Daily Desultory

Woman 'Trapped' In Car Gets Help From 911

2009-04-02T15:25:00.001-05:00

KISSIMMEE -- A woman who thought she was locked inside her car got some help from a calm Kissimmee 911 dispatcher Tuesday.

“My car will not start, I'm locked inside my car. I cannot open my car. I can't get the windows down,” the caller said. “Nothing electrical works. And it's getting very hot in here and I'm not feeling well. And I need some help.”

The dispatcher told the woman she should be “able to pull the lock up on the door even if it’s electrical.”

The caller began by saying she tried that, but a second later she was able to unlock the door.

Man shoots television after DTV tantrum

2009-02-25T00:11:00.003-06:00

A Missouri man is charged with unlawful use of a firearm, after peppering his T-V with bullets.

Police responded to a home in Joplin Wednesday after reports of shots being fired inside.

The 70 year old homeowner was angry that he had lost his cable, and was unable to get his new DTV converter to work properly.

After a brief standoff, the man was taken into custody. His wife told officers the suspect had been drinking.

Gizmodo

Quebecois Black community: "Nous désapprouvons votre shennanigans"

2009-01-07T18:47:00.004-06:00

Radio-Canada and the producers of the French-language broadcaster's popular New Year's Eve special are defending the show amid allegations that certain skits were insulting and racist.

The annual special Bye Bye is one of the most-watched television events of the year in Quebec, drawing four million viewers on Dec. 31.

The program, which aired on Radio-Canada, parodied everything from the U.S. election to Quebec's top news events of the year.

However, one skit in particular went too far, according to some members of Quebec's black community.

The skit involved a fake interview between U.S. president-elect Barack Obama and a news anchor who confuses him with the popular Quebec entertainer Gregory Charles. When corrected, the anchor tells viewers that all black people look alike. He goes on to say that viewers at home shouldn't worry about Obama stealing their purses, but he might steal their television sets.

"Radio-Canada recognizes that the edition this year contained elements that may not have been to everyone's taste," read a statement from Radio-Canada.

By Tuesday, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission had received 28 complaints about the show. The CRTC said the content of the complaints is confidential.

Dan Phillip of the Black Coalition said the skit went too far.

"Firstly, it's totally racist," Phillip told Le Journal de Montreal. "Radio-Canada has also demonstrated a lack of sensitivity and respect towards the black community."

The program verged on racism, said Michael Farkus, the director of the community organization Youth in Motion in the Montreal neighbourhood of Little Burgundy, home to much of the city's English-speaking black community. He said the skit was one part of an entire program that was in bad taste.

"The whole show was really low. That particular sketch was despicable," Farkus told CBC Radio.

Farkus said the producers, Véronique Cloutier's production company Novem, should not be allowed back next year.

In a statement, Radio-Canada defended the program and its decision to put the writing in the hands of the Novem team.

The writers, said the statement, are behind some of Quebec's most popular television programs, including CA and Les Bougon.

"As a democratic institution in the service of culture, Radio-Canada has a principal of respecting the freedom of its creative teams who contribute to its dramatic and variety programming," said the statement.

CBC

1980's Wendy's Training Video

2009-01-07T14:45:00.000-06:00

Porn industry seeks federal bailout

2009-01-07T14:36:00.000-06:00

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Another major American industry is asking for assistance as the global financial crisis continues: Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis said Wednesday they will request that Congress allocate $5 billion for a bailout of the adult entertainment industry.

“The take here is that everyone and their mother want to be bailed out from the banks to the big three,” said Owen Moogan, spokesman for Larry Flynt. “The porn industry has been hurt by the downturn like everyone else and they are going to ask for the $5 billion. Is it the most serious thing in the world? Is it going to make the lives of Americans better if it happens? It is not for them to determine.”

Francis said in a statement that “the US government should actively support the adult industry's survival and growth, just as it feels the need to support any other industry cherished by the American people."

“We should be delivering [the request] by the end of today to our congressmen and [Secretary of the Treasury Henry] Paulson asking for this $5 billion dollar bailout,” he told CNN Wednesday.

Studies Show Dogs Have Sense Of Fairness (TBO.com)

2008-12-08T20:56:00.001-06:00

Studies Show Dogs Have Sense Of Fairness

WASHINGTON - No fair! What parent hasn't heard that from a child who thinks another youngster got more of something? Well, it turns out dogs can react the same way. Ask them to do a trick and they'll give it a try. For a reward, sausage say, they'll happily keep at it. But if one dog gets no reward, and then sees another get sausage for doing the same trick, just try to get the first one to do it again. Indeed, he may even turn away and refuse to look at you.

Dogs, like people and monkeys, seem to have a sense of fairness.

"Animals react to inequity," said Friederike Range of the University of Vienna, Austria, who led a team of researchers testing animals at the school's Clever Dog Lab. "To avoid stress, we should try to avoid treating them differently."

Similar responses have been seen in monkeys.

Range said she wasn't surprised at the dogs reaction, since wolves are known to cooperate with one another and appear to be sensitive to each other. Modern dogs are descended from wolves.

Next, she said, will be experiments to test how dogs and wolves work together. "Among other questions, we will investigate how differences in emotions influence cooperative abilities," she said via e-mail.

In the reward experiments reported in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Range and colleagues experimented with dogs that understood the command "paw," to place their paw in the hand of a researcher. It's the same game as teaching a dog to "shake hands."

Those that refused at the start - and one border collie that insisted on trying to herd other dogs - were removed. That left 29 dogs to be tested in varying pairs.

The dogs sat side-by-side with an experimenter in front of them. In front of the experimenter was a divided food bowl with pieces of sausage on one side and brown bread on the other.

The dogs were asked to shake hands and each could see what reward the other received.

When one dog got a reward and the other didn't, the unrewarded animal stopped playing.

When both got a reward all was well.

One thing that did surprise the researchers was that - unlike primates - the dogs didn't seem to care whether the reward was sausage or bread.

Possibly, they suggested, the presence of a reward was so important it obscured any preference. Other possibilities, they said, are that daily training with their owners overrides a preference, or that the social condition of working next to a partner increased their motivation regardless of which reward they got.

And the dogs never rejected the food, something that primates had done when they thought the reward was unfair.

The dogs, the researchers said, "were not willing to pay a cost by rejecting unfair offers."

Clive Wynne, an associate professor in the psychology department of the University of Florida, isn't so sure the experiment measures the animals reaction to fairness.

"What it means is individuals are responding negatively to being treated less well," he said in a telephone interview.

But the researchers didn't do a control test that had been done in monkey studies, Wynne said, in which a preferred reward was visible but not given to anyone. In that case the monkeys went on strike because they could see the better reward but got something lesser.

Range responded, however, that her team did indeed do that control test as well as others in which food was moved or held in the hand but not given to the dog being tested.

In dogs, Wynne noted, the quality of reward didn't seem to matter, so the test only worked when they got no reward at all.

However, Wynne added, there is "no doubt in my mind that dogs are very, very sensitive to what people are doing and are very smart."

Blogged with the Flock Browser

China Blasts Guns N' Roses

2008-11-28T22:28:00.002-06:00

China's ruling Communist Party is outraged at the newest Guns N' Roses album, calling it a "venomous attack" on the Chinese nation.

The album, called Chinese Democracy, was delayed since recording started in 1994, and will most likely not be legally sold in China. But downloads are tough to police, hence the strong rhetoric.

A Communist Party's newspaper, Global Times, published an article entitled "American band releases album venomously attacking China," and claimed that unidentified Chinese Internet users believe the album to be part of a plot by some in the West to "grasp and control the world using democracy as a pawn."

The article adds that the album "turns its spear point on China."

As an example of its apparent subversive qualities, the record's title track refers to the Falun Gong meditation practice, that was abolished by China and dubbed an "evil cult", and warns "if your Great Wall rocks blame yourself," no doubt referring to China's authoritarian government.

Sarah Palin Hates Verbs

2008-10-13T13:10:00.002-05:00

This may surprise you, but the cringe which adds hundreds of irreversible wrinkles to your face when you hear Sarah Palin speak doesn't come from her inane policy proposals. (Or not totally.) For the most part, it comes from witnessing Palin desecrate our most precious resource: verbs.

Remember verbs? They're the valuable action words which come between subjects. They're awesome! They tell you exactly what happened and when. But Sarah Palin hates verbs. She twists them, snips them, and hides them from us. The result is a tangle of decontextualized ideas and dizzying logic collapsing in onto itself. When you are confronted with the sentences of Sarah Palin, you are confronted with the abyss. Like so:

Not necessarily this, as it's been proposed, has to pass or we're going to find ourselves in another Great Depression. But, there has got to be action—bipartisan effort—Congress not pointing fingers at one another but finding the solution to this, taking action, and being serious about the reforms on Wall Street that are needed.

Or:

He's also known as the maverick though, taking shots from his own party, and certainly taking shots from the other party. Trying to get people to understand what he's been talking about - the need to reform government.

So much hostility against verbs! It almost seems personal, like she was once raped by a verb and found the entire ordeal—which perhaps included having to pay for her own Strunk and White kit to clean things up—so unpleasant that she vowed to spend the rest of her days eradicating the cursed parts of speech. But there's a much more likely explanation.

Palin belongs to a not-so-secret order of mercenaries who have been staging a ruthless 20-year war against grammar: TV newscasters. Palin had a stint as a TV sportscaster in 1988, and it's fair to assume that the gritty, cut-throat newsrooms of Alaska inculcated in Palin the lethal art of obfuscation.

You are surely familiar with this linguistic genocide. In order to keep the content fresh and urgent, TV newscasters gut the tenses from headlines the way experienced hunters gut moose. Past, present, and future all melt together so that everything sounds like an up-to-the-minute exclusive. Here's an example from an NBC News transcript: "Less resilient, local business. Dwight's concession stand, in the family three generations. Sales this summer off 75 percent."

Here's one from grammar's Archangel of Death Lou Dobbs: "Top government officials today adding their voices to the call for Americans to remain vigilant."

See where this is going? Not a verb to be heard. The only sound is the shudder of a thousand English teachers.

Your turn again, Sarah: "I know that John McCain will do that and I, as his vice president, families we are blessed with that vote of the American people and are elected to serve and are sworn in on January 20, that will be our top priority is to defend the American people."

Yes! Just like that.

So she's adamantly pro-gerund, you say. In the scheme of things, is it really that big a deal? Indeed. In fact, it's far more nefarious than you might imagine. It all speaks to her emphasis on the visceral over the cerebral, sensation over reason, emotion over thought, the immediate over the past. It reveals her murderous disdain for context and nuance.

George Orwell, the patron saint of political rhetoric, made it very clear: "...[I]f thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better."

We should know better. Let's hope we do.

Ed McMahon: Rapper

2008-09-25T15:11:00.000-05:00

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Ed McMahon has an unexpected new job title: rapper.

The 85-year-old former "Tonight Show" sidekick will star in two viral rap videos for FreeCreditReport.com, a financial Web site owned by credit bureau Experian.

The videos feature McMahon wearing a tracksuit, being chauffeured around Los Angeles in a Cadillac Escalade golf cart and waxing lyrical about his very public financial troubles.

"I knew I could sing the blues, but I didn't know I could rap," McMahon said Wednesday.

The videos will appear online in October.

Charles Harris, FreeCreditReport.com's vice president of strategic marketing, said the company sought out McMahon to star in the humorous spots after seeing him openly discuss his finances on "Larry King Live." Harris said McMahon represents "a man who is taking charge."

In the first video, McMahon -- who once pitched the American Family Publishing sweepstakes -- and a bodyguard are cruising through a neighborhood looking for sweepstakes winners to ask for some money back, but McMahon doesn't actually go through with it. In the second spot, McMahon dons a new suit after undergoing a financial and emotional makeover.

"When I retired, I was famous," McMahon raps in the video. "I had money and glory/I bought a house for 6 mill/I thought nothing could touch me/Until my credit went south, and debt started to crunch me/Next thing I know, instead of playing gin rummy, I was scrambling just to make ends meet/It wasn't funny."

After being joined by two scantily clad women, McMahon continues: "Got a bump from the media chumps, but that was temporary/Wife with bad credit was scary, so I got wise/I may have fallen, but I got back up/Now I'm back on the attack, like a ninja swinging nunchucks/I told the haters, 'Go on, take a hike'/It's my show now, and I can do what I like."

McMahon said he spent one day in the studio recording the rap. He said he hopes his participation will inspire viewers to learn from his mistakes and become more aware about their finances.

When asked if he would consider releasing a full-length rap album, McMahon said: "Not immediately."

In June, the former "Star Search" host revealed he was fighting foreclosure after falling $644,000 behind on mortgage payments on his Beverly Hills home. Last month, he agreed to a deal with a private buyer.

McMahon said Wednesday the deal has not been completed, and he's not sure what he and his wife, Patricia, will do after the sale.

"We're in this together," said McMahon. "We're a team. We're going to solve it together. We're going to work this out. I'm very optimistic. I'm an old Marine. I've been in two wars and have 85 combat missions under my belt. I've got a background of looking for the good stuff, going for the best way. My wife is with me 100 percent."

It's not the first job for McMahon following his money problems. In July, the former "Tonight Show" sidekick reprised his role as pitchman with commercial segments alongside talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel on "Jimmy Kimmel Live."

One of the spots featured McMahon teaching Kimmel how to sell a product. Another had the duo preparing for a road trip to Mexico.

Last week, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled that McMahon's lawsuit against Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and two physicians he claims failed to properly diagnose and repair his broken neck laid out adequate legal ground to pursue claims that include negligence, elder abuse, battery, fraud and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

CNN

Brother Says He Was Stabbed Over Hot Pocket

2008-09-19T12:29:00.000-05:00

SOUTH BEND – A 20-year-old man told police he was stabbed by his younger brother Sunday night after a fight broke out over a Hot Pocket.

St. Joseph County police were called to an apartment in the 3600 block of Generations Drive just after 7 p.m. Sunday, where they found a man bleeding from a cut on his side.

Although the man was initially uncooperative with police, he admitted that he got into a fight with his 18-year-old brother over the microwave sandwich.

