Posted 12/31/2008 02:57:00 PM by Douglas

The words of 2008 that need to go. Good to see "not so much" there, but where's "it is what it is?"

Labels: dumb internet lists

Posted 12/31/2008 02:45:00 PM by Douglas

Baby, that perfume you're wearing, what is it? Grilled Meat by Burger King, of course!

Maybe you heard the late-night talk-show hosts joking about it and assumed the product was an urban myth spread by some truant, meat-obsessed teenager. Or maybe you were so intrigued, you threw on your bathrobe, jumped in the car and hit the nearest BK drive-through in search of a midnight Whopper and some beefy love potion.

Either scenario would have left you dismayed. Flame, which costs $3.99 a spray bottle and, according to the company, has "the scent of seduction, with a hint of flame-broiled meat," is no joke.

Yuk.

Posted 12/30/2008 09:46:00 PM by Douglas

Damn leap second. I hate it when December 31^st has 86,401 seconds instead of the normal 86,400

That's why the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) occasionally adds a "leap second" to the world's timescale to keep internationally defined time and the Earth's rhythms in synch.

As a result, thousands of organisations across the world will be adjusting their clocks from midnight.

Just think. All those people that are going to be a second late for work on Monday. It's going to be pure bedlam.

Posted 12/30/2008 05:54:00 PM by Douglas

Don't show us the data if it doesn't support your own bullshit theory that red light cameras decrease crashes. They don't

The number of crashes at Houston intersections with red-light cameras doubled in the first year after their installation, according to a city-financed study released Monday.

But Mayor Bill White argued that the cameras' presence prevented even more collisions and that the study proves the monitoring program is keeping drivers safe.

And you're basing this on what exactly? Collisions went up, along with city revenue, to the tune of about $20 million dollars.

Since September 2006, the cameras have led to at least 387,000 citations and generated more than $20 million in revenue.

Don't kid yourself. It's about raising money, not safety. And I hope the rest of Texas keeps this in mind when this professional liar runs for the senate.

Labels: red light cameras

Posted 12/30/2008 05:48:00 PM by Douglas

Always a bad sign.

Yellowstone National Park was jostled by a host of small earthquakes for a third straight day Monday, and scientists watched closely to see whether the more than 250 tremors were a sign of something bigger to come. Swarms of small earthquakes happen frequently in Yellowstone, but it's very unusual for so many earthquakes to happen over several days, said Robert Smith, a professor of geophysics at the University of Utah.

Wow. Time to repent?

Labels: Earthquakes

Posted 12/30/2008 05:45:00 PM by Douglas

Apparently, leaving orbit without a spaceship is hazardous to your health.

The NASA report found the astronauts knew for about 40 seconds that they did not have control of the shuttle before they likely were knocked unconscious as Columbia broke apart around them.

The report also found that while crew members were wearing their pressurized suits, one astronaut did not have on a helmet, three were not wearing gloves and none lowered the visors before the module lost cabin pressure. One astronaut also was not seated.

Not seated? What were they doing, moving the drink cart back to the galley?

Posted 12/25/2008 03:22:00 PM by Douglas

Two words you don't want to see in an article about you: "naked" and "taser."

A naked man who was banging on doors and windows at a northside apartment complex died Wednesday after being shocked by Tasers at least three times during a confrontation with Harris County sheriff's deputies, authorities said.

Investigators said the 46-year-old man was randomly knocking on doors and windows and yelling while walking around the complex. At one point, he kicked open a front door and briefly went inside an occupied apartment, officials said.

Posted 12/25/2008 03:18:00 PM by Douglas

This guy took naughty to a whole new level this year:

A man dressed as Santa who had been having marital problems opened fire at a Christmas party, leaving more than three people dead in a home that then caught fire, authorities said.

"He was going through some type of marital problems, and we believe that this residence is a relative's residence," Lt. Pat Buchanan said of the house that burned.

He knows when you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!

Posted 12/25/2008 03:07:00 PM by Douglas

Santa's sleigh: Greener than baby farts!



Merry Christmas!

Posted 12/21/2008 02:00:00 PM by Douglas

This dog really loves the snow!

Posted 12/20/2008 07:15:00 PM by Douglas

The most awesomest table ever!

Posted 12/20/2008 07:10:00 PM by Douglas

Are they going to pass a law against being a complete pussy, too?

A 21-year-old woman accused of sending a vulgar text message to a 17-year-old girl is one of the first cases brought under a law against cyberbullying spurred by the suicide of a teenage girl following cruel messages on the Internet.

The 2006 death of 13-year-old Megan Meier prompted Missouri lawmakers to update state harassment law earlier this year so that it now covers bullying and stalking done through electronic media, like e-mails or text messages.

