Water is wet, and Gateway Pundit is full of crap. Past examples of Mr. Pundit’s craptitude include relying on a Rocky Mountain News article to “prove” Barack Obama is a citizen of Kenya, while conveniently ignoring that the RMN had subsequently distanced itself from “this erroneous information,” and best of all, slamming President Obama for writing a letter to former French President Jacques Chirac in response to a letter from … drum roll … former French President Jacques Chirac. I’m sure there are many other examples of Mr. Pundit’s craptastically bad reporting, but as a non-reader who only pays attention to him/her/it when other conservatives link to his crazy stories, these are the only ones I can cite off the top of my head.

Given his apparently perfect record of reporting misleading crap that was supposed to make liberals look bad but actually makes conservatives look bad for being gullible enough to believe it, I’m torn as to what to think about Mr. Pundit. Namely, is he (a) retarded or (b) a devious liberal trying to discredit conservatives by pretending to be one, spewing stupid, easily debunked crap, and then watching with glee as all the real conservatives follow him off the cliff?

Last night an individual identifying himself as Eric Giardina of NCO posted a comment on my ancient old post on his “debt” collection scumpany:

Ha, Great posts whiners! I do harass some of you deadbeats, but that’s my job. Deal with it and pay your bills and we won’t have to call everyone and track down you losers. I’m a tough guy and can deal with it so I’ll keep calling. It is a great job actually. I will sometimes smoke up a bit on break or at lunch and when I make my calls then I can hardly keep from laughing at all of your bullshit excuses. Pay your bills and we’ll stop calling. NCO has been a great company to work for and maybe some of you low-lifes should get out of the gutter and come work for us http://www.ncogroup.com/Careers/Search_for_Careers_at_NCO.html and pay off your debt. Get a job and pay your bills losers!! You can send all the Cease and Desist orders you want. Our managers trash them and tell us to disregard them anyhow. That’s why we keep calling. What are going to do? Sue us? C’mon now you can’t pay your bills as it is so what lawyer are you going to get. Take care, I’ll be calling! Eric

Lest his/her/its pearls of wisdom be lost on a 3-year old post on a blog nobody reads read by only a few really cool people such as yourself, he/she/it also spammed his comment here, here, here, here, here, and Lord knows how many other places Google hasn’t caught yet. Adding irony, several of the sites he spammed his comment to actually answered his “what lawyer are you going to get” question, the answer to which is, “just about any lawyer who specializes in that area of law, and doesn’t expect NCO to go bankrupt before his bills come due.”

I tried to confirm the authenticity of the comment by emailing its purported author, whose email address was consistent with him being an NCO employee named Eric Giardina, but could of course have been written by anyone. I got an instant response from postmaster@ncogroup.com stating that delivery had failed, but not stating why it had failed, e.g., whether the mailbox was full, the address invalid, or what not. At least one of the threads he spammed has a much older comment from another individual claiming to have received a harassing call from an NCO employee named Eric Giardina, so my working hypothesis is that there really is, or at least was, an individual working for NCO named Eric Giardina. The main question is whether he really was the one who posted the crap bearing his name, or whether someone else is trying to make him look even worse than he probably is. The secondary question is if these posts really came from Eric Giardina of NCO, is NCO dumb enough to continue employing him now that he’s provided their victims’ attorneys with Exhibit A? Another option, I suppose, is that Mr. Giardina was recently fired from the company or quit on bad terms, and wanted to go out with a bang.

What say you?

Hugh Hewitt sez the future of California is moving to North Carolina. Apparently, that’s actually a good thing.

For years, Charles Erwin Wilson thought that what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice-versa. Now, it seems, he’s finally right.

I am speechless. Mega hat tip to Anwyn for the first statement by an elected politician that was so dumb even I couldn’t fisk it. Nice incredibly unbiased headline, too, courtesy of the Ass. Press.

Last year was a blast. Bummed I couldn’t make it this year. Next year’s a no-brainer since it’s in Charlotte. Updates here.

I’m long over my one-man boycott against Wal-Mart for doing the equivalent of handing someone a 12 caviar specimens for requesting a dozen eggs, but apparently, the gunnies are not done taking me to task for the same. What is it about gun owners that cause them to accept and even vigorously defend a craptastically low level of customer service no consumer would tolerate for anything else?

Insty thinks it’s a bad idea for people to take on student loans to get law degrees while the economy is rotten. I think he’s all wet. As bad as the economy is today, does anyone have any serious projection, one way or the other, about how it will look in December, 2013? Because let’s face it; if you are a college junior, senior or grad thinking of applying to law school now, that’s the earliest you can expect to become a lawyer. And if you are anybody else, it’s further off still.

Also not taken is the Puppyblender’s statement that student loans are the worst form of debt. True, they’re not dischargeable in bankruptcy, as if that were the plan anyway. They are, however, dischargeable by any other form of debt you may wish to take on after you graduate. Mine was discharged in three years by a second mortgage during the last real estate boom. Given how pathetically low property values are today, is it too much to hope that there may be another between now and, say, 2016?