The victim told police the two began fighting over who got to eat the Hot Pocket, pushing and grappling with each other into a hallway. He said his younger brother then grabbed a steak knife off the kitchen counter and stabbed at his brother, cutting him on his left side.

Police said the victim was able wrestle the knife away from his brother, who then left on foot.

Officers searched the area with a police dog, but were unable to locate him.

The man was transported to the hospital with minor injuries, where he was treated and released

WSBT - South Bend, Indiana

CON ARTIST DOES TO REPUBLICAN DELEGATE WHAT REPUBLICANS HAVE DONE TO COUNTRY

2008-09-18T10:31:00.003-05:00

It's a timeless story: Boy attends political convention, boy meets "beautiful woman" at RNC party, boy takes woman back to hotel, boy gets date rape-drugged, boy wakes up with $50k worth of jewelry and electronics missing. And if you think the story is somehow funny because the boy in question happens to be the kind of person who thinks bragging about war is a laughing matter, shame on you. There are plenty of other reasons it's funny.

Every "That's what she said" from The Office

2008-09-18T10:31:00.001-05:00

The Running Man

2008-09-05T11:56:00.001-05:00

Palin: The Hypocrisy Clock Goes Tic-Tock

2008-09-04T16:09:00.004-05:00

Now this is embarrassing. It seems that John McCain's soulmate has also made his anti-earmark "pork list".

Three times in recent years, McCain's catalogs of "objectionable" spending have included earmarks for this small Alaska town, requested by its mayor at the time -- Sarah Palin.

Oops. But hey, it's not like Palin was the first Wasilla mayor to go after federal money, right?

Wasilla had received few if any earmarks before Palin became mayor. She actively sought federal funds -- a campaign that began to pay off only after she hired a lobbyist with close ties to Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who long controlled federal spending as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He made funneling money to Alaska his hallmark.

Yeah, she's quite the anti-pork, anti-lobbyist maverick. It's too bad the McCain campaign is now refusing to answer questions about the vetting process because it would be nice to know if they knew about this.

Via Kos

Diddy halts private jet flights over fuel prices

2008-09-01T09:54:00.002-05:00

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Fuel prices have grounded an unexpected frequent-flyer: Diddy.

Sean "Diddy" Combs complained about the "... too high" price of gas and pleaded for free oil from his "Saudi Arabia brothers and sisters" in a YouTube video posted Wednesday. The hip-hop mogul said he is now flying on commercial airlines instead of in private jets, which Combs said had previously cost him $200,000 and up for a roundtrip between New York and Los Angeles.

"I'm actually flying commercial," Diddy said before walking onto an airplane, sitting in a first-class seat and flashing his boarding pass to the camera. "That's how high gas prices are. I'm at the gate right now. This is really happening, proof gas prices are too high. Tell whoever the next president is we need to bring gas prices down."

---

On the Net:

http://www.diddy.com

Dead Shark Found in Lake Michigan

2008-08-30T18:29:00.002-05:00

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) -- There's no telling what might turn up in Lake Michigan.

Rich Fasi of Traverse City says he found a dead 2-foot shark in the water while fishing on West Grand Traverse Bay on Wednesday.

The saltwater fish was a juvenile blacktip shark, said Mark Tonello, a fisheries biologist from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

Tonello said someone might have caught the shark off the Atlantic Coast and kept it on ice while bringing it to northern Michigan.

Another possibility is that the dead shark was dumped by someone who had kept it as a pet, Tonello said.

TBO.com

Billboard Near MSP Airport Welcomes Republicans to Town

2008-08-23T21:56:00.004-05:00

In honor of the upcoming Republican National Convention, Comedy Central has a billboard welcoming the attendees to town near the Minneapolis/St Paul International Airport (Near I-494 and Hwy 77 to be more specific)

For those of you scratching your head about what an Oligarch is....

Oligarchy is a form of government where political power effectively rests with a small elite segment of society (whether distinguished by wealth, family, military powers or spiritual hegemony). The word oligarchy is translated into "rule by few." Compare with autocracy (rule by one person) and democracy (rule by the people).

Giant Inflatable Turd Terrorizes Swiss Town

2008-08-13T11:19:00.001-05:00

Flash! An inflatable catastrophe second only to the Hindenburg disaster has occurred in Bern Switzerland at the Paul Klee Center art museum. A house-sized inflatable turd designed by American artist Paul McCarthy broke free from its moorings in high winds after the security system designed to deflate the installation failed.

Townspeople fled in terror as the work entitled "Complex Shit" cut a swath of destruction that included downed power lines and a broken window at a children's home. At this point we can confirm that there were no poop related injuries, but it is a scene that the townspeople (and this reporter) will not soon forget. They will be forced to relive it every time they drop a deuce. Oh, the humanity!

The Hottest Radio Station in Los Angeles

2008-08-06T22:45:00.003-05:00

Click Here for AiRadio 530 AM

Another Smear Debunked

2008-08-06T19:25:00.005-05:00

More bullshit from the right has surfaced this week as small minded conservative blowhards have been blowing up the blogosphere with some bullshit about how Obama removed the flag from the tail of the plane he is leasing for his campaign. Why did he have such a thing get done? Is it because he is dangerous and not patriotic and not in love with his country?

NOPE! THATS NOT WHY!!!!! BUT THOSE ARE THE REASONS THE RIGHT WING JACKASSES WANT YOU TO BELIEVE!!!!!!

THE REAL REASON:
The plane is being leased from a company called "North American Airlines" and the "flag" on the tail of the plane that was removed is THE COMPANY'S REGISTERED TRADEMARK. So, the reason the "flag" design was removed is because it is THE REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF NORTH AMERICAN AIRLINES! The flag next to the plane's tail number is still there in plain sight....

So all you close minded small thinking conservative assholes can shut the fuck up!!

Oh, speaking of campaign aircraft, I don't even see a flag or anything resembling a flag or the colors that are on the U.S. Flag ANYWHERE on McCain's plane!!!???
And since when are an aqua-ish blue, gold, and white patriotic colors? Ah... McCain must be colorblind in his old age.

Man Calls 911 To Report Slot Machine Stole His Money

2008-08-05T11:00:00.002-05:00

FLORIDA IS ON A ROLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TAMPA, Fla. -- A second Hillsborough County man has been arrested on charges of making false 911 calls in as many days. An arrest report says 47-year-old Carlos Gutierrez was at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino early Monday and called 911 to say the slot machine stole his money. The report says Gutierrez left the casino to place a second 911 call to say the same thing. He was arrested and charged with making a false 911 call. He's being held with no bail set.

On Sunday another man was arrested after calling 911 five times during an argument with his brother. He demanded that dispatchers send deputies to help sort things out. And in northern Florida last week, a Jacksonville man called 911 to complain that a Subway left the sauce off a spicy Italian sandwich.

WFTV - Orlando

Related?:

Police: Man Calls 911 Over Incorrect Sandwich

Chinese Restaurant Used An Online Language Translator to Name Restaurant and.....

2008-08-04T09:53:00.003-05:00

I'm not sure what kind of dishes they serve up at "Translate Server Error" - but I have no doubt it would be a smorgasboard of "404 page not found" fried rice, and "A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer" with Honey Soy Chicken.

LIVENEWS

Vi setter pris på våre norske besøkende!

2008-08-03T23:43:00.002-05:00

Takk for at du besøker Daglig Desultory. Vi setter pris på våre norske besøkende! Vi er nå en blogg med over 200 innlegg! Gratulerer til oss!

'Tween' Gangs: America's Next Epidemic

2008-08-03T19:52:00.004-05:00

Groups of young people are vandalizing, intimidating, terrorizing and assaulting neighbors. Even worse, they're only 10 to 14 years old. It's a growing summer problem in some Minneapolis neighborhoods.

The 8th Street Block Club spent years creating and expanding their "Peaceful Patch Garden."

"The most important thing I think is it's really brought us together, these four blocks," said club leader Marge Magnuson.

A gang of mostly young teen girls tore the neighborhood apart.

"They would just operate in marauding groups I guess I would say, of between 10 and 15," said Bill Bryant, another club leader.

"They'd be walking down the sidewalk, and if you were coming their way, you could not, they would, you had to step aside," said Magnuson.

They used the same intimidation tactics on drivers in the street. The garden became anything but peaceful.

"(They) would vandalize and we'd try to put things back and then it would, (a) couple days later maybe the same thing would happen again," he added.

Then they started assaulting people, including Magnuson.

The block club enlisted help from police, parole officers, social service leaders and others to help combat the problem. Its behavior police have battled before.

"I think you'd find a lot of kids that aren't getting any supervision at home that have got a lot of problems of their own, and they join up with other kids," explained Don Greeley, a Community Crime Prevention Specialist.

The neighborhood refused to let the gangs take over, and it steered them in a more positive direction.

"We actually were able to have the kids interacting with the residents and the community in a respectful way," said V.J. Smith, a founder of Mad Dads.

Last year the 11th Street Block Club was so discouraged about the young teen gang violence and destruction in their neighborhood, they skipped it. This year it will proceed as planned to celebrate their accomplishments.

WCCO

91 Nørwegiån råcing spectåtørs struck by lightning. Øuch

2008-08-03T19:49:00.002-05:00

OSLO, Norway (AP) — A lightning bolt struck 91 auto racing fans at a racetrack in Norway Sunday, and 45 people were taken to hospital with minor burns, police said.

"No one was seriously injured," police officer Hans Eng told the Associated Press. "But some of them will stay in the hospital for observation."

The lightning hit a hill where spectators at the rallycross were sitting. Rallycross is a form of sprint-style automobile racing on a closed circuit.

The race, a national championship, was called off after the incident.

Eng said 16 ambulances and three medical helicopters were brought to the scene at Flisa, about eight kilometers from the Swedish border.

The injured fans were taken to four different hospitals.

"I've never seen anything like it; spectators fell off their seats," a witness, Roar Bringaker, was quoted as saying on the Web site of Norwegian paper Verdens Gang. "People got scared and ran. It was chaotic."

Even Wiger, another spectator, went to the racetrack with his 14-year-old son and some friends.

"It was a raining and suddenly the lightning hit the stand," he was quoted as saying to the Norwegian News Agency NTB. "We all tried to get down from the hill. Many screamed and cried. The situation was dramatic. I've never experienced anything similar."

The thunderstorm knocked out telephone service in the area, police said.

Police: Man Calls 911 Over Incorrect Sandwich

2008-08-03T16:42:00.003-05:00

OH YEAAAAAH!!!!!!! IT'S A STORY OUT OF FLORIDA!!!!!!!!!

JACKSONVILLE, FL -- An unhappy Subway customer called 911 not once, but twice to complain to police that his sandwich was not made to his liking.

Reginald Peterson called the Jacksonville Sheriffs Office in hopes that police could have his sandwich made to his satisfaction.

A short time later, Peterson contacted JSO again to complain that police still had not shown up.

When police did arrive Peterson told the officer he had ordered two sandwiches, checked out, and then walked outside to find the subs did not have "everything" he ordered.

He told police he became "very upset" and "belligerent" because the employee making the sandwich was not doing it correctly.

Witnesses inside the store say Peterson eventually started screaming at everyone inside. When Peterson went outside to call police. Employees closed the store and locked the door to keep him from returning.

According to the report, the officer tried to calm Petterson and explain to him the proper way to use 911, but he would not cooperate.

Peterson was arrested and at his request the sandwiches were thrown away.

First Coast News

Is Snoop Dogg A Future Rotarian?

2008-07-31T11:35:00.003-05:00

Hip-hop superstar Snoop Dogg surprised LSU football coach Les Miles (right) with a guest appearance at the July 30 Rotary Club of Baton Rouge weekly meeting.

Family Claims to See Jesus in Cat's Fur

2008-07-30T21:16:00.001-05:00

You could call her a holy cat or a feline with Jesus on her side... An Indiana family says if you look closely at their pet, you can see the face of Christ.

"In this window well down here was 4 baby kittens... stuck together."

Lori Johnson couldn't help but take in two kittens, she found abandoned outside her house on mother's day.

"Oh no, i couldn't imagine giving them away now. I've worked too hard. They are a part of me now. I love being a mom."

The two kittens, brother and sister, now named sissy and bubby -- could also be called opposites... the female has striped fur. The male is all black.

"Maybe one's an angel.. and the other one' is not. Yeah, we have the good and evil." Recently, lori's husband was petting sissy when he noticed...

"He says 'i swear that looks like jesus with a shroud on' and i'm like 'ok,' and then my son took that picture, and it was like 'wow!'"

"After looking at the picture and stuff, it was like 'oh, there it is.'"

"See the eyes beard. here's the shroud."

After a closer look, you might see the "shroud of turin." And even if you don't... "then they might think we are weird crazy or something."

Something this family is fine with. To them, sissy's fur is a sign from above of joy and blessings to come.

"We've had a lot of things happen in our lives. This was a good sign that uh..
everything's ok and got somebody looking after us."

ABC 2 - Baltimore

MSNBC: Fox News does it again...

2008-07-30T21:12:00.004-05:00

Once again... The Fox and Friends morning show staff needs to be fired....

This racist bullshit Fox News Channel keeps pulling needs to stop.

Good Lord, Dana Perino Is Full Of It

2008-07-30T20:47:00.000-05:00

From yesterday's White House press briefing:

MS. PERINO: Also at the end of this week, Congress is expected to go on their August recess, and at that same time many families across America are making tough decisions about whether or not they can go on their summer vacations, due to the high gasoline prices.

God, this woman is full of it. Yes, across America families putting off vacation plans until congress votes on offshore drilling...drilling that wouldn't affect prices for years to come. This administration obviously thinks Americans are stupid.

As for what she's full of, you make the call.

Partiers mistake police for strippers

2008-07-29T09:23:00.002-05:00

BERLIN — Police say two officers who responded to complaints about a raucous weekend party in western Germany were mistaken for male strippers by the female guests.

Simmern police spokesman Bernd Hoffmann says neighbours called police around 12.45 a.m. Sunday to complain about noise from a birthday party in their building.

A round of applause from the apartment resident — who had just turned 30 — and her friends greeted two officers who went to investigate.

Hoffmann said today that “they thought the policemen were dressed like that because they were strippers.

It took them a while to realize they were real police officers.”