It's unfortunate if that's the only reason she killed herself, but do we really need laws to mitigate stupid high school shit?

Posted 12/20/2008 07:07:00 PM by Douglas

To protect and serve.

A fight over a policeman’s gun in the parking lot of a topless bar left an officer bruised and a Webster man suffering from a gunshot wound that wasn’t life-threatening, authorities said Thursday.

Bond for Jose Gilberto Barrera Jr., 26, was set at $250,000 on a charge of assault of a peace officer, said Joel H. Bennett, a criminal prosecutor with the Galveston County District Attorney’s Office.

Dickinson police officer Michael Henson was working Wednesday night in uniform at an off-duty security job at a nearby business when he drove through Heartbreakers parking lot at 3200 Gulf Freeway in Dickinson, Bennett said.

Henson saw an altercation about 11 p.m. and stepped out to see what was going on, Bennett said.

“During the investigation, he recovered a controlled substance and a struggle ensued,” Bennett said. “There was a fight over his weapon and the weapon discharged.”

He just happened to be in the parking at 11 p.m. Keeping the parking lots of strip clubs safe for you and me! God bless you boys!

Posted 12/18/2008 09:18:00 PM by Douglas

The year in pictures. Damn, was 2008 a rough year. I wish there was some indication 2009 was going to be any better.

Posted 12/18/2008 08:35:00 PM by Douglas

$42 Million for a space ship is quite a bargain, actually.

The space agency said Wednesday it's looking for ideas on where and how best to display its space shuttles once they stop flying in a few years. It's put out a call to schools, science museums and "other appropriate organizations" that might be interested in showcasing one of the three remaining shuttles.

Beware: NASA estimates it will cost about $42 million to get each shuttle ready and get it where it needs to go, and the final tab could end up much more.

I bet they'd make great hurricane shelters. Close the hatch and ride that bitch out! Beats the shit out of a FEMA trailer.

Posted 12/18/2008 08:15:00 PM by Douglas

What would you do if you were triple drunk, ran into a truck and killed your boyfriend? Why, sue the truck driver, of course!

Convicted last year of intoxication manslaughter for the death of her boyfriend, the 21-year-old daughter of a state district judge is suing the truck driver she ran into during a drunken driving crash.

Shelton had a blood alcohol concentration more than three times the legal limit, two tests showed. She was sentenced to eight years' probation and had to serve four months in jail.

Wow. Four whole months in jail for killing someone. That's gotta be rough.

Shelton, her family and the family of the boyfriend who was killed are suing for $20,000 for the destruction of the Lexus SUV she was driving and an undetermined amount for mental anguish, pain and suffering.

Bennett was driving the box truck that Shelton rear-ended on the Southwest Freeway near Kirby around 2 a.m.

Jiminy Cricket, what balls. You get drunk, you drive home, you kill your boyfriend, and you sue the guy your drunk ass ran into for the value of your car?!?

Posted 12/18/2008 06:13:00 PM by Douglas

What a sad, pathetic shell of a president. Geez, he even looks like he's been beaten:


"I have never used my position to personally denigrate someone." Uh, Karl Rove, call your office.

Posted 12/17/2008 06:46:00 PM by Douglas

Holy crap, when stupidity gets to $140 a barrel I want drilling rights to these people's heads.

A supermarket is defending itself for refusing to a write out 3-year-old Adolf Hitler Campbell's name on his birthday cake. Deborah Campbell, 25, of nearby Hunterdon County, N.J., said she phoned in her order last week to the Greenwich ShopRite. When she told the bakery department she wanted her son's name spelled out, she was told to talk to a supervisor, who denied the request.

That's right, they named their kid "Adolf Hitler Cambell." What did they name is sisters?

The Campbells' two other children are named JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, who turns 2 in a few months, and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell, who will be 1 in April.

You really hate to give these knuckle-dragging mouth breathers the attention they're so desperately craving, but geez.

Posted 12/17/2008 06:41:00 PM by Douglas

I felt really old when I read this article because I didn't know what the heck it was talking about. Then I was really, really glad.

Cans of the "pro-relaxation" drink Purple Stuff will stop carrying a phrase that critics say refers to an illicit drug combination popularized in Southern rap music, the company announced Tuesday.

"We're modifying the labeling of the product," said Tim Lucas, spokesman for the Houston-based Funktional Beverages Inc. He said future cans will no longer advertise the slogan "Lean with it." He was not sure when the new cans will begin appearing on shelves.

What. The. Hell.

