … like[s] large breasts," told the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin that he objected to the woman because he doesn't think she is a paralegal and not because she has an ample bosom.

[Hat Tip: OpinionJournal]

† (Islamo)Fascist Fashionistas: French designers have been trying to get fashionable Western women into haute couture hajibs and harem pants for a couple of years. Well, turnabout is fair play and now Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld wants men to wear turbans, The Daily Mail of London reports:

At his recent Chanel cruisewear show, Lagerfeld sent his muse, Baptiste Giabiconi, striding down the catwalk in the sort of headgear normally only seen on Sikh men. 

Perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise. After all, the ‘urban turban’ was touted as the ultimate headgear for women this year.

[Hat Tip: OpinionJournal]

† Updates To Previous Posts (fifth item, The TSA Emperor Wears No Clothes: Part II): This time, it’s not a woman with a prosthetic breast or a man with a urostomy bag who was humiliated by a TSA groper, but two veterans who set off the metal detector. TX State Republican Executive Committeeman David Bellow, an Army National Guardsman, relates what one of the veterans told him about the incident on his blog on the Texas GOP Vote Web site:

They were going to a ceremony to honor them for their courageous service in defending America. One of the wounded warriors … has bullet fragments in his leg. The other wounded warrior has shrapnel in his face.

The TSA agents cornered them and bombarded them with repeated questions like, “What are you hiding in your face?” The agents did not give the wounded warriors time to explain anything and went straight into accusing them of “hiding” something in their bodies. … My friend told me that one TSA agent came up to him and asked what he was hiding in his leg, but before my friend could answer he said that the TSA agent grabbed him, without notice, right in the crotch area as if trying to find something hidden. My friend has served many tours of duty, and I believe him when he tells me that it took everything in him not to react defensively when this agent grabbed his crotch without even letting him know he was going to be pat searched.

[Hat Tip: Prison Planet]

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Raising Cain in SC): New York Times columnist Ross Douthat discusses Steven Levitt's common-sense standard to explain why Ron Paul's curious idea that none of us are truly free as long as it's illegal for some of us to be drug addicts and prostitutes is whacked out:  

The primary determinant of where I stand with respect to government interference in activities comes down to the answer to a simple question: How would I feel if my daughter were engaged in that activity?

If the answer is that I wouldn’t want my daughter to do it, then I don’t mind the government passing a law against it. I wouldn’t want my daughter to be a cocaine addict or a prostitute, so in spite of the fact that it would probably be more economically efficient to legalize drugs and prostitution subject to heavy regulation/taxation, I don’t mind those activities being illegal.

On the other hand, if my daughter had good reasons to want an abortion, I would want her to be able to have one, so I’m weakly in favor of abortion being legal, even though I put a lot of value on unborn fetuses.

Douthat thinks that the daughter test is useful to “clarify which vices seem so profoundly self-destructively that they merit sanction in law as well as culture  … and which are merely regrettable life choices that even the most meddlesome parents must accept as part of the warp and woof of a free society,” adding:

[I]t’s also to clarify which of two competing values should hold the trump card in a particular controversy: For Levitt, applying the test to abortion demonstrates that his concern for unborn human life isn’t potent enough to override his preference for personal liberty.

In both cases, thinking “what if I my daughter did this/were in this position?” is a way to take an argument from the abstract to the viscerally real, and to bring moral and legal gray areas into a sharper focus.

The Stiletto has no quarrel with the logic underlying the daughter test, but she wouldn’t want her son to be a drug addict or a prostitute, either, so perhaps the test should be “would I want my child to …”

† Updates To Previous Posts (fifth item, All The News That’s Fart To Print): Obviously,  Universidad Icesi (Cali, Columbia) presidente Francisco Piedrahita does not read Popular Science, because when he became lost in LA's Jean Lafitte National Historic Park for five days, he drank his urine to survive, reports The Daily Mail of London:

He roughed it out for the next four days until a local sheriff's office helicopter spotted him. …

To survive he ate a few plant stems. 'For drink I had to use urine,' Piedrahita said to reporters before he was due to leave the hospital Thursday evening.

A walk in the park 'looked like no risk at all,' He also said, which is why he had chosen to leave his cell phone in a safe at his hotel before venturing to the park. …

Park rangers had searched for the university head until midnight on Saturday, Sheriff's deputies joined the search on Sunday. By Tuesday, the number of searchers had grown from 50 to more than 100. …

When he was finally found, searchers quickly gathered around. 'you are all for me?' he asked the search party. Mr Piedrahita said he was humbled by the response.

He has made a quick recovery from dehydration, exposure, muscle loss, some gastrointestinal and kidney problems resulting from dehydration and little food,' said his Dr. Robert Chugden who treated the university head.

As Popular Science pointed out, drinking your urine will only exacerbate the effects of dehydration on your kidneys. You can’t say you haven’t been warned.

† 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 25-year old Army Staff Sgt. Dysha Huggins-Hodge, a hazardous materials specialist stationed at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, who hit the books as soon as her 12-hour shift ended, The Washington Post reports:

After her deployment last spring, Huggins-Hodge was determined to keep up with her classes at Anne Arundel Community College and finish her associate’s degree on time. …

She carefully mapped out her study plan. The Army will pay for two college courses at a time, so Huggins-Hodge decided against taking two 15-week courses at once. Instead, she took several shorter, more intensive classes, two at a time.

“The schoolwork helped her a lot because when you deploy, you have to leave this life behind you,” her husband said. “You have to find something to occupy your thoughts.”

Even when sleep-deprived, Huggins-Hodge turned in every assignment. One professor had to piece together that she was in a war zone. Another received an e-mail from Huggins-Hodge that explained she would not be able to come to campus to take two proctored exams.

“It was almost apologetic,” said Louis L. Aymard Jr., who teaches psychology. “She said she didn’t want to use her service as an excuse.”

Instead of multiple-choice tests, Aymard logged onto Skype and asked Huggins-Hodge all 200 test questions. Both times, it was morning in his office and late night in her computer lab in Qatar. She was obviously exhausted, he said, but “spot on” with her answers.

“Of the 10,000 students I have dealt with, I can count on one hand the students I will never forget,” said Aymard, who has taught for 40 years. “Dysha is one of them.”

Huggins-Hodge graduated with a 4.0 GPA and was selected to give the valedictorian speech to her graduating class of just under 2,000. “She plans to enroll at a four-year college next year to study administration of justice and social work. She eventually wants to earn a PhD,” reports The WaPo.