Hoffmann says the women had not ordered strippers but thought someone had sent them as a birthday surprise.

The incident resulted in no arrests.

24 Hours Vancouver

Police Blotter of the Day - 7/28/08

2008-07-28T19:21:00.002-05:00

Saint Cloud, Minnesota 7/28/08:

Police were called at 10:03 a.m. to Go For it Gas, 1000 Ninth Ave. S. A man robbed the store with a large-framed semi-automatic handgun, Sgt. Jeff Janssen said. The robber got an undisclosed amount of cash and a carton of Newport brand cigarettes.

The man ran south from the store and was last seen running through Southside Park, Janssen said.

Police describe the suspect as being a 30-year-old, light-skinned black man. He his about 6 feet tall and has a slim build.

Go Breast, Young Man

2008-07-28T09:57:00.001-05:00

LIKE-MINDED TODDLER Not the kid in question, assorted boobs

Everything is bigger in Texas, right? Well, it looks like that even extends to the cojones of their toddlers. A five-year-old boy escaped his daycare center just outside of Dallas, Texas, earlier this week by saying he had to go to the bathroom. He then proceeded to sneak out through an unlocked fire exit, walk to a RaceTrac gas station to buy himself snacks and soda, and then stroll nearly a half-mile to the local Hooters, presumably to pick up a couple chicks and power a few hot wings. Nappy hour, if you will?

Embrace The Majesty Of The Bear. EMBRACE IT!

2008-07-28T09:51:00.002-05:00

Here's how it's done: Take one video of a bear being released into the wild from the fine folks at KRQE News 13, place it in the dexterous hands of someone with too much time on their hands, sit back, and let the summertime enjoyment cascade down upon you. It will be 5 o'clock before you know it, people; we'll get through it together.

Whale taught to blow bubble rings

2008-07-28T09:37:00.004-05:00

The whales have delighted thousands of visitors since being taught the impressive trick by scuba divers in a pool.

They are given a breath from the diver's regulator to give them enough air to blow the big bubbles.

Metro.co.uk

Man Drowns During Baptism

2008-07-28T09:35:00.001-05:00

RIO VISTA (CBS13) ― Rescuers have called off the search for a 22-year-old man feared drowned during a baptism in the San Joaquin Delta.

The Hispanic man disappeared under the water late Sunday afternoon near the Brannan Island State Recreation Area, northeast of the San Francisco Bay, according to Coast Guard officials.

A Sacramento County Drowning Accident Rescue Team (DART) joined the underwater search for the missing man, whose identity has not been released.

Officials called off the search Sunday night.

CBS 13 - Sacramento

Obama's Private Prayer 'Leaked'

2008-07-25T20:53:00.003-05:00

Senator Barack Obama probably thought that the prayer he penned in the solitude of his King David hotel room in Jerusalem would remain between him and the Almighty. But an Orthodox Jewish student had other ideas.

Following Jewish tradition, Obama donned a yarmulke and went to the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, where shortly before dawn on Thursday he stuffed his prayer into a crevass between the giant white stones, hewn over 2,000 years ago. Traditionally such prayers, and there are over a million every year, some arriving by fax and email, are collected twice a year and buried on the Mount of Olives. It is considered taboo to read the prayers.

But after Obama and his entourage left the sacred site, an orthodox seminary student went to the Wall, fished out Obama's personal note and delivered it to Maariv newspaper, which duly printed the senator's prayer.

The newspaper's decision to publish Obama's private words was "an outrage", said Rabbbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, supervisor of the Western Wall. "It damages the personal, deep part of every one of us that we keep to ourselves," the rabbi told Army Radio. "The note placed between the stones of the Western Wall are between a person and his maker. It is forbidden to read them or make use of them."

Obama didn't pray for an election victory, a lottery win to help pay for his campaign, or for his Republican rival Senator John McCain to be felled by lightning or a pecadillo. On the contrary; his prayer hints at the struggle within, how Obama is seeking divine guidance to surmount the obstacles that lie ahead of him in his lonely, awesome challenge to become the next president of the United States. On hotel stationary, he penned the following prayer, according to Maariv, which ran a photo of the note:

"Lord, protect my family and me," Obama wrote. "Forgive me my sins and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will."

Obama, now finishing up the European leg of his tour, has not commented on his private prayer being made public in Jerusalem.

CNN

Man Charged with Shooting His Own Lawnmower

2008-07-25T20:24:00.002-05:00

More: Click here to read the criminal complaint

A man from Milwaukee is facing criminal charges after he solved a problem with his lawnmower by shooting it.

According to a criminal complaint, on Wednesday Keith Walendowski got drunk early in the morning. He decided to mow his lawn on the 3500 block of South Austin Street in Milwaukee.

He couldn't get the lawnmower to start. His solution? Prosecutors say Walendowski went to his basement and grabbed a sawed off shotgun, and he fired twice at the lawnmower.

"I'll tell you the truth. I got p---ed because my lawn mower wouldn't start, so I got my shotgun and shot it," Walendowski said to an officer. "I can do that, it's my lawn mower and my yard, so I can shoot it if I want."

If convicted, Walendowski faces up to six years and 90 days behind bars and fines of $11,000.

A local lawnmower repairman tells the Journal Sentinel that Walendowski may have trouble fixing the mower noting that anything not factory recommended voids the warranty.

620WTMJ

Fox gets called out for it's racist behavior by 620,000

2008-07-25T12:23:00.001-05:00

Nas and Color of Change deliver 620,000 petitions to Fox News calling it out for its racist behavior.

Send your own message to Fox now

Driver Reaches For Handgun After Request For 'Grey Poupon'

2008-07-25T10:18:00.001-05:00

SANDY - A wiseguy who asked another Utah driver whether he had any Grey Poupon -- in a reference to a world famous commercial -- found himself looking down the barrel of a semiautomatic handgun instead, authorities said.

A vehicle containing three people was traveling near 900 East Winchester Street (6600 South) on June 18, when one of the occupants decided to crack a joke to the driver next to them.

"Excuse me, sir... do you have any Grey Poupon?" asked passenger Stephen Cox.

The quip was a reference to the world famous commercials that advertise the dijon mustard -- in which a sophisticated older gentleman asks a limousine passenger to roll his windows down, and asks the same question. (Watch the commercial)

However, police say when Cox posed the question to 22-year-old Vitaly Alex Kovtun, of Sandy, the driver was not amused.

Instead of reaching for a bottle of the mustard, Kovtun allegedly pulled a semiautomatic handgun from the glove box, cocked it, and pointed it at the inquiring passengers in the other vehicle.

A man offers some Grey Poupon dijon mustard to another motorist in a famous TV commercial by Nabisco. (Nabisco)

Kovtun then allegedly said, "Here's your Grey Poupon! Roll your [expletive] windows up."

Those inside of the car managed to record Kovtun's license plate number before he left, which authorities later used to track him down.

According to court documents, Kovtun later admitted to pulling the handgun, cocking the slide and pointing it at those in the other vehicle.

No one was injured in the incident, but Kovtun has been charged with a count of aggravated assault, which is a third-degree felony.

The charge, according to Utah Code 76-5-102, alleges that Kovtun used a dangerous weapon likely to produce death or serious bodily injury.

MORE:

KUTV
TV Commercial: "Excuse me... do you have any Grey Poupon?"
TV Commercial: "Would you have any Grey Poupon?"

Obama is in Berlin, so McCain Visits a German Village.... German Village, OHIO

2008-07-24T22:37:00.004-05:00

So, Barack Obama was in Germany today giving a speech in Berlin, so it was only right that John McCain speak to people in a similar venue........... Schmidt's Sausage House, a German restaurant in GERMAN VILLAGE, OHIO....

Hmm... So, if Obama goes to Mexico I guess McCain will go to a Taco Bell in, oh, Kalamazoo, Michigan perhaps???

Work those swing states good, Grandpa John!!! Oh, and I hope you do choose my state's governor, Tim Pawlenty, as your running mate... He will help guide you deeper into obscurity as the campaign goes on and you will be retiring to Sun City, Arizona by November 5th.

My stations meteorologist's fauxhawk is better than your station's

2008-07-24T22:28:00.000-05:00

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

McCain Crying Over Attention on Obama in Iraq

2008-07-24T10:11:00.004-05:00

John McCain and his campaign aides are frosted at the media for giving so much attention to Barack Obama's overseas trip, and they accuse reporters of being in love with the Democratic candidate. Apparently no one told them that, as Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz once advised, you should never complain about your problems, because most people don't care, and the rest are happy you have them.

Whining is not a reassuring habit in a political candidate. One thing all presidents and presidential candidates have in common is that sometimes the press coverage won't go their way. Stoic indifference is the best way to respond. If McCain gets in a snit over what The Washington Post does, how will he react when he has to deal with truly aggravating adversaries, like Kim Jong Il?

Besides, it's his own fault that Obama is getting so much attention. For weeks, McCain has been practically taunting his opponent into visiting Iraq--making it that much more newsworthy when Obama actually did.

McCain thought it was important for Obama to see the war firsthand. Now the media is treating the trip as important, and McCain acts as though they shouldn't.

The Arizona senator may be especially resentful because, in past campaigns, he was seen as the media darling--and even jokingly referred to reporters as "my base." But given that experience, he should know that if the press is treating Obama favorably now, it won't last.

Rest assured, if Obama makes a major gaffe while abroad, the media will swarm like piranhas around it, and McCain will be grateful for the coverage. We in the journalism business are like what Churchill said of the Germans: Always at your feet or at your throat.

Anchorman Part Deux!

2008-07-24T09:39:00.002-05:00

Grab your Sex Panther cologne!!!!

Ron Burgundy—back in action?

"Anchorman" writer Adam McKay told ew.com that he and Will Ferrell have started working on a sequel that may take Ron Burgundy and his news posse into the 1980s.

Dreamworks told Entertainment Weekly that it had not yet talked to Ferrell and McKay, about a Part 2 for the cheesy, flute-playing, smooth-talking San Diego news anchor. But the possibilities are intriguing.

The audience will now allow us to do even crazier stuff," McKay told EW, "and that's really all we're looking for in our careers."

Chicago Tribune

During a segment on education, Fox News misspells the word ‘education.’

2008-07-23T22:46:00.001-05:00

Spelling now joins geography on the list of subjects in which Fox News needs a lesson.

'Wall Street got drunk'

2008-07-23T14:33:00.000-05:00

(CNN) — In case you're wondering why our economy is in the toilet, President Bush had the explanation at a closed Republican fund-raiser in Houston last week:

”Wall Street got drunk – it’s one of the reasons I asked you to turn off your TV cameras. It got drunk and now it’s got a hangover. The question is: how long will it sober up.”

The depth of the intellect at the very top of our nation's government is staggering, isn't it?

But... But... But... He Brought Hockey Back

2008-07-22T22:10:00.004-05:00

Norm Coleman has been running a television ad that has a guy in a bowling alley spewing all these great things that Coleman has supposedly "got done" during his tenure in the U.S. Senate... In the ad, voices off screen yell "He brought hockey back!!" after the guy on camera finishes a sentence (as if that is such an important thing... and on a side note, Norm Coleman was the mayor of St Paul when the NHL announced a return to Minnesota and the arena was built, so even if it were important to mention, it is completely irrelevant when it comes to Coleman's Senate tenure)

Anyway, Al Franken has shot back with an ad that spoofs the dumb Coleman "Bowling and Hockey ad... The ad features a man in a bowling alley discussing Norm's many failings as Senator, like voting for giant cuts in student aid, selling out to Big Oil, and rubber-stamping the Bush policy in Iraq. As he hears about more of Norm's record, he realizes that although hockey will always be Minnesota's favorite pastime, Norm Coleman hasn't represented Minnesota well in Washington.:

Robber Nabbed After Writing Note on Back of His Personal Checks

2008-07-22T11:05:00.003-05:00

In another strange but true moment from the great state of FLORIDA of course.....

MARION COUNTY, Fla. -- A bank robber was captured pretty quickly Monday after police noticed that the note he handed a teller demanding cash was written on the back of his own personal check.

The incident began at a Bank Of America on SW 34th Street in Ocala just before 10 am.

Police said a man walked in and handed the teller a note that said he had a .45 caliber pistol and demanding money. After the teller complied and gave the man cash, he fled. Witnesses saw the man jump into a gold compact car driven by another man.

Not content with the first robbery the suspect pulled the same crime at another Bank Of America not far away several hours later. In that robbery the man also gave the teller a note, was given cash and fled. This time witnesses saw the man jump into a taxi and flee.

Police located the taxi soon after along with the suspect was in the back. They arrested 33 year old Patrick Johnson.

Investigators were then able to link Johnson to the crimes when they observed that the notes he had written his demands on were both checks from his personal checking account.

Johnson was transported to the hospital and checked out fine before being transported to jail.

MyFoxOrlando

John McCain is paying for that sandwich with a check

2008-07-21T23:14:00.004-05:00

John McCain wears sneakers with velcro

John McCain gets confused by his remote control

John McCain would remember where he put it if you would just shut up for a few minutes, Dolores

John McCain is winking at that blond mannequin in the store window

John McCain won't make phone calls during thunderstorms

See these and many more by clicking on over on the internet (you just learned how to get on it too, right?) to JohnMcCainisyourjalopy.com

Ambitious McCain Already Redrawing Middle East

2008-07-21T18:59:00.002-05:00

Here's John McCain on Good Morning America, discussing the situation in Afghanistan and noting that it's going to be a "very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border." Unfortunately, as others were quick to point out, the border between Iraq and Pakistan is actually what the rest of us call Iran, which puts a good thousand or so miles between those two nations. Still, I'm not inclined to be too hard on the man; my grandpa could barely find Pakistan on a map, and McCain is almost as old as him.

NBC Sets Leno's Last Day On 'Tonight'

2008-07-21T18:25:00.001-05:00

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) -- Conan O'Brien will take over the "Tonight" Show next June -- and what happens to deposed host Jay Leno after that is anybody's guess.

Leno's last show will be Friday, May 29, and O'Brien will start the following Monday, June 1, NBC executives told a Television Critics Association meeting Monday.

NBC is angling to keep Leno with the network but the late-night king has indicated he's ready to jump ship. Eager NBC competitors, including other networks and syndicators, are eager to help him make the leap.