"Drank," "purple stuff" and "lean" are street terms for the mixture of codeine syrup with soft drinks or alcohol, a concoction that is believed to have factored in the deaths of three local rap stars. "Sippin' syrup" is believed to have originated in Houston, and it remains a common topic for Southern rappers.

Sweet sassy molassy. Marketing carbonated cough syrup to get high. Or low, as the case may be. If only one of the side effects was sterility.

Posted 12/15/2008 10:31:00 PM by Douglas

He told you he wanted that Thomas the Train set.

Child Protective Services claimed oversight of a 4-year-old boy found at a Beaumont discount store, playing with toys, as police responded to a burglar alarm.

Police said store surveillance video showed the unidentified boy tried one of the front doors to a Family Dollar store about 3 a.m. Monday, only to find it locked. But the second door was unlocked and the child went inside.

That triggered the silent alarm.

So the Family Dollar store just forgot to lock the door? But good to see CPS on the job. Hell, why toss him to CPS? Lock him up for B&E and let him spend Christmas in juvie for his heinous crime.

Posted 12/15/2008 10:06:00 PM by Douglas

The Air Force now have airplanes with freakin' lasers on them.

IMAGINE swarms of aircraft patrolling the skies, zapping missiles, aircraft or even satellites in low Earth orbit with invisible, ultrapowerful laser beams.

Such laser battles in the sky may not be such a long way off, after a megawatt laser weapon was fired from an aircraft for the first time.

Although the Airborne Laser (ABL) was fired from a stationary plane at a target on the ground just a few metres away, the test marked a milestone for the weapon, developed by aerospace firms Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

Coming up next? Light Sabers!

Posted 12/15/2008 10:01:00 PM by Douglas

It's obvious that the headline "We adore you, Maria" and the fact the December issue came out days before her feast day was a total coincidence.

Playboy magazine issued an apology Monday for the cover of its Mexican edition, which features an Argentine model in what many observers say is meant to be a depiction of the Virgin Mary.

Playboy Mexico has said the cover was not meant to portray the Virgin Mary, despite being printed just days before the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe -- both Catholic holidays centering on the Virgin Mary.

Stay classy, Mexican Playboy!

Posted 12/15/2008 09:45:00 PM by Douglas

Every try to give a cat a pill? I can't even begin to imagine how you'd give 'em contact lenses.

Centre manager Paula Sadler, 56, said: 'Before Earnest was given the contact lenses he was quite squinty and had trouble seeing where he was going.

'Now his eyes have opened up and he has a new lease of life.

Weird. But if you're going to bother sticking a contact lens in your cats face, why not upgrade? I'm thinking something like this. Or perhaps this. Imagine that standing on your chest in the morning asking for breakfast.

Posted 12/15/2008 06:55:00 AM by Douglas

Pointless running claims one more.

A 29-year-old Austin woman running in the Dallas White Rock Marathon collapsed on Sunday and died, officials said.

Like sticking a wet fork in a light socket, some things aren't worth doing, just "to say you did it."

Labels: Marathons

Posted 12/14/2008 03:30:00 PM by Douglas

With any luck, it may be harder after this Thursday for your credit card to screw you.

The Federal Reserve is to vote on credit card reforms that may bring some relief to customers who face a variety of ways for being hit with late fees, universal defaults, shorter payment periods and confusing payment allocations for different balances.

They are expected to prohibit credit card companies from increasing rates at will, with some exceptions such as those that apply to people who fail to pay a bill within 30 days.

So-called universal default, which permits changing card terms if the borrower defaults on another bill such as utilities or a gym membership, also is expected to be banned.

Double-cycle billing, in which card companies reach back to earlier billing cycles to help calculate interest charged in the current cycle, also is expected to be eliminated.

It's gonna be a rough day for the banks with the cash cow they have in credit cards is taken away from them.

Posted 12/14/2008 03:10:00 PM by Douglas

Why do you have dozens of dogs living with you in their own filth? UFOs, of course.

Authorities in Fayette County seized the dogs on Dec. 3, after they were found living in a 5-by-9 foot trailer — eating, sleeping and giving birth in their own waste — with a woman who claimed the terriers were unhealthy because UFOs were circling above her home, said Houston SPCA spokeswoman Meera Nandlal.

Freak.

Posted 12/14/2008 02:38:00 PM by Douglas

I really wanted to see the Secret Service jump in front of the second shoe like Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard:



♪♪ And I, will always love youuuu! ♪♪

Posted 12/13/2008 12:35:00 PM by Douglas

William Stevens, author of the law article about the infield fly rule, is no longer with us.

William S. Stevens, whose slyly humorous law-review note on the relationship between baseball’s infield fly rule and Anglo-American common law became one of the most celebrated and imitated analyses in American legal history, died Monday in Anchorage, where he was working. He was 60 and lived in Narberth, Pa.

He got his obit in The New York Times because he came up with a clever analogy. Better than most.

Posted 12/13/2008 12:22:00 PM by Douglas

Socks!!! I'll mourn ya 'till I join ya, you crazy kitty.

We have some bad news today on the presidential pet front. Socks the cat, probably the most photographed presidential kitty in history, has cancer and isn't expected to live. "His days are numbered," says Barry Landau, a friend of Socks' master, Betty Currie.

Poor kitty. He had a good run. I'm not even going to make a "Bill Clinton/Black Pussy" joke.

Posted 12/13/2008 12:13:00 PM by Douglas

Premature adjudication. That's funny. I'm certainly not going to claim that "Justice Porn" isn't quality television, but there's something about Judge Judy that is oddly compelling.

Like a Romper Room for adults, like Oprah with a whip, justice porn constantly preaches doctrines of prudence, responsibility, and self-empowerment: The ultimate goal is to avoid putting oneself in the position of requiring the court's assistance. As Laurie Ouellette, a professor of communications studies at the University of Minnesota, has written, "The imagined viewer at home is encouraged to self-govern her daily affairs without the direct involvement of the court, the welfare office, or any public institution for that matter." To reinforce this notion, Judge Judy is forever yipping at litigants for wasting her time, as if there is something she'd rather be doing than getting paid $38 million a year just to insult losers arguing over unpaid telephone bills.

Anyone that's seen the show and would want Judy to publicly humiliate them on TV is clearly unstable.

Posted 12/11/2008 07:24:00 PM by Douglas

Jesus made it look so easy. Thanks, long-time reader!

What a great way to asphyxiate your kids!

Actually, the CO₂ level would only raise 1 mmHg an hour. So you'd get tired of playing in this thing long before you "ran out of air."

Posted 12/11/2008 06:14:00 PM by Douglas

So the shuttle flew over Houston today. Did you see it? Probably not.

What is really troubling is the folks (at JSC) who have commented saying "I don't care what it cost". If ever there was a single comment that so aptly epitomized the biggest problem that NASA has today, that is it.

And NASA wonders why people have a problem connecting with what it does. They can't even announce a simple flyover - something that has the power to amaze everyone who sees it. What a bungled opportunity.

Check out the flight track. You're going to fly that far out of the way and not tell the public? What on earth for?

Posted 12/10/2008 08:35:00 PM by Douglas

Snow! Honest to god, snow. Didn't we have a hurricane or something three months ago? What's next, the locust or the frogs?

White stuff fell across much of the Houston area Wednesday evening, as temperatures hovered just above freezing, tying a record for the city's earliest ever snowfall.

Since 1895, according to data collected by Houston's Weather Research Center, snow has fallen this early just once — on Dec. 10, 1944 — during the last 113 years.

Can't wait for the earthquake!!!

Because the ground in the Houston area was relatively warm — 77 degrees as late as Tuesday afternoon — neither snow nor ice was expected to stick to the ground and cause major transportation problems for long.

Wanna bet? Houstonians don't know whether to shit or go blind when it rains. Snow is going to fuck shit up all morning.

Posted 12/10/2008 06:53:00 PM by Douglas

Have I mentioned this week how much the BCS sucks? This is kinda funny:

After determining the Big-12 championship game participants, the BCS computers were put to work on other major contests and today the BCS declared Germany to be the winner of World War II.

The French ranking has also come under scrutiny. The BCS commented " France had a single loss against Germany and following a preseason #1 ranking they only fell to #2."

Makes as much sense as OU in the big dance.

Posted 12/10/2008 06:48:00 PM by Douglas

Stupid video about how smart women are and how dumb men are, or something like that. Kinda funny, I guess. Really reiterates the affection women have for shiny things.

Posted 12/10/2008 06:43:00 PM by Douglas

This is way too close to reality to be funny:

Posted 12/07/2008 03:32:00 PM by Douglas

Darwin, call your office.

A 22-year-old man died after he was allegedly shot during a game of Russian roulette at a northwest Houston apartment early Saturday morning, authorities said.

Four men and one woman were in the 8700 block of Hammerly around midnight to celebrate a new apartment one of the men had just rented when the men decided to play Russian roulette, authorities said.

Investigators learned that one of the men pointed the gun at his head, but the weapon did not fire a live round.

For an unknown reason, that man then proceeded to point the gun at another man's head and fired a round, killing him, authorities said.

I'm not that clear of the rules of Russian roulette, but I thought you pulled the trigger yourself. This sounds more like murder than Russian roulette.