Ben Silverman and Marc Graboff, NBC Entertainment co-chairmen, were asked about the specter of Leno being hired by ABC and overpowering O'Brien in the ratings.

"We really believe in the decisions we've made with our partners, including Jay" and are standing by them, Silverman replied.

Jimmy Fallon is poised to take over O'Brien's "Late Night" in March or April of 2009, after honing his approach in brief Internet shows, Silverman and Graboff said.

O'Brien will wrap his "Late Night" run sometime in the first quarter of the year, with exact dates to be determined, the executives said. O'Brien reruns will fill the gap until Fallon takes over.

11 Alive

Some disappointed after cops bust strip club that let you have sex with porn stars, cocaine, and had a free cold-cut buffet. "It was fucking awesome"

2008-07-21T08:37:00.005-05:00

Stripper "Janiella," (above) in a photo on the Hot Lap Dance Club’s Web site, was one of 21 employees, including Falynn Rodriguez rounded up in a raid on the nightspot, where officials said patrons could score a lap dance, drugs or sex.
------------------------

Sex with a porn star? $5,000.

Cocaine? Negotiable with the "house dealer."

Booze and Viagra? Bring your own.

The cold-cuts buffet? Gratis.

Lawyers and Wall Streeters could get pretty much anything they wanted at Big Daddy Lou's Hot Lap Dance Club on West 38th Street, officials said yesterday after a vice raid netted 21 of the swanky but illegal club's personnel.

Those hauled out in cuffs from the plush, red-velvet-upholstered alleged bordello include Andrew Rosa, a cop from the private police force of Sea Gate, Brooklyn, who was charged with a misdemeanor, promoting prostitution, for allegedly working there.

Then there's Louis Posner, 52, a Manhattan-based civil lawyer accused of owning the club, a 7,000-square-foot loft on the fifth floor of 344 W. 38th St. that featured live sex shows, big-screen porn movies and a suite of curtained "VIP" bedrooms.

"It was f- - -ing awesome!" one disappointed young customer told a reporter after showing up outside the padlocked club last night. "This was the greatest establishment."

Posner went by "Big Lou" among the customers and "Daddy" among the 40 to 50 women who worked there on any given night, according to law-enforcement sources and the criminal complaint charging him with money-laundering and promoting prostitution.

One dancer called him "sleazy, disgusting and very unloyal" boss who often cajoled the girls into giving him freebies.

His wife, Betty, 56, was charged with helping him launder the proceeds, which the sources said totaled more than $1 million a year.

Two other alleged managers were charged with felony promoting prostitution. Four women, including porn star Alexia Moore, were charged with prostitution after allegedly getting caught having sex with customers behind VIP-room curtains.

Another 13 employees were busted on misdemeanor promoting-prostitution charges, cops said.

Former customers, law-enforcement sources, court papers and the club's Web site paint a portrait of a swinging scene where customers could get anything from sandwiches to sex shows - some involving machines - to outright sex.

Moore, who's real name is Cassandra Malandri, and dancer Falynn Rodriguez, who prosecutors said offered an undercover cop a menage-a-trois sex romp for $5,000, were released last night after posting $1,500 bail.

NY Post

Little Girl Expresses Entire Nation's Sentiments

2008-07-20T18:31:00.003-05:00

Yeah, I know I already posted this a few days ago... But it was classic enough to warrant a re-posting under a new headline.

If you haven't yet seen this video of a little girl crying and running away from George W. Bush at the White House T-ball game, you're in for a treat. And if America's editorial cartoonists are as vapid and unimaginative as has been suggested, expect to see a raft of scribblings with a jug-eared president standing alone as Uncle Sam (helpfully labeled "America") flees his embrace. Hell, it's what I'd do if I could draw.

COMING SOON: Black Dynamite

2008-07-20T18:22:00.002-05:00

When this cat's not busy stickin' it to The Man, he's all about tappin' top-shelf foxy ass. With Michael Jai White.

Visit the website for this upcoming film by clicking HERE.

It looks like a sweet fucking movie by the looks of the trailer

New target in Colombia’s drug war: ecofriendly US users

2008-07-19T21:36:00.002-05:00

Maybe upscale American cocaine users would quit if they knew what growing coca leaves does to the environment?? :)

Bogotá, Colombia

Millions of Americans use cocaine, but few of them consider the millions of acres of forest that have been cleared by coca growers in all corners of Colombia or the blue-billed curassow, a turkey-sized bird that is losing habitat to coca farming.

Ana Maria Caballero believes that many recreational cocaine users are well-educated professionals who also recycle, drive hybrid vehicles, and buy fair-trade products, but that they just don’t understand what cocaine is doing to Colombia’s environment.

Ms. Caballero works for Shared Responsibility, the Colombian government’s effort to raise consumer awareness of cocaine’s impact on one of the world’s most biodiverse nations. The project is led by Vice President Francisco Santos Calderón, who has more than a passing interest in narco-traficking – he was once kidnapped and held for months by Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel.

Colombia’s decades-old, drug-funded, armed conflict is complicated, says Caballero, but environmental devastation is apolitical. “When you talk about deforestation, when you talk about a specific species being threatened because coca is encroaching upon its sole habitat, there’s no political argument there,” she says. “It’s absolutely black and white. You are destroying natural treasures that belong to the world.”

According to Shared Responsibility, 43 square feet of forest are cleared to produce one gram of cocaine, and coca growers have cleared an area the size of New Jersey – nearly five million acres – within Colombia over the past 20 years.

Clandestine cocaine laboratories, which use an array of toxic chemicals, pollute once-pristine waters in remote areas. And slash-and-burn clearing for coca farms is one of the country’s largest sources of air pollution. The clearing also accelerates global climate change, which is shrinking Colombia’s mountaintop glaciers.

Now coca farmers are moving further south and west, into remote areas in the upper Amazon basin and along the border with Ecuador that are havens for many rare plants and animals.
Shared Responsibility and the United Nations office on Drugs and Crime have produced a series of maps labeled “Incidence of Illicit Crops in the Habitats of Endemic Species in Danger of Extinction” that illustrate the problem. Four critically endangered magnolia species, for example, are native only to southwestern Colombia, where coca growers are clearing thousands of acres of land.

Colombia has more bird species than any other country, 1,870 at last count. But rare endemic birds – such as the gorgeted puffleg, a hummingbird discovered just three years ago in southwest Colombia – are losing habitat within their limited ranges to coca cultivation.

Alonso Quevedo, president of the Colombian bird conservation group ProAves, says that in addition to deforestation, there are secondary effects. The coca farmers open previously wild, forested areas to settlement, and others follow to hunt and log.

Shared Responsibility took its photographic exhibit to London’s Trafalgar Square in May and Alex James, bassist for the British band Blur, is a high-profile spokesman in England. But it has not yet made a splash in the United States, which consumes the vast majority of Colombian cocaine.

According to a US Embassy official in Bogotá, the United States is the top cocaine consumer in the world, and Colombia produces 90 percent of that cocaine, likely 600 tons annually. Despite aggressive US-funded eradication efforts, coca fields remain abundant. A recent United Nations report estimated that 250,000 acres of Colombian coca fields were harvested in 2007; US estimates are considerably higher.

Will the Shared Responsibility message actually change the behavior of the estimated six million Americans who use cocaine?

“It’s probably not something that would influence me,” says one environmentally minded, occasional cocaine user who did not want her name used. She says she would rather see a more holistic approach to addressing drugs in society. And she says there are some times when she wants to turn her environmental filter off. “We all have our vices,” she says, “and you don’t want to think about this.”

But Caballero believes increased awareness can cut cocaine use, and she’d like to make connections with governments, universities, and environmental organizations in the United States and elsewhere. “It’s an international problem,” Caballero says. “People don’t understand where their drugs are coming from and that they are feeding this entire process that is not only socially destructive, but very environmentally destructive.”

We Support: Coalition of Immokalee Workers

2008-07-19T21:34:00.000-05:00

Consciousness + Commitment = Change: How and why we are organizing...

The CIW is a community-based worker organization. Our members are largely Latino, Haitian, and Mayan Indian immigrants working in low-wage jobs throughout the state of Florida.

We strive to build our strength as a community on a basis of reflection and analysis, constant attention to coalition building across ethnic divisions, and an ongoing investment in leadership development to help our members continually develop their skills in community education and organization.

From this basis we fight for, among other things: a fair wage for the work we do, more respect on the part of our bosses and the industries where we work, better and cheaper housing, stronger laws and stronger enforcement against those who would violate workers' rights, the right to organize on our jobs without fear of retaliation, and an end to indentured servitude in the fields.

From the people, for the people: Who we are...

Southwest Florida is the state's most important center for agricultural production, and Immokalee is the state's largest farmworker community. As such, the majority of our more than 2,500 members work for large agricultural corporations in the tomato and citrus harvests, traveling along the entire East Coast following the harvest in season. Many local residents, and thus many of our members, move out of agriculture and into other low wage industries that are important in our area, including the construction, nursery, and tourist industries. The community is split, roughly, along the following ethnic/national origin lines: Mexican 50%, Guatemalan 30%, Haitian 10% and other nationalities (mostly African-American) 10%.

We are all leaders: Our history...

We began organizing in 1993 as a small group of workers who met weekly in a room borrowed from a local church to discuss how to better our community and our lives. In a relatively short time we have managed to bring about significant, concrete change.

Combining community-wide work stoppages with intense public pressure -- including three general strikes, an unprecedented month-long hunger strike by six of our members in 1998, and an historic 230-mile march from Ft. Myers to Orlando in 2000 -- our early organizing ended over twenty years of declining wages in the tomato industry.

By 1998, we had won industry-wide raises of 13-25% (translating into several million dollars annually for the community in increased wages) and a new-found political and social respect from the outside world.

Those raises brought the tomato picking piece-rate back to pre-1980 levels (the piece-rate had fallen below those levels over the course of the intervening two decades), but wages remained below poverty level and continuing improvement was slow in coming. At the same time, the phenomenon of modern-day slavery was establishing a foothold in Florida's fields. While continuing to organize for fairer wages, we also turned our attention to attacking involuntary servitude in our state. From 1997-2001, we helped bring three modern-day slavery operations to justice, resulting in freedom for over 500 workers from debt bondage.

Since then, our Anti-Slavery Campaign has earned national and international recognition, based on its innovative program of worker-led investigation and human rights education, and a track record of real success. Our latest victory against indentured servitude came in January of 2007, when a crewleader by the name of Ron Evans was sentenced to 30 years in prison. You can read more about the Evans case and the CIW's work against the most extreme forms of farm labor exploitation by clicking on the following link: "Labor camps keep workers in servitude with crack cocaine," Naples Daily News 9/06. The Evans case was the sixth major servitude case in the past ten years in which the CIW has played a key role in the discovery, investigation, and prosecution of the operation, helping to liberate well over 1,000 workers.

The CIW is a co-founder of the national Freedom Network USA to Empower Enslaved and Trafficked Persons. We are also co-founders and Southeastern US Regional Coordinator for the Freedom Network Training Institute, conducting trainings for law enforcement and social service personnel in how to identify and assist slavery victims, as well as advocating for the full prosecution of all traffickers, including corporations and their sub-contractors. At the state level, we are members of the US Attorneys Anti-Trafficking Task Forces for Tampa and Miami, as well as Florida State University’s statewide Working Group against Human Trafficking through its Center for the Advancement of Human Rights.

In 2001, we turned a new page in our organizing, launching the first-ever farmworker boycott of a major fast-food company -- the national boycott of Taco Bell -- calling on the fast-food giant to take responsibility for human rights abuses in the fields where its produce is grown and picked. The fast-food industry as a whole -- including industry giants such as McDonald's, Burger King, Subway, and Wendy's -- purchases a tremendous volume of fruits and vegetables, leveraging its buying power to demand the lowest possible prices from its suppliers. Through this unprecedented market power, the fast-food industry exerts a powerful downward pressure on wages and working conditions in its suppliers' operations.

The Taco Bell boycott gained broad student, religious, labor, and community support in the nearly four years since its inception, including the establishment of boycott committees in nearly all 50 states and a fast-growing movement to "Boot the Bell" from college and high school campuses across the country. Large scale national actions helped move the boycott forward. For example, in 2003 we organized a 10-day hunger strike outside of Taco Bell headquarters in Irvine, CA -- one of the largest hunger strikes in US labor history, with over 75 farmworkers and students fasting during the 10-day period -- galvanizing the support of national religious, labor, and student organizations and thousands of individuals. During that strike we posed Taco Bell’s executives one question: “Can Taco Bell guarantee its customers that the tomatoes in its tacos were not picked by forced labor?” The company had no answer. In 2004 and 2005, we organized cross-country tours featuring marches and actions in Louisville, KY, and Irvine, CA, lifting the campaign to new heights.

In March 2005, amidst growing pressure from students, churches, and communities throughout the country, Taco Bell agreed to meet all of our demands to improve wages and working conditions for Florida tomato pickers in its supply chain. The boycott victory was celebrated by observers including former President Jimmy Carter, former guitarist for Rage Against the Machine, Tom Morello, and the 21 members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. The Hispanic Caucus said of the accord, "This is a truly historic agreement, marking perhaps the single greatest advance for farm workers since the early struggles of the United Farm Workers. To the the workers and organizers of CIW, we express our deepest gratitude for their determined work for their own dignity and their historic contribution to advancing the cause of labor rights." Click here to read a detailed analysis of this historic agreement.

Following the successful conclusion of the Taco Bell boycott, the national network of allies that had helped carry that campaign to victory consolidated to form the Alliance for Fair Food, signalling the fast-food industry that the Campaign for Fair Food would not stop at Taco Bell. Since its birth in March of 2006, the AFF has become a powerful new voice for the respect of human rights in this country's food industry and for an end to the relentless exploitation of Florida's farmworkers.

And in April of 2007 -- following a two-year battle with the largest restaurant chain in the world, McDonald's -- the Campaign for Fair Food took an important new step forward. With an announcement at the Carter Center in Atlanta (President Jimmy Carter's center for conflict resolution), McDonald’s and the CIW reached a landmark accord that not only met the standards set in the Taco Bell agreement, but also committed the fast-food leader to collaborate with the CIW in developing an industry-wide third party mechanism for monitoring conditions in the fields and investigating abuses. You can read more about the details of the McDonald's agreement by clicking here.