Also since when was Russian roulette a good house warming activity? What happened to a six-pack or a bottle of bourbon?

Posted 12/07/2008 03:17:00 PM by Douglas

President-Elect on Meet the Press today. I thought the part of discovery was interesting with regards to what NASA is going to look like in the next four years.

PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: When it comes to science, elevating science once again, and having lectures in the White House where people are talking about traveling to the stars or breaking down atoms, inspiring our youth to get a sense of what discovery is all about. Thinking about the diversity of our culture and, and inviting jazz musicians and classical musicians and poetry readings in the White House so that, once again, we appreciate this incredible tapestry that's America. I--you know, that, I think, is, is going to be incredibly important, particularly because we're going through hard times. And, historically, what has always brought us through hard times is that national character, that sense of optimism, that willingness to look forward, that, that sense that better days are ahead. I think that our art and our culture, our science, you know, that's the essence of what makes America special, and, and we want to project that as much as possible in the White House.

I don't think there are too many volunteers to travel to a star, per se, but I like the notion of space travel inspiring a sense of discovery in our youth. It's a good start.

And I had no idea that Barry was a smoker:

MR. BROKAW: Finally, Mr. President-elect, the White House is a no-smoking zone, and when you were asked about this recently by Barbara Walters, I read it very carefully, you ducked. Have you stopped smoking?

PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: You know, I have, but what I said was that, you know, there are times where I've fallen off the wagon. Well...

MR. BROKAW: Well, wait a minute.

PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: ...what can I tell...

MR. BROKAW: Then that means you haven't stopped.

PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: Well, the--fair enough. What I would say is, is that I have done a terrific job under the circumstances of making myself much healthier, and I think that you will not see any violations of these rules in the White House.

Nice job, Tom, for not letting him skate with a bullshit answer to a direct question, but I think I like him a bit more knowing that he's an ex-smoker with occasional relapses. It's almost like he's human.

Posted 12/06/2008 08:00:00 PM by Douglas

Always funny when the soldiers in the moronic drug war get caught in their own sting.

KopBusters rented a house in Odessa, Texas and began growing two small Christmas trees under a grow light similar to those used for growing marijuana. When faced with a suspected marijuana grow, the police usually use illegal FLIR cameras and/or lie on the search warrant affidavit claiming they have probable cause to raid the house. Instead of conducting a proper investigation which usually leads to no probable cause, the Kops lie on the affidavit claiming a confidential informant saw the plants and/or the police could smell marijuana coming from the suspected house.

The trap was set and less than 24 hours later, the Odessa narcotics unit raided the house only to find KopBuster’s attorney waiting under a system of complex gadgetry and spy cameras that streamed online to the KopBuster’s secret mobile office nearby.

D'Oh. Probable cause? What probable cause. We don't really have any. Any that's legal anyway. I hope this story gets the press it deserves.

Posted 12/04/2008 08:10:00 PM by Douglas

Gone are the days where you freeze to death in your own home because your blanket doesn't have arm holes. Say hello to the Slanket! But wait, there's more. Competition! Here's the Snuggie. I hope this ends without a bloodbath.

Posted 12/04/2008 06:13:00 PM by Douglas

NASA prepares for the looming budget crisis: The Obama Administration.

The Texas congressional delegation is launching a campaign to combat potentially deep budget cuts for NASA as President-elect Barack Obama focuses on rescuing the nation's economy.

The drive comes amid expectations that billions of dollars will be shifted from various federal agencies into new programs to stimulate the economy and stabilize the financial system.

With tough trade-offs ahead, NASA's supporters are bracing for a hard look by the new administration and Democratic-controlled Congress at the space agency's $20.2 billion budget for the current year, which includes $5.8 billion for the shuttle and $3 billion to develop the Orion moonship.

$20 Billion. The bailout is over $7 Trillion. What a drop in the bucket. Do they know where that money goes? NASA doesn't strap it on rockets and launch it to the moon. It goes to civil servants, contractors, vendors, grocery stores and strip clubs in Florida, Texas, California, and every other state in the country, and occasionally, they launch some pretty cool stuff. Could CitiBank, AIG, GM, Ford, Chrysler do anything nearly as cool.

Posted 12/04/2008 05:56:00 PM by Douglas

Sweet jiminy cricket never underestimate the stupidity of Aggies with their class rings.

When she returned, one of the windows was smashed and all was gone save for the golf clubs. Purses, a cell phone, iPod, three dozen new golf balls and $100 or so she kept in the glove compartment for tip money. And the ring.

"I was just shattered, coming out to my car and seeing this," said Ghio, a 52-year-old private investigator who works for corporations and law firms. "It was only about $1,800 in goods that were stolen. But my A&M ring, you couldn't put a value on that."

Yeah, keep telling yourself that. When you say it enough times, you start to believe it. Then you're down in South America, drinking the delicious Kool-Aide. And for more class ring silliness:

A class ring lost for decades in an East Texas lake is back with its owner after turning up in a fish caught the day after Thanksgiving.

Richardson was fishing at Lake Sam Rayburn about two weeks after his 1987 graduation from Universal Technical Institute in Houston when he lost the ring.

Now there's a good use for an Aggie ring: bait. Turns out, I bet Aggies would make good chum.

Posted 12/02/2008 05:23:00 PM by Douglas

If you're gonna have an AR-15, you might as well decorate its lower receiver, especially if it's full auto (and you have a Class-III license). [h/t]

Posted 12/02/2008 05:17:00 PM by Douglas

Watch your kitty when it's outside:

In early November, T.C. Nelson was out in the backyard with her dog Teddy and her cat. But unbeknownst to them, a fourth player was watching from above.

“The bird was behind me. He flew down and landed in the middle of my flower bed on top of my cat. My cat shrieked,” said T.C. Nelson, pet owner.

Nelson said it wasn’t just any bird; it was a bald eagle.

Sweetie. . . an eagle stole your cat is now an acceptable response to "Dude, where's my cat?"

Posted 12/02/2008 05:01:00 PM by Douglas

Crash prevention or cash production?

Red-light cameras apparently reduced overall collisions at dozens of monitored intersections across Texas, according to a state transportation study.

The report, released today by the Texas Department of Transportation, concludes that crashes declined overall by 30 percent at a sampling intersections, many of them in Houston.

"While these results cannot conclusively determine that red light cameras are responsible for the overall reduction in crashes," the report reads, "the presence of the treatment provided some effect on the frequency of crashes at the selected intersections for the limited time period of this analysis."

The study examined crashes from July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2008 at select intersections at 12 cities required to report crashes under a new state law.

The data show that right-angle collisions reduced by 43 percent, while rear-end collisions increased by 5 percent, mirroring some other studies across the nation.

Not that I'm ranting, but it's not about money. Obviously.

Labels: red light cameras

Posted 12/01/2008 06:34:00 PM by Douglas

The next shoe in this dismal economic landscape is about to drop.

The U.S. credit-card industry may pull back well over $2 trillion of lines over the next 18 months due to risk aversion and regulatory changes, leading to sharp declines in consumer spending, prominent banking analyst Meredith Whitney said.

The credit card is the second key source of consumer liquidity, the first being jobs, the Oppenheimer & Co analyst noted.

"In other words, we expect available consumer liquidity in the form of credit-card lines to decline by 45 percent."

It's bad news when all the credit markets are drying up like scorpion's ass, but if it means I'm going to get less credit card applications in the mail featuring stupid and misleading gimmicks, that's just fine by me.

Labels: Credit Card Collapse

Posted 12/01/2008 05:32:00 PM by Douglas

This is getting a bit ridiculous, it would seem, if it were a bad SNL sketch:

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi met leading governors on Monday to discuss the size and shape of an economic stimulus package that one Democratic aide said was likely to cost around $500 billion.

The aide, who asked not to be identified, said the legislation would include a middle-class tax cut, billions of dollars for road, bridge and mass transit construction, expanded aid to states and investments in renewable energy.

Geez, they're not going to quit 'till they give away all our money.

Posted 11/30/2008 10:44:00 PM by Douglas

It's not the BCS, it's a friggin' loophole.

This episode does the sport no favors. It makes college football look as if its search for logic entered a traffic rotary and can't find an exit. There isn't a dime's worth of difference between Texas and Oklahoma. Both played well throughout the season. Both finished strong. Both lost to very good teams. The Sooners lost to the Longhorns and won a loophole.

Ya know, if you're going to decide the whole year with roshambo at the end of the season, why bother putting on your cleats in September?

Posted 11/30/2008 05:08:00 PM by Douglas

Two words: fucking Tech. They don't do squat, but they can fuck it up for someone else, can't they?

Oklahoma was ahead of Texas in the BCS standings Sunday and headed to the Big 12 championship game with an inside track to the national title.

A three-way tie between Oklahoma, Texas and Texas Tech atop the Big 12 South standings forced the league to use its fifth tiebreaker, best BCS rating, to determine which team will play Missouri on Saturday in Kansas City, Mo.

So Oklahoma is going to play Missouri, two teams Texas soundly beat this season, for the Big 12 Championship. Makes sense to me.

Oh well. Get over it.