Over the past several years, through the Campaign for Fair Food and our anti-slavery work, Immokalee has evolved from being one of the poorest, most politically powerless communities in the country to become today a new and important public presence with forceful, committed leadership directly from the base of our community -- young, immigrant workers forging a future of livable wages and modern labor relations in Florida's fields. In recognition of their work, three CIW members were recently presented the prestigious 2003 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, the first time the award has gone to a US-based organization in its 20 years of existence. In recent years, the CIW and the Campaign for Fair Food have been recognized by several other institutions, including the World Hunger Year's 2006 Harry Chapin Self-Reliance Award, the Freedom Network's 2006 Wellstone Award, and the 2005 Business Ethics Network's BENNY Award.

We Support: Freedom To Marry

2008-07-19T21:26:00.003-05:00

Marriage is not a monolithic, unchanging institution, even though many people define it that way (or believe that God has defined it that way). Civil marriage and religious marriage are different institutions, but are often confused with each other because states allow the religious ceremony to double as the state ceremony.

There are different marriage laws in all the states and different definitions of marriage in every religious tradition. In addition to this diversity, civil marriage rights in the U.S. have been significantly broadened during the last fifty years.

Civil vs. Religious Marriage
Unlike some religious definitions, civil definitions of marriage do not usually mention childbearing, sexual relations, living arrangements, or religious beliefs or observance.

When clergy or congregations marry couples it is a religious rite, not a civil ceremony, although the government may recognize it. Clergy and congregations choose whom they marry. They aren't compelled to accept the state's marriage definition, and indeed, many religious institutions don't accept it. Many religious institutions are more restrictive than the state, rejecting interfaith marriages or remarriages after divorce. And some have a broader definition, blessing the unions of same-gender couples.

Religious Diversity

There are a variety of views of the purpose of marriage in the religious community; some think gender is irrelevant. Many religious organizations and people of faith have definitions that are probably different from yours.

Some faiths consider marriage an aid to religious instruction. Some call it an expression of committed love. Others say it is mainly for raising children. In some Christian faiths marriage is a sacrament, in others it is not. But whether one agrees with someone else's definition of marriage (or baptism, or sacrament, or communion) one must respect everyone's Constitutional rights of free speech and free exercise of religion.

The Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, Ecumenical Catholic Church, Church of God Anonymous, ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, Reconstructionist Judaism,
Reform Judaism, and Unitarian Universalist Association bless same-gender relationships as a matter of policy.

The United Church of Christ, and various Quaker groups leave the decision to clergy, congregations or local governing bodies.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) allows the blessings of same-gender unions with terminology restrictions.

Entanglement and Discrimination
The federal government and 49 state governments refuse (on what appear to be purely religious grounds) to grant the same legal recognition to same-gender couples that is available to mixed-gender couples who meet the same qualifications. State governments generally let religious ceremonies double as state ceremonies (in some states it is illegal to call a religious blessing a marriage without benefit of a marriage license from the state); the civil definition of marriage covers almost all religious definitions. (Some are more restrictive than the government.) Same-gender relationships are blessed in houses of worship by clergy and congregations from a wide range of religious traditions. The Constitution guarantees religious liberty. but same-gender marriages are still not recognized by almost all U.S. governments.

Civil marriage law has historically been used to legally encode segregation and majority privilege; it was forbidden to members of certain ethnic groups; and forbidden between people who were not members of the same ethnic group (blacks and whites still could not marry each other in some states until the Supreme Court overturned those laws in 1967). Denying legal marriage recognition on the basis of a single characteristic makes it easy to discriminate against everyone who shares that characteristic.

Without civil marriage, families are not legally recognized. In situations involving child custody, medical decisions, burial, and inheritance, preference is given to legally-recognized family members. There are thousands of local, state, and federal laws in which legal marital status determines government treatment of two consenting adults in a relationship. Without legal marriage recognition it is difficult or impossible to legally establish and maintain families(especially when facing opposition from relatives), contrary to the Constitutional right of free association.

Today, many see marriage as the last line of defense for encoding the supposed supremacy of heterosexuality. Only same-gender couples are legally discriminated against in civil marriage in the U.S. States have different requirements for marriage (such as residency and waiting periods, age of consent, kinship restrictions, and blood tests), and different procedures for obtaining a license, but all states and the federal government automatically recognize all marriages and divorces from all states, except those of same-gender couples. Within the last few years "Defense of Marriage" acts have been passed by Congress and more than half the state legislatures. But civil marriage isn't jeopardized by opening it up to more people. There aren't a limited number of licenses; people who support civil marriage for same-gender couples are not asking the state to stop recognizing mixed-gender marriages.

Religious Support for Equal Rights
Many religious organizations, including some that do not recognize religious same-gender marriage, either directly support civil marriage for same-gender couples, support equal rights for same-gender couples, or are opposed to the denial of equal rights for same-gender couples. These include ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, American Friends Service Committee, California Council of Churches, Central Conference of American Rabbis, Church of Religious Science, Ecumenical Catholic Church, Hawai'i Council of Churches, Interfaith Working Group, Pacific Congress of Quakers, Presbyterian Church (USA), Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, Unitarian Universalist Association, and Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches.

The reasons religious organizations support equal rights for same-gender couples are varied. But it is fair to say that most see it as a matter of love, justice, basic fairness, and civil rights. Many agree that legal recognition of same-gender marriage would make very positive moral and social points--that we as a people value committed, caring relationships and do not discriminate on the basis of gender, sexual orientation or religion.

Freedom to Marry is the gay and non-gay partnership working to win marriage equality nationwide. Headed by Evan Wolfson, one of America's leading civil rights advocates and lawyers, Freedom to Marry brings new resources and a renewed context of urgency and opportunity to this social justice movement. Freedom to Marry brings the work of its partner organizations and their many approaches — litigation, legislation, direct action, and public education — into a larger whole, a shared civil rights campaign that fosters heightened outreach to non-gay allies.

Freedom to Marry encourages dialogue with Americans thinking through the need to end discrimination in marriage, provides support to targeted state and local efforts, and promotes fairness for all families, including same-sex couples and the children raised by gay parents. By working to secure equal access to marriage, we help reinforce our country's historic commitment to freedom, the pursuit of happiness, and equal justice for all.

As we advance toward full marriage equality, we promote gains along the way for all families, including same-sex couples and the children raised by gay parents. By working to end the exclusion of same-sex couples and their families from marriage, we help reinforce our country's historic commitment to freedom of religion and the separation of church and state. By ending sex discrimination in marriage, much as we ended race discrimination in marriage a generation ago, we are building a better America, protecting and supporting families, children, and the freedom of choice for all.

British man arrested for sex with sheep, charged with bestiality in London, copyright infringement in Scotland

2008-07-19T13:36:00.004-05:00

RUN SHEEP! RUUUUUUN!!!!!

A Briton has been arrested on suspicion of carrying out a series of sex attacks on sheep, London police said on Friday.

The 27-year-old man was held at his home in Dulwich, south London, on suspicion of bestiality with sheep. He was also wanted in connection of the possession of drugs with intent to supply.

Detectives said the arrest followed allegations made to them in May and June.

"Two male joggers said they had observed a man molesting the sheep in a field at Botany Bay Lane, Chislehurst," police said in a statement.

"A similar incident was reported to police by a stables employee in the area."

Media reports said the man had been barred from visiting farmland while officers carried out their investigation.

"Ladies and gentlemen, O'Hare airport welcomes Mexicana Airlines 802, now arriving at gate 11 . . . 12 . . . 13 . . . 14 . . . 15 . . ."

2008-07-19T13:30:00.002-05:00

CHICAGO -- A Mexicana Airlines flight overshot a runway while landing at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport Friday night and struck a safety barrier, injuring a flight attendant, authorities said.

Flight 802 was arriving from Mexico City just after 7 p.m. when it was stopped by a barrier of lightweight, crushable concrete blocks, authorities said.

The safety barrier, known as an arrestor bed, was specifically installed to stop planes that overshoot runways, said Department of Aviation spokeswoman Karen Pride.

"The good news is the safety enhancements that we had in place worked perfectly and things are OK out there," she said.

One crew member went to the hospital with minor injuries, said Chicago Fire Department spokesman Richard Rosado. Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Tony Molinaro said the injured person was a flight attendant.

Authorities differed on the number of people on board the Airbus A320.

Mexicana Airlines spokesman Adolfo Crespo said there were 145 passengers and crew aboard, but Rosado said 142 people were evacuated using a stair truck raised to the rear of the plane.

The passengers were transported by bus to a nearby terminal.

"Everything went textbook," Rosado said of the evacuation.

Crespo says crosswinds forced the plane's nose gear off the runway, but Molinaro said an investigation will take some time.

The arrestor bed was installed recently, "probably in the past year," Molinaro said.

"It did its job, it stopped the plane," he said.

O'Hare Runway 22L closed Friday, but Pride said she expected it to reopen soon.

"The incident has not significantly affected traffic at the airport," she said.

---

Girl runs away from Bush, chipmunk

2008-07-18T10:08:00.002-05:00

Maybe it was the president. Or that giant chipmunk mascot.

Something made little Emily from Kentucky run away crying after she was called out onto the field to meet President Bush on the South Lawn yesterday after a tee-ball game. Emily took a few steps toward Bush, then a lot more steps back, hugged the fence looking terrified, got pulled up there by some adults and then ran away.

She was going, going, gone.

Lots of kids get nervous during big moments (meeting Santa and birthday parties for example). So, Emily, it's OK. There are a lot of congressional Republicans running away from Bush during this election year too.

Chicago Tribune

John McCain is learning how to use the internets

2008-07-13T20:43:00.003-05:00

Pitiful:

I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself.

How long should it take to "learn" to get online? It's one point and a click.

Next up, John McCain tackles "the google."

NEW DailyDesultory Domain!!!!!

2008-07-13T19:53:00.002-05:00

We are now easily accessible from the following domain:

http://www.dailydesultory.net

Movin' on up, to the east side... To that deeeeeluxe domain name......

Get this "Iraq war" charge off my bill!

2008-07-13T17:52:00.001-05:00

The Bored Kangaroo

2008-07-12T20:36:00.001-05:00

Nas Enters the Fox News Fracas

2008-07-11T21:33:00.003-05:00

More fun with Fox News!

I've always been a fan of Nas... From "If I Ruled the World" back in '96 to "Hip Hop is Dead" in '07 and it continues today after watching the video to his new single "Sly Fox", which is a Fox News diss... Check it out.

Nas has a few choice lyrics for the station in his newest single, "Sly Fox," targeting in particular New York's own Fox 5, and, well, he seems kinda pissed! But there's more to the story, and it involves a strain of the very censorship he inveighs against. Seems he's capitulated in a more personal, extremely well-played battle and is scrapping plans to title his new album Nigger, opting instead for, sadly (and, media frenzy accomplished, smartly), Untitled. Nas tells the WSJ (!) of the sudden change: "Because of the heat coming down on me I saw it becoming a circus. I told myself that if it came to that point that I would make the change, because there's a message in that, too." We suppose there is!

Cubs fans will get cemetery that looks like Wrigley Field

2008-07-11T19:07:00.002-05:00

CHICAGO (AP) -- Finally, the perfect answer for a team that has been killing its fans for 100 years: A place to put their remains.

A Chicago man and Bohemian National Cemetery on the city's North Side are joining forces to build for Cubs fans a final resting place that looks a lot like the spot where they saw their dreams of a pennant die year after year.

Called "Beyond the Vines," the 24-foot long ivy-covered wall is designed to look like the one in dead center at Wrigley Field.

It's all on the drawing board now, but the wall is expected to be up and ready to accept fans in October -- just about the time Cubs fans are starting their annual mantra of "Wait till next year."

And when it does go up, Dennis Mascari the president of Fans Forever, Inc., says it will transform the cemetery experience, if not for the dead, at least for the living.

"When you come to a cemetery to visit a loved one it's usually a pretty sad, gloomy situation," he said, standing on the lawn where the wall will be erected. "But when you come here and visit (what looks like) his home away from home ... Wrigley Field, it's going to be a great feeling for people."

Mascari, 60, is envisioning something special. There will be a stained-glass scoreboard. And at each of the 280 niches in the wall -- "eternal skyboxes, that's what we call them," he says -- there will be an urn emblazoned with the Cubs logo.

Near each urn will be a bronze baseball card with a photograph of the deceased fan who, Mascari said, depending on the wishes of the family can be dressed up in a Cubs hat, Cubs jersey or full Cubs uniform. It could also include the dead fan's 'statistics' such as date of birth, date of death, and maybe their favorite Cubs game and favorite Cub.

There's even talk of piping in Cubs games on speakers so nobody, living or dead, will miss an inning. Not only that, but if this idea appeals to more than 280 Cubs fans, the cemetery has set aside enough land to add a right-field wall and a left-field wall.

The price tag for interment will cost as much as $5,000, the "grand slam" package that includes pick up of the body and delivery to Bohemian for cremation in its brand new $100,000 cremation oven, a service, and, of course, the baseball card plaque and urn.

But Mascari knows there are plenty of fans who have long since died and their remains are just sitting in urns somewhere, waiting for their own Field of Dreams. Interment of those ashes can cost as little as $1,200.

If this sounds, well, crazy, urns with the logo of the Cubs and other sports teams are already on the market and the maker of those urns -- Eternal Image -- says last year that Cubs urns accounted for 10 percent of their Major League urn sales.

And nobody who saw survivors of dead Cubs fans bring photographs to the 2003 playoffs will forget the sight of them trudging home, pictures under their arms, after the Cubs once again failed to reach the World Series.

Besides, Cubs fans have for years been scattering ashes of loved ones at Wrigley Field -- a tradition immortalized by the late singer-songwriter Steve Goodman, in whose "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request" an old man asks his own family to do just that at the "ivy-covered burial ground." Those ashes include some of Goodman's, scattered there by family and friends a year after his death.

That tradition reminds Mascari that his wall can offer something to fans they can't possibly get from having their ashes scattered on the outfield grass: Peace of mind.