Posted 11/30/2008 05:03:00 PM by Douglas

These truly Arrrrrrrrrr some trying times. I can't believe no one has thought of this before. [thanks, long-time reader!]

The Somali pirates, renegade Somalis known for hijacking ships for ransom in the Gulf of Aden, are negotiating a purchase of Citigroup.

The pirates would buy Citigroup with new debt and their existing cash stockpiles, earned most recently from hijacking numerous ships, including most recently a $200 million Saudi Arabian oil tanker. The Somali pirates are offering up to $0.10 per share for Citigroup, pirate spokesman Sugule Ali said earlier today. The negotiations have entered the final stage, Ali said.

Sadly, the Somali pirates would at least be as shrewd with their investments as Citi has been.

Posted 11/30/2008 01:25:00 PM by Douglas

Dave Barry's shopping guide for those yet to feel the recession. Actually, there's nothing that says you have to use this on a golf course. It'd be great for the office!

Posted 11/30/2008 12:59:00 PM by Douglas

The hand wringing from Ike (as well as re-roofing) is far from over. Turns out the weather prognosticators have figured out (shocker!) that the Saffir-Simpson scale really didn't tell us squat this time around. Remember, it was only a 2!

As hurricane season ends today, the debate over whether to substantially change how Americans are warned about tropical weather is just beginning.

Hurricane Ike — the most destructive storm in the 2008 hurricane season — was not classified as a major hurricane by the yardstick forecasters have used for decades.

Yet Ike produced a catastrophic storm surge and ranks as the third-costliest tropical system to strike the United States in 150 years, behind only Hurricanes Katrina and Andrew.

This disconnect has driven forecasters to consider modifying the venerable Saffir-Simpson scale, under which Ike ranked as a mere Category 2 hurricane.

Well, duh. There's several proposals to update the scale based on energy.

The problem, proponents of a change say, is that the scale fails to predict storm surge accurately, the most devastating component of a hurricane for coastal areas.

Storm surge is determined more by the size of a hurricane than its maximum winds.

Bigger storms have more energy, slosh around more ocean and produce much larger surges.

OK, so what's the hold-up? Oh right, it's next to impossible to predict storm energy and its path in any meaningful way:

But evacuation managers live in the real, maddening world in which nature still cannot be forecast with enough precision to really matter.

So sleep tight knowing those tasked to predict such things know just as much as you do when it's time to leave. And remember, you're an idiot.

Posted 11/29/2008 05:56:00 PM by Douglas

So why isn't he Barry anymore?

Barry Obama decided that he didn't like his nickname. A few of his friends at Occidental College had already begun to call him Barack (his formal name), and he'd come to prefer that. The way his half sister, Maya, remembers it, Obama returned home at Christmas in 1980, and there he told his mother and grandparents: no more Barry. Obama recalls it slightly differently, but in the same basic time frame. He believes he told his mom he wanted to be called Barack when she visited him in New York the following summer. By both accounts, it seemed that the elder relatives were reluctant to embrace the change. Maya recalls that Obama's maternal grandparents, who had played a big role in raising him, continued long after that to call him by an affectionate nickname, "Bar."

I'm sure his supporters will say because America is full of racists and he felt Barry was easier to take, while his critics will say he did it to advance his credibility in the black community. I still think it's interesting.

Posted 11/29/2008 05:48:00 PM by Douglas

No one is going to rejoice in the misfortunes of others, but these stories don't make me have a lot of sympathy. Idiots like this caused this problem:

Together and separately, the couple bought a five-bedroom house in Smyrna, a condominium in Smyrna for his mother and another condo at an intown development that was creating a lot of buzz at the time — Atlantic Station.

Atlantic Station was so popular in 2005 and 2006 that a lottery was used to sell homes. Adam got lucky, she thought, and purchased a two-bedroom condo at Twelve for $387,700.

The couple’s gung-ho approach to real estate turned out to be an enormous mistake.

Adam, a real estate agent, now collects unemployment because home sales have nose-dived. Valles, a chiropractor, couldn’t make a go of it locally, so he travels to Florida to work.

Buried under three mortgages, two education loans and private school bills for their two children, “we don’t sleep at night,” Adam said, sitting with her husband outside a Starbucks at Atlantic Station.

Their struggles typify what’s happened in many locales, with the result being a crippled housing market that has led to the economic downturn.

You got in over your head in debt under the assumption the value of your property is always going to go up. It didn't. Deal with it, oh thanks for ruining the economy, jerks.

The couple’s Smyrna house, which cost $419,000, is probably worth $100,000 less today, Adam said. The condo at Twelve? Similar ones are now priced $150,000 lower. The couple won’t consider selling at such losses.