"Last year the turf (at Wrigley) was removed," Mascari explained. "So something like this would make sure that fans would never have to worry about any turf being removed and put somewhere else."

Over at Wrigley, the Cubs aren't saying much. Team spokesman Peter Chase said in an e-mail that nobody connected with the team had heard of the wall or wanted to talk about it.

A longtime Cubs fan himself, Mascari hopes the team likes the idea, if for no other reason it might prompt fans to head to his wall and not Wrigley with dead fans' ashes.

But since there won't be a Cubs logo on the wall and the company that makes the urns is already licensed to do so by Major League Baseball, he doesn't think the Cubs can stop the wall if they wanted to.

One man who is talking about it is Philip Roux, the superintendent at the cemetery.

"I think this is great, the best publicity a cemetery could have," said Philip Roux, Bohemian's superintendent.

For one thing, he said it would remind people that the cemetery perhaps best known for being the final resting place for Anton Cermak, the Chicago mayor who was assassinated by a man aiming for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, is still open.

"We have space available," Roux said.

The big test will, of course, be convincing Cubs fans their remains belong in the friendly confines of Bohemian National Cemetery.

Out at Wrigley, where the Cubs were playing this week, fans' opinions varied. Some said they hated the idea. Others said they liked it but wouldn't want their remains to be alone and they just couldn't imagine their family members joining them.

Steve Kopetsky, a 53-year-old fan who lives in Corte Madera, Calif., said he didn't have a problem with spending the money to reserve a spot on the wall as much as he did if word got out that he'd done so.

"My wife would kill me," he said.

But Don Rood, a 31-year-old Chicagoan who wore his "Die-Hard Cub Fan" shirt to the game, said it makes perfect sense.

"What else are you going to do, lay in a box next to loved ones?" he asked. "It would symbolize what your passion is, what you enjoyed about your life."

Favre To Miami?

2008-07-09T20:25:00.005-05:00

From the "Highly Unlikely Department"

This Miami Herald columnist

GREG COTE

gcote@MiamiHerald.com

has a feeling the Dolphins could court Favre if the Packers said "no" if he asked to return after all... HAHAHAHA
------------------------------------

Brett Favre seems like he wants to parachute back into the NFL. They ought to be drawing a big ''X'' in the middle of the Dolphins' huddle and coaxing him to a soft landing right here in Miami.

(Dear Brett: You may have heard. Our weather is somewhat kinder to old bones than Green Bay's. We average about one inch of light snow every 35 or 40 years down here. And don't worry about that pay cut you'd probably have to take. We lead the nation in retiree-pleasing Early Bird specials.)

I know that some of you out there are saying of Favre becoming a Dolphin, ''It could never happen.'' But it could, and I'll tell you why.

I know some others are saying, ''It should never happen.'' But you're wrong. And I'll tell you why on that, too.

Remember that need + need = possibility.

Favre by most indications is a quarterback who needs to play again. Seems he has had a change of heart and wishes to recant his March 4 retirement, but Green Bay appears to have yanked away the welcome mat, like Lucy used to yank away the football just as Charlie Brown was about to kick it.

But Miami is a team that needs a QB it can trust and rely on in 2008. Favre last missed a game in 1992. Seriously. Tomorrow's sunrise cannot be trusted and relied on like this dude.

Granted, plenty could prevent this brief-but-blissful marriage from happening, such as Favre staying retired (unlikely) or (more likely) the Dolphins' hierarchy misguidedly thinking that rebuilding means you don't try to be as good as you possibly can now.

If you're Miami of course you don't pursue Favre if you believe that veteran journeyman Josh McCown is better. But not even people in McCown's family could possibly believe that.

You don't pursue Favre if you think John Beck will be ready, in two months, to make your team as good as Favre would. But you know that isn't the case, either.

And you don't pursue Favre if you are committed to handing the future, right now, to Chad Henne. But that also isn't the situation, as Henne prepares for the NFL equivalent of a redshirt season.

So here's what you do, Dolphins: You do what Green Bay isn't doing. You welcome Favre back to football. You trade lame-duck Jason Taylor (whom the Packers have coveted) to get him. You put McCown up for sale. And then you let Beck and Henne develop for a year under the unhurried tutelage of a master -- thereby being as good a team as you can be right now while also letting the roots take on future success at that position.

From Miami's perspective, having a quality QB now, even for one year, makes sense because the team ought not forsake 2008 in the name of rebuilding. This is a team that lost six games by only three points last year despite itself. A team much improved. And a team with what seems a ridiculously soft schedule. Add Favre and you're thinking .500. Maybe even wild-card hunt.

Dolfans have suffered too much for too long to see their club dismiss this coming season as hopeless. If you can shoot for a dramatic turnaround now while also shaping your future, you do both at once.

IT MAKES SENSE

From Favre's perspective, there also is some logic. This is a team that spent its past two No. 1 picks on a receiver and a blocker. A team with two solid running backs. A team with the imprimatur of Bill Parcells in charge. And a team whose fans will regard you as a civic hero if you win six games and a saint if you win eight.

It makes sense in so many ways.

The old ''he-should-stay-retired'' argument does not apply here. Favre looked closer to tank-full than on-fumes last season. He made the Pro Bowl, completed a career-high 66.5 percent of his passes, threw for 4,155 yards and 28 touchdowns, took his second-fewest sacks ever as a starter and had his lowest interception rate since 2000. Favre went out with his best QB rating (95.7) in more than a decade. He was just plain great, in other words.

The old ''he's-broken-down-physically'' notion certainly doesn't apply.

The ''he-should-go-out-a-Packer'' sentiment hardly fits, either. He surely would, if there were indications the Pack wanted him back. But there aren't. Besides, Favre would hardly be setting precedent. Johnny Unitas went out a Charger, Joe Namath a Ram and Joe Montana a Chief. Did Michael Jordan finish as a Bull? Oh, and Dan Marino came very, very close to signing with the Vikings in 2000, by the way.

Favre saying of the comeback, ''it's all rumor,'' hardly qualifies as him snuffing out the speculation. Packers cornerback Al Harris said, ''I know he has the itch to come back and play.'' Favre's brother told a Milwaukee TV station Favre has been working out and that he ''wouldn't be surprised'' if his brother un-retired. Their mother told a different station that Favre thinks Packers general manager Ted Thompson -- who has invested three years in first-round pick Aaron Rodgers and just drafted two other QBs -- doesn't want him.

DANCING NO. 99

Meantime, Favre has yet to file formal retirement papers with the league, meaning he is technically an active player with three years left on his contract.

So if he chose to come back but the Packers weren't interested, they'd have to trade him or release him. In that scenario The Dancing Defensive End, No. 99, might be enough to make a deal work.

Is it all far-fetched? Maybe. But the best ideas often seem that way -- until somebody has the foresight or nerve to make them real.

Free Money!!!!!????

2008-07-09T20:10:00.002-05:00

(WCCO) It's one of the best kept political secrets in Minnesota: Free money. The state will give you $50 for contributing to an election campaign.

It's TRUE.

If you donate to a political party, or a candidate for statewide office, or a candidate for Minnesota legislature, fill out this form, and the state sends you back up to $50. Seriously.

IN FACT...

Since 1995, the state of Minnesota refunded almost $58 million to Minnesota donors who gave money to political campaigns. Some call it the "Ronald Reagan Effect".

Here's WHY.

State and federal political donations used to be deductible on state and federal income tax forms. However, a massive overhaul of America's tax system by President Reagan abolished the deduction.

And Minnesota replaced it with a refund program to encourage small givers.

That's NOT THE WHOLE STORY.

The refund only applies if you donate to candidates who agree to public spending limits on their campaigns. The contribution is over and above the public money they already get from the state. However, the money also goes to political parties, and it's a lot of money.

So here's what you NEED TO KNOW.

Political parties, not candidates, get almost half of all that tax money going out in campaign refunds.

To check the resources click on the links below.
Minnesota Political Contribution Refund
Tax Information: Political Contribution Refund
Form: 2007 Political Contribution Refund Application
2006 Contribution Refund Summary by Candidates
2006 Contribution Refund Summary by Political Party

From my great (albeit sometimes VERY weird) home state of Florida

2008-07-09T20:02:00.003-05:00

"Can I ask a ? without you calling the cops?"

Guess the answer was no...

Police: Firefighter Asked Child To 'Talk Dirty'

PALM BAY, Fla. -- A Palm Bay Fire-Rescue firefighter faces legal trouble after a law enforcement agency charged him with text-messaging a 13-year-old girl and asking her if she liked to "talk dirty.”The new charges from West Melbourne police come less than two weeks after Gary Lynn Sebastian was charged June 25 by Palm Bay detectives with having computer pornography, lewd and lascivious conduct, promotion of a sexual performance by a child and child abuse, Local 6 News partner Florida Today reported.In the West Melbourne case, police said Sebastian sent a child in their jurisdiction several sex-laced text messages. One of the messages allegedly read, "R U Alone? Can I ask a ? without U calling the cops? Do you like to talk dirty to guys..."

Local 6

Better At Achieving a More Immediate Relief Than Offshore Drilling

2008-07-09T15:56:00.003-05:00

Rampant speculation in the commodities futures market is driving up prices
out of proportion to marketplace demands. The problem is speculators are
increasingly buying and selling commodities such as oil even though they
have no intention of using the product. The unregulated speculators are
pocketing billions of dollars at our expense. The cost of food has gone
up, the price at the pump has gone way up, and I'm already concerned about
how much more it will cost to heat my home this winter.

To lower oil prices for all Americans we need to increase domestic supply,
exploration, alternative energy sources and conservation. We also must
protect bona fide speculation and hedging.

To address excessive speculation, Congress should promptly take the
following actions:

1. Re-establish strict position limits on energy commodities - Position
limits have existed since 1936 and work well at curtailing excessive
speculation. Any trader that in not hedging with the intention of taking
physical delivery of a commodity must be subject to strict position limits
in all contract months.

2. Close the London Loophole - Foreign Boards of Trade with U.S. Terminals
trading futures contracts that cash-settle against U.S. contracts should
face the exact same regulations as U.S. exchanges. It is not fair for U.S.
futures exchanges to face more regulation than their foreign counterparts
trading in U.S. commodities.

3. Regulate "swaps trades" - All trades in the over-the-counter (OTC)
swaps market must be subject to strict position limits. It is unfair to
exempt swaps dealers from the same regulations that other market
participants face. Experts have estimated the size of the OTC markets as
nine or ten times larger than the futures markets.

4. Fully close the "Enron loophole" - "Exempt Commercial Markets" that
trade U.S. contract which are nearly identical to fully regulated
contracts should no longer be exempt from the same regulations that apply
to Designated Commercial Markets such as the NYMEX.

5. Bring transparency to all energy trading - Positions of traders in all
markets should be reported to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission
(CFTC) and should be properly categorized based on where the trades occur
and who is doing the trading. This will provide vital information that can
be used to detect and prevent market manipulation.

Stimulus Checks have been helping to stimulate... uh... um...

2008-07-07T23:36:00.003-05:00

Adult Web sites enjoy boost from stimulus checks

Seems Uncle Sam's economic stimulus checks are boosting an unlikely part of the economy.

Adult entertainment Web sites began seeing a spike in business shortly after the first wave of checks went out in mid-May, according to Adult Internet Market Research Co., a New York firm that tracks the adult online world.

The checks paid up to $600 to individuals and $1,200 to married couples.

The online spike is unusual because the warmer months — beginning in May — tend to be slow for the adult online entertainment industry, said Kirk Mishkin, director of the market research firm.

The market research firm was alerted to the increase by one of its for-pay Web sites.

"Thirty-two percent of respondents referenced the recent stimulus package as part of their decision to either become a new member or renew an existing membership," said Jillian Fox, a spokeswoman for LSGModels, the company that tipped off the research firm.

The market research firm polled the rest of its 800 pay-site members and 4,000 affiliate sites and found similar results after compiling data over seven weeks.

Some 20 percent to 30 percent of the people who responded said the stimulus checks were an incentive to go onto the sites, Mishkin said.

The surveys didn't ask how much of the stimulus checks went to online visits, Mishkin said, but purchases tend to be about $50 for a monthly membership.

"People know how much they need to pay for rent, buy gas and take their kids to school," he said. "The stimulus check was a way for some people to entertain themselves."

AJC

Identi.ca - Like Twitter But Open Source

2008-07-04T00:13:00.002-05:00

Identi.ca is a new microblogging site which of course begs comparison to the mother of all microblogs, Twitter; however, it’s not merely a Twitter clone. Rather, it’s open source and runs on a CreativeCommons license, providing users with a transparent service that preserves their autonomy, meaning that if you don’t like how Identi.ca works, you can take your own data and move it to another account or server. Also, friends on other microblogging services will be able to receive your messages. This will probably appeal to those frustrated by Twitter’s shortcomings—e.g. its frequent outages and downtimes.

Identi.ca does stick with the classic 140 character limit. All content is supported by CC licenses. Currently, features are limited, but there’s definitely more in the works including, SMS updates, maps, cross posting capability, Facebook integration, hashtags, and media updates. You can sign up for a free account now.

Kanye West Sucessfully Makes Vodka Less Appealing

2008-07-03T09:48:00.003-05:00

Kanye West has achieved the impossible! He's made us not want to drink vodka. Hip-hop's biggest ego is appearing in a viral ad campaign for Absolut vodka that may cause nausea before you take your first sip of the mediocre brand of potato juice.

The "Be Kanye" spot features West, a blonde chick, and a schlubby white dude pretending to be in a cheesy infomercial for a "Be Kanye" tablet that lets you experience Kanye's magical superstar powers. If you call 1-877-BE-KANYE or go to www.bekanyenow.com, it turns out, it's all fake! Surprise! There are no special Kanye tablets, just a cheesy, trying-too-hard-to-be-hip marketing scheme. Kanye is no stranger to shilling, his current tour is sponsored by Absolut and he's designing a shoe line for Louis Vuitton, but this spot is a new low.

Orlando Thrill Ride Used To Stake Out Crime

2008-07-02T09:41:00.003-05:00

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Three people are accused of using a thrill ride on Orlando's tourist-filled International Drive to stake out a robbery.

"It's kind of an unusual way to rob someone," Orange County sheriff's representative Jeff Williamson said. "Casing isn't anything new. However, the way they did it seemed to be a bit unusual.

Investigators said an unidentified man and woman were videotaped on the Slingshot thrill ride at the Magic Midway on International Drive. The pair was apparently staking out a ride operator during the ride.After the ride closed, the woman spotted earlier on the ride used deception to get the ride operator to stop his vehicle as he was leaving the amusement area.

The man then rushed the victim's car, opened a car door and demanded money, police said.However, during the incident, the ride operator sped away. While fleeing, one of the men threw a brick into the vehicle's window.The man is described as a 20-year-old who is covered in tattoos, including a teardrop tattoo under his eye. The woman is 5 feet 7 inches tall with long brown hair.A description for a third man was not given.Anyone with information concerning the crime is urged to call Crimeline at 800-423-TIPS.Watch Local 6 News for more on this story.

Kentucky woman accused of trading sex for fuel

2008-07-02T09:28:00.003-05:00

FORT WRIGHT, Ky. --

Police in northern Kentucky arrested a woman who officers say traded sex for gasoline.

Police in Fort Wright set up a prostitution sting and said one of the suspects they arrested engaged in sex for a $100 gasoline card and other gifts.

Thirty-four-year-old Angela Eversole of Fort Wright is charged with prostitution and doing business without an occupational license. She pleaded not guilty at a Tuesday arraignment.

Police also arrested a man they said paid Eversole. He is 50-year-old Kenneth Nowak of Avon, Indiana.

Kenton County prosecutor Ken Easterling said it's sad when people are selling their bodies for gas.

KY Enquirer

John McCain relates to young people... by referencing a movie released 46 years ago

2008-07-01T00:44:00.001-05:00

I wonder who McCain is taking to the sock hop Friday night... Maybe whomever it is will go to make out point and neck with him afterward.

Man to Cops: "Just relaxing in the park."

2008-07-01T00:39:00.003-05:00

FORT PIERCE — A 41-year-old man who told police he was just “relaxing” with his pants undone at the Fort Pierce Community Center was arrested and charged Saturday with lewd or lascivious exhibition/masturbation.

Fort Pierce Police officers saw Nicodeme Petion sitting in the driver’s seat with his pants open, belt unbuckled with a sock over his genital area, according to a police report. Before police contact with Petion, a family with young children walked past his 1994 green Chevy Caprice and the mother looked inside the car and quickly ran over and picked up her child to escort them pass Petion’s vehicle, according to a police report.

Petion told officers he was “just relaxing in the park” and that his pants were open because he was “hot,” according to a police report.

Also, officers found a black and red book bag with 11 condoms, a pamphlet on STD awareness, Latina babes pornographic magazine, two white ankle socks and one black sock with possible seminal secretions.

Also, Petion was cited for driving while his license was suspended.

TCPalm

Lawmaker says he'll defy city's ban on weapons by bringing gun to airport

2008-07-01T00:31:00.003-05:00

You could call it the Atlanta version of "High Noon."

Top city officials will announce Tuesday that despite a new state gun law that went into effect at midnight, they will have anyone carrying a weapon at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport arrested. The state lawmaker who sponsored the new gun law says if they do, the city will immediately be sued. And state Rep. Tim Bearden (R-Villa Rica) said the plaintiff in the lawsuit could be himself.

"I have a permit, and I have family I have to pick up at the airport tomorrow [Tuesday]," Bearden told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday. "I'll have one [a concealed weapon] with me at all times."

Airport General Manager Ben DeCosta said if Bearden shows up at the world's busiest airport with a gun, he'll be busted.

"I can identify him, and I'll have him arrested," DeCosta said Monday. "We're not fooling around. This is a post-terrorism environment."

The new law, which Bearden sponsored, permits licensed gun owners to carry concealed firearms in parks, on public transportation and in restaurants that serve liquor. The law takes effect Tuesday.

Firearms proponents hailed the law as a victory for the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. They say law-abiding citizens with the appropriate permits should be allowed to carry firearms in formerly forbidden areas for self-protection.

Before the new law was passed, Georgia law banned guns from venues like public transportation and restaurants serving alcohol. More than 40 other states permit guns on public transportation, Bearden said, and 37 allow permit holders to carry weapons into restaurants.

"I was in law enforcement for 15 years," Bearden said as the bill awaited the governor's signature two months ago. "I never rode up on a shooting in progress. I don't like the idea of the police telling you, 'Get mugged, get raped, get murdered. We'll come by, take the report, or send flowers.' That's the wrong message."

Opponents, however, blasted the proposal, saying it has the potential to spark more violence than it stops. DeCosta wrote to Gov. Sonny Perdue asking him to veto the bill, and Mayor Shirley Franklin and MARTA officials publicly lambasted the idea. MARTA bus drivers gathered more than 1,000 signatures on petitions demanding bulletproof shields.

Federal law already bans guns past the security checkpoints at U.S. airports. The new state law, however, apparently would permit guns to be carried on the non-secure side of Hartsfield-Jackson by people who have gone through a background check and have been certified to carry a weapon. Licensed gun owners would be permitted to carry weapons on public transportation coming into the airport, its lobby and in restaurants outside the security checkpoints.

DeCosta said he will use the first day the new law takes effect to declare Hartsfield-Jackson a "gun-free" zone.

"We're going to make it clear that the law does not make any allowance for guns at the airport," DeCosta said. "Guns are not appropriate for any airport in Georgia."

He and Franklin plan a 10 a.m. news conference to discuss the new gun law.

Bearden said the new law clearly permits guns in some areas of the airport.

"They are not appropriate once you go past security," he said. "But in parking lots or restaurants or public transportation, they are OK."

The state lawmaker said the city does not have the authority to defy a state law, and if they make arrests they will end up in court.

DeCosta said city officials will not back down from their position on the new law and again vowed to have Bearden or anyone else carrying a gun on airport property arrested.

"He can then have all the NRA [National Rifle Association] lawyers say why it's OK for him to bring a gun to the airport," DeCosta said.

MARTA, meanwhile, released a statement late Monday noting that state law prohibits firearms on public transit unless the carrier has a valid license to carry a gun.

"This license must be carried at any time that an individual is carrying a firearm on MARTA," the statement said.

AJC

Wisconsin Sculptor Gets Cheesy

2008-06-29T16:50:00.003-05:00

LITTLE CHUTE, Wis. - A Wisconsin sculptor's version of a historical painting is a bit cheesy.

Troy Landwehr has carved a version of John Trumbull's painting "Declaration of Independence" in a 2,000-pound block of cheddar.

The artist's painting of the historic signing hangs in the Capitol in Washington and graces the back of the $2 bill.

The cheesy version is to be displayed near Independence Mall in Philadelphia for July 4, then returned to Wisconsin to be shown at Landwehr's Kerrigan Brothers Winery.

The cheddar will eventually be cut up and sent to food pantries.

It is Landwehr's second project for Kellogg Co.'s Cheez-It cracker brand. Last year, he did several renditions of Mount Rushmore.

WINK News - Ft Myers

Weekend Pundit Roundup

2008-06-29T16:44:00.004-05:00

Like I said... I'm toning down the political aspect of this site... but you can't not have a weekend pundit roundup!!!

David Broder: Breaking! I've just discovered that George Bush spent nearly eight years dumbing down the presidency. Who knew? And they say I've lost my touch. Hah! Watch me make this bipartisan.

Peter Wehner: "I am a conservative evangelical, and even I am offended by James Dobson's dishonest critique of Barack Obama's theology." And believe me when I tell you that when it comes to conservative evangelical dishonest Democrat-bashing critiques, it takes a heck of a lot to offend me.

Frank Rich: A terror attack help McCain? An urban myth, like alligators in the NY sewers.

But let’s put ourselves in Mr. Black’s shoes and try out the Rove playbook at home — though not in front of the children — by thinking the unthinkable. If a terrorist bomb did detonate in an American city before Election Day, would that automatically be to the Republican ticket’s benefit?

Not necessarily. Some might instead ask why the Bush White House didn’t replace Michael Chertoff as secretary of homeland security after a House report condemned his bungling of Katrina. The man didn’t know what was happening in the New Orleans Convention Center even when it was broadcast on national television.

Peggy Noonan: How the mighty have fallen! Reagan's people could steal your wallet right under your nose and get you to blame your Democratic grandmother. McCain's people? "What a hotbed of incompetent manipulation they have become." Rank amateurs!

Y'know McCain ought to unleash his inner "straight talk express" and start telling people what he really thinks of George Bush. He'd still lose, of course, but at least it'd be a good deal more interesting than what we're getting from McCain now.

Gail Collins: On Barack and Hillary:

Do they really like each other? I think I speak for most of the nation when I say that on the list of things that keep us up at night, it does not make the top 1,000. It is, in fact, right down there with the fate of the Clinton campaign debt.

Well, I still can't figure out why he won and she didn't (they are so very similar to my eye), but can we start talking about Obama vs McCain now? It's time to move on.

Bob Herbert:

Congress and the public do not know nearly enough about the nation’s post-Sept. 11 interrogation practices. When something as foul as torture is on the table, there is a tendency to avert one’s eyes from the most painful truths.

It’s a tendency we should resist.

Maureen Dowd:

It’s hard to fathom why Obama should be mau-maued into paying off the debt that Hillary and Bill accrued attacking and undermining him, while mismanaging the campaign and their nearly quarter-billion-dollar war chest so horribly that one Hillaryland insider told The New Republic that it bordered on fraud.

MN girl severs fingers in tug-of-war accident

2008-06-28T01:10:00.006-05:00

Webmaster's Note: O.J. Simpson has been vacationing in Fergus Falls all week... Possible that he is responsible for this????? :)

Courtesy of the "Freak Accident That Makes Me Wonder How Many Times I Was In Danger As A Child" Department:

FERGUS FALLS, Minn. -- An 8-year-old girl from Fergus Falls is recovering from multiple surgeries after she had four fingers severed during a tug-of-war game at a charity benefit.

Alyssa Martin was at the I-94 BMX track in Fergus Falls on June 20 for a "Race for Life" fundraiser for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Her father, Cameron Martin, is the track's director.

During an intermission, Alyssa Martin was participating in a tug-of-war for kids. Her left hand was wrapped around the rope and apparently got caught, severing four fingers.

She was rushed to North Memorial Hospital in the Twin Cities, and since then has had multiple surgeries to reconstruct her fingers. Probes in her fingertips are being used to track temperature changes in the damaged limbs.

Cameron Martin said his daughter, who is right-handed, was moved from intensive care to a pediatric ward on Thursday, and that's she's feeling much better.
"Even though she's going through the pain, as a parent it's almost harder to see her have to go through this. It's really tough," Cameron Martin said.

Brent Schiefert, a family friend, said doctors are optimistic that Alyssa will get full range of motion back in her fingers but won't know for sure for another six week until the tissue heals and bones set.

The Martins are a family of active BMX racers, and Alyssa is currently ranked eighth in the nation for her age division.

Cameron Martin said her goal is to be back racing within two years.
"After they start with the rehab, I don't think it will take that long for her," Cameron Martin said. "The strength and outlook she has is unbelievable for an 8-year-old, and we knew she'd be the same fun, incredible girl no matter what happened."

KARE 11

MadLibs: This American Life Edition

2008-06-27T23:37:00.003-05:00

Ira Glass' This American Life is the darling of Generation X. Its segments—first on NPR and now available (in high definition!) on Showtime—have provided a valuable census of liberal America's cultural consciousness since 1996. And honestly, Radar can't get enough of the show.

That's why we decided to create a This American Life–themed RadLib. Now, your dreams of Ira narrating some touching yet inoffensive slice of your middle- to upper-class existence can become a reality.

Try it out for yourself at Radar

It's fun

Boy tackled by Colo. mayor gets restraining order

2008-06-26T16:11:00.001-05:00

GREELEY, Colo. (AP) - The mayor of this northern Colorado city has a temporary restraining order against him after he was accused of throwing a 15-year-old boy to the ground when the teen refused to stop riding a motorbike.

Mayor Ed Clark, who must stay at least 100 yards away from the boy, told the Greeley Tribune he stopped the boy for his own safety and did not hurt him. He said he will fight the restraining order during a July 7 hearing.

The boy's father, Tim Stitt, plans to ask the judge to make the restraining order permanent.

Stitt said Clark forced the boy to the ground on Monday and then held him there until police arrived. Police ticketed the boy for driving without a license.

The father said Clark should be charged with assault. Greeley police spokeswoman Joe Tymkowych said Wednesday an investigation was ongoing.

Stitt said his son and Clark have been at odds for weeks after his son had a dispute with the mayor's wife. Stitt said Clark confronted his son at a basketball court and told him "bad things are going to happen" if he didn't stop showing disrespect to his wife.

Clark is a former police officer who works as a security director at a charter school and recently took a part-time job as an investigator with the Weld County district attorney's office.

Ok... One Last Political Thing... For awhile

2008-06-26T16:02:00.003-05:00

Holy shit! I actually liked something that ol' conservative addict Glen Beck said...

"People do not have the right to jam their version of God (or no God) down anybody else's throat."

I agree with that, and that is why I choose to not mix my religion and my politics... MAYBE more of you conservatives should read the quote above and live by that from now on...

Um...

Uh....

I never thought I would say the following...

?Thanks Glen Beck?

A Day in the Life of a TiVo DVR:

2008-06-26T14:22:00.006-05:00

TiVo: "Hey, you like Three's Company, well I also recorded Square Pegs... You're WELCOME!"

-That Concludes "A Day in the Life of a TiVo DVR"

A Note From The Blogger-In-Chief of DailyDesultory:

2008-06-26T14:05:00.003-05:00

After careful consideration and a good sized amount of reflection, it has come to my attention that the direction that this blog has been taking as of late is not the direction I intended it to go. The byline in the header states "Offbeat News... Politics... Random Stuff..." but it seems that recently I have been letting the political stuff overshadow the offbeat news items and the 'random stuff'. I understand, yes, that it is important to point out things that people need to know so that the same mistakes made in 2000 and 2004 are not made again, but I really didn't intend for this to be a heavily political blog. I have decided that there will be a very small amount of political content in future posts until further notice. I need to start getting feedback from readers about the other types of content in this blog.

Ryan Fagan
Webmaster

The Grand Unified Theory of Conservatism: Idiocracy

2008-06-26T10:21:00.001-05:00

The mark of a good theory in science is it unites previously disparate facts within a single unifying explanatory framework. And here, finally, we have evidence, a final piece in the puzzle, for a heretofore suspected but not yet fully accepted Unified Theory of Conservatism: Intentional Stupidity at the highest levels of the GOP AKA Idiocracy. I posit we could explain and unite just about any of the many Bush/GOP clusterfucks in one single willfully ignorant theme so well demonstrated by this:

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week. ...Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, refused to comment on discussions between the White House and the Environmental Protection Agency. Asked about changes in the original report, Mr. Fratto said, "It’s the E.P.A. that determines what analysis it wants to make available" in its documents.

No doubt intentionally avoiding reports and thus not knowing what's in them makes not commenting on it a much smoother process. But I propose this head in the sand approach helps explain more, much more. For example, it predicts that when senior government leaders refuse to even hear empirical data that might challenge their precious-s-s-s extremist warped ideology, we might end up blowing a trillion dollars and expending thousands of lives and limbs needlessly in a war against the wrong fucking country while the real bad guys slip away; or that fuel prices might skyrocket leaving American families in a bleak, unending bind with little or no alternatives; or that conservatives might ignore a category five hurricane bearing down on the most vulnerable city in the nation even though it had been predicted for decades and then blame it on a parade; or a looming housing crisis leaving entire families from shore to shore homeless; it even predicts that big fat tax gifts for a few rich people won't lead to an economic Mecca for the working man as promised by neocon idiots, but only to a few richer rich people ... really, need we continue?

At some point in the near future history of this great nation, "Republican" or "Conservative" might just become a generic insult synonymous with dipshit precisely because dangerously stupid has become the premier conservative governing philosophy: Shut up, don't open emails, don't read analyst reports, dismiss empirical evidence in favor of wishful thinking, keep your heads in the sand, and don't strain your faith-based noggins worrying about stuff like some silly report back in August 2001 that might say Bin Laden determined to strike in the US until it's too late. Think about that elite asshole in the corner of the country club social with the hot date and martini; shit doesn't that dumbass piss you off? Now, watch this drive, enjoy tonight's episode of rehabilitation, and drink your Brawndo, it has what plants crave!

An Entry From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...

2008-06-26T09:58:00.002-05:00

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...

Dear President Bush,

It's been awhile since we talked. Just busy, I guess.

Anyway, I want to Congratulate you. You win. In fact, you win big-time. It's time for me to admit it: you came, you saw, you kicked ass.

Over the course of the past seven and a half years, you and your wingman Dick Cheney have gotten virtually everything you demanded, much if it without a fight. You used a national tragedy to clamp down on Americans' civil liberties and launch a war against a country that neither caused that tragedy nor threatened us at all. You pretty much halted government-supported scientific research and environmental protection in their tracks. You did nothing to solve the health care crisis. You politicized the Justice Department. You worked hard to breach the church-state levee in the government, and then played patty-cake while the real levees collapsed into countless people's back yards. You gave big business (especially big oil, big finance and big military-industrial complex) free reign to "self-police." You made your elite base very, very rich, while using your shiny lapel pin to awe-strike your poorer, more ignorant base.

I mean, you are so talented that you even managed to break the Census Bureau. My gosh, even Reagan couldn’t figure out how to do that.

And through it all you avoided repercussions. Even losing GOP House and Senate majorities hasn’t slowed you down much. There's so much raw evidence to impeach your ass that it would be as easy as Dick Cheney shooting a lawyer in the face. The rap sheet is a mile long. Yet you remain 100 percent unscathed, threatened by nothing more than a pretzel getting stuck in your craw. That's amazing. My peasant hat is off to you.

Seriously, all you've "suffered" (if you can call it that) is low approval ratings. Big deal. As long as you have your 25 percent "base" that thinks you walk on water, you can do anything you want. Smirk. Dance. Ride your bike. Wave. Swagger. Intimidate the Democratic leadership with the word "Boo!", beat the traditional media so senseless that when you say "jump" they put on rocket shoes and blast off for the stratosphere. Smirk some more. Clear some more brush. Hell, you can do pretty much anything you damn well please.

So, sincerely: congratulations. You may have wrecked the country and your party, but so what? You got everything that you, George W. Bush, wanted out of your time in office. You should have no regrets, since you telescoped your intentions to everyone well in advance (yes, even back in school). And in seven months you'll retire and open up a Texas-size think tank disguised as a presidential library that will perpetuate your propaganda and your policies. ("Oh look, Heritage Foundation...you have a baby brother!")

Many will say your administration was a failure, but that only works if they're thinking about the welfare of the country and its 300 million citizens. Your presidency was never about them (just ask the Supreme Court)---it was about you taking care of your circle of rich, power-hungry, war-mad cronies while simultaneously setting out to prove how much the federal government can suck. On that score, you may indeed be the best president ever.

Love, Billy

Via DailyKos

Uh Oh!! Insurance Company Lacked Full Insurance

2008-06-26T09:36:00.001-05:00

June 25 (Bloomberg) -- United Fire & Casualty Co., the Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based property and casualty insurer, said it was flooded out of its headquarters and expects to incur costs because it's not fully covered by insurance.

United Fire moved 200 workers, including Chief Executive Randy Ramlo, to a temporary office on June 20 after the overflowing Cedar River triggered an evacuation, the company said in a statement today. Floodwaters as high as six feet destroyed computer equipment and everything else in the main office's first floor.

``Everything is brown and stinky and gooey,'' Ramlo said by telephone from the office in Norway, 17 miles southwest of Cedar Rapids. Financial losses from the flood won't be of ``material financial consequence'' to second-quarter earnings, he said.

Floods and severe weather in the Midwest, especially along the Mississippi River, have killed 24 people since late May, forced more than 38,000 from their homes and inundated at least 3.4 million acres in three states, an area larger than Connecticut. The worst flooding in 15 years was the result of storms in the Midwest.

Living in RV

United Fire did have some flood insurance, said Chief Financial Officer Dianne Lyons. Flooding forced her to forsake her own home in downtown Cedar Rapids for a recreational vehicle, she said.

``We consider ourselves good analyzers of risk,'' Lyons said, declining to provide the percentage of risk taken by the company or an estimate of the cost of the damage. The main office still has three to four inches of water, she said.

United Fire is open, serving policyholders and agents in more than 41 states, according to Ramlo.

``It's functioning as it's supposed to be,'' said Beth Malone, an analyst at Keybanc Capital Markets who rates United Fire shares ``hold.'' ``The downside is that it certainly creates some logistical challenges.''

America Plunged Into the Horror of "The Deep V"

2008-06-25T18:55:00.003-05:00

Even the most clueless observer will have noted a disturbing new trend emerging among the male of the species these days: the deep V-neck T-shirt. We're not talking about the ratty white Hanes with the yellow-stained armpits that your dad used to wear while cleaning the garage. No, this is a far more insidious epidemic, recognizable by its long, deep V, supple fabric, and retro color schemes. But why is it happening? And what does it say about us?

Kanye West is a Cry Baby

2008-06-25T18:46:00.003-05:00

It looks like Kanye West is not too happy about his recent performance at the Bonnaroo festival

From his blog:

I am sick of negative people who just sit around trying 2 plot my downfall... Why???? I understand if people don't like me because I like me or if people think tight clothes look gay or people say I run my mouth to much, But this Bonnaroo thing is the worst insult I've ever had in my life. This is the most offended I've ever been... this is the maddest I ever will be. I'm typing so fucking hard I might break my fucking Mac book Air!!!!!!!! (Click here if you haven't gotten enough and want to read the whole blog entry)

Woopra: Better Analytical Tracking and it's FREE

2008-06-25T17:10:00.003-05:00

I just downloaded it and can't wait to see how much better it is than Google Analytics!

LIVE Tracking and Web Statistics:
Woopra’s revolutionary server architecture, combined with its intuitively designed client software, enables seamless tracking of visitors. Webmasters can track over 40 different statistical events and analytics. Never before has so much information been instantaneously available to Webmasters. Most analytical and site statistics are updated once a day at the least, or several times during the day. With Woopra, you get live track of visitors coming and going and moving through your site. You get the stats now.

Real-Time Analytics:
Woopra redefines Web Analytics by enabling instantaneous information transfer combined with the ability to immediately act on each action. Woopra changes website management discussions from “how should we change things in the future” to “what should we do right now? Webmasters can respond faster to sudden influxes in traffic and help monitor trends in search and traffic patterns. Woopra helps web owners generate content based upon customer needs and trends now, not after the fact.

Click-to-chat:
Woopra enables websites with both “proactive” and “reactive” chat functionality. Webmasters can remotely initiate sessions with visitors, or embed “Click-to-Chat” buttons within a site to accept inbound requests. This breaks the virtual wall between visitor and webmaster. Customer service sites could offer personal service directly through the Woopra interface, with no installation of software by the visitor. Woopra breaks down the barriers of the static web.

And so much more. I just downloaded it and can't wait to see how much better it is than Google Analytics!

Visit Woopra

I only wanted 2 see u bathing in the Purple Rain

2008-06-25T12:21:00.004-05:00

24 years ago TODAY:

Prince's "Purple Rain" was released. Lets all take a moment to honor this day in history, because the mid-day newscasts in the Twin Cities sure are taking every effort to honor their native son and the album and movie that followed that both helped rocket him into the stratosphere of fame.

Track listing

All songs composed and arranged by Prince; except "Computer Blue," words by Prince music by Prince, John L. Nelson, Wendy and Lisa, and Dr. Fink.

"Let's Go Crazy" – 4:39
"Take Me with U" – 3:58
"The Beautiful Ones" – 5:17
"Computer Blue" – 3:56
"Darling Nikki" – 4:13
"When Doves Cry" – 5:52
"I Would Die 4 U" – 2:56
"Baby I'm a Star" – 4:24
"Purple Rain" – 8:42

Personnel

Prince: Guitars, bass guitar, keyboards, piano, vocals
Brownmark: Bass guitar, vocals
Lisa Coleman: Keyboards, piano, sitar, vocals
Wendy Melvoin: Guitars, vocals
Dr. Fink: Keyboards, organ, vocals
Bobby Z.: Drums, percussion
Apollonia Kotero: Vocals on "Take Me With You"
David Coleman: Violin
Suzie Katayama: Violin, viola
Novi Novog: Violin, viola

Lawnmower DUI

2008-06-25T09:05:00.002-05:00

NORTH POLE, Alaska (AP) - Alaska State Troopers used lights and sirens to apprehend a North Pole man suspected of driving under the influence after he allegedly led them on a slow-speed chase that covered several lawns.

The 20-year-old man was on a riding mower. Sunday's pursuit lasted about 200 feet and reached speeds of up to 5 mph before a trooper got out of a cruiser and told the man to stop.

Troopers received a call early Sunday complaining of an intoxicated man driving a mower. They said Wyatt Lewis's blood-alcohol content was 0.18 percent, more than twice the legal limit of 0.08 percent.

Driving a lawnmower while drunk qualifies for a DUI charge. Lewis was also charged with failure to stop at the direction of a peace officer.

No phone number was listed for Lewis in North Pole and a message left with the Fairbanks Correctional Center on Tuesday was not immediately returned.

WINK-TV

Is McCain even trying? Part 455

2008-06-24T23:29:00.001-05:00

He's proposing things he knows won't make a difference, then admits it:

At a town hall in Fresno, CA, McCain admitted that the offshore drilling proposal he unveiled last week would probably have mostly "psychological" benefits, NBC/NJ’s Adam Aigner-Treworgy notes. "Even though it may take some years, the fact that we are exploiting those reserves would have psychological impact that I think is beneficial."

In other words, "It won't do shit for you, but it'll make you feel like something is being done." That's not beneficial. In fact, it's the exact opposite of beneficial.

2008-06-24T22:38:00.000-05:00

American Airlines To Test In-Flight WiFi Tomorrow

2008-06-24T20:13:00.002-05:00

You heard right, folks. American Airlines is planning to open up the world wide web to passengers on board an unspecified round-trip flight from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport and Los Angeles. The Gogo service, provided via Aircell, will be free for patrons tomorrow, but will eventually run users $12.95 for flights greater than three hours and $9.95 for trips under said threshold. We're also told that more trials are expected to get going on flights between New York and San Francisco and New York and Miami, though no time frame is given for when the service would escape the beta stage and hit mass implementation. Additionally, the Gogo system is supposed to "prioritize the flow of data so that passengers downloading movies or large documents won't prevent other passengers from getting their email," so don't expect to use that excuse for not sending in those Q2 close reports.

Engadget

I won't believe this until 'you know who' is out of office

2008-06-24T11:51:00.000-05:00

Where's Waldouche?

2008-06-24T11:18:00.003-05:00

I thought it would be good to check-in with one of my favorite sites... "Hot Chicks With Douche Bags"... Let us see what we have today....
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AH LOOK!!!
There he is!!!! Waldouche!!!

Playing politics with stimulus checks

2008-06-24T10:19:00.001-05:00

The announcement from the Internal Revenue Service that, for example, more than 77,000 Wisconsin residents -- most of them elderly -- will not get their economic stimulus check from the federal government if they do not file appropriate paperwork by Oct. 15 is unsettling.

Doesn't the IRS work for us?

Why is it that the federal government can find people who fail to pay their taxes but cannot find people that it owes money?

The answer, of course, is that the stimulus checks are a political gimmick, rather than a sincere effort to stimulate the economy.

The Bush administration and its congressional allies want to make Americans formally request the money so that taxpayers know they are getting a "gift" from an embattled Republican president in a difficult election year.

Bush is shameful.

But the IRS is being even more shameful when it plays along with this charade.

There is general agreement that a simple computer program could identify the Social Security number and address of everyone who is owed a stimulus check, and the checks could be dispatched quickly and with a minimum of hassle.

That's not happening for all the wrong -- read: political -- reasons.

Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl is right to be calling on the IRS and Social Security Administration to increase outreach efforts to let Wisconsinites know what they must do to qualify for the payments.

madison.com