Adam said she won’t ruin her cousin’s credit rating. Instead, she and Valles have decided to quit making payments on their Smyrna house after failing to convince the lender to adjust the mortgage.

You took out the loans, jerk. How is simply NOT paying at this point going to help anyone? Just going to accelerate the foreclosure. Then there's this:

More homeowners are simply walking away from properties. Curtis Bratton abandoned two condos at Twelve he bought as investments.

“I don’t like to give up on anything that I have,” said Bratton, who is self-employed. “At the same time, it’s easy in the sense of I’m not going to keep spending money there. I don’t care about my credit rating. I’m just a cash person.”

First off, you don't know anything: the bank does. And what do you mean you're a 'cash' person? You are now, because you have no credit, but if you were a cash person, buying things you could afford, what's the problem?

Posted 11/28/2008 07:56:00 PM by Douglas

Here's a big non-news flash: No one likes Rosie.

Rosie O'Donnell's Wednesday night special on NBC, "Rosie Live," was supposed to be a tribute to the variety shows of the 1970s, but she added a Nixonian twist: Christmas songs, tap-dancing twins and an enemies list.

How many people want to see a left-wing harpie shrill show-tunes and other random crap? About
5 million. Sounds 'bout right. Hope she got the money up front.

Posted 11/28/2008 06:53:00 PM by Douglas

Absent from the news cycle today, any mention of someone burning down their house frying a turkey. Maybe tomorrow.

Posted 11/28/2008 06:49:00 PM by Douglas

Then there's this little ray of sunshine:

That pace is expected to quicken. The number of late payments and defaults will double, if not triple, by the end of next year, according to analysts from Fitch Ratings Ltd., which evaluates companies' credit.

"We're probably in the first inning of the commercial mortgage problem," said Scott Tross, a real estate lawyer with Herrick Feinstein in New Jersey.

Companies have survived plenty of downturns, but economists see this one playing out like never before. In the past, when businesses hit rough patches, owners negotiated with banks or refinanced their loans.

But many banks no longer hold the loans they made. Over the past decade, banks have increasingly bundled mortgages and sold them to investors. Pension funds, insurance companies, and hedge funds bought the seemingly safe securities and are now bracing for losses that could ripple through the financial system.

"It's a toxic drug and nobody knows how bad it's going to be," said Paul Miller, an analyst with Friedman, Billings, Ramsey, who was among the first to sound alarm bells in the residential market.

A chilling vision of things to come.

California, New York, Texas and Florida — states with a high concentration of mortgages in the securities market, according to Fitch — are particularly vulnerable. Texas and Florida are already seeing increased delinquencies and defaults, as are Michigan, Tennessee and Georgia.

We've only seen the beginning of this.

Posted 11/28/2008 06:40:00 PM by Douglas

Black Friday got a little bit blacker today.

A Wal-Mart worker was killed Friday when "out-of-control" shoppers desperate for bargains broke down the doors at a 5 a.m. sale. Other workers were trampled as they tried to rescue the man, and customers shouted angrily and kept shopping when store officials said they were closing because of the death, police and witnesses said.

At least four other people, including a woman who was eight months pregnant, were taken to hospitals for observation or minor injuries, and the store in Valley Stream on Long Island closed for several hours before reopening.

What the hell is wrong with these people? Is there really that much to save with this carnival?

Posted 11/26/2008 06:46:00 PM by Douglas

The bail-out: Check this out for relative size:

If we add in the Citi bailout, the total cost now exceeds $4.6165 trillion dollars. People have a hard time conceptualizing very large numbers, so let’s give this some context. The current Credit Crisis bailout is now the largest outlay In American history.

Sleep tight, suckers.

Posted 11/26/2008 06:42:00 PM by Douglas

20 optical illusions to mystify and annoy your friends. I like the story of the blivet, though.

Posted 11/26/2008 06:38:00 PM by Douglas

Looks like a bit too much crab for a landing. Apparently the pilot thought so, too.

Posted 11/26/2008 04:26:00 PM by Douglas

Terrorists bringing the heat, to India this time:

Gunmen rampaged through a series of targets in the Indian city of Mumbai killing indiscriminately and taking hostages at two luxury hotels.

Mumbai police spokesman Satish Katsa said gunmen have taken over the Taj Mahal Hotel and Hotel Oberoi, and were holding hostages on multiple floors.

Flames and smoke poured from the Taj early Thursday, and at the Oberoi the military reportedly entered the building and a large explosion was heard shortly afterwards.

I was on IM when my friend in Mumbai was hearing the explosions. These two landmark hotels (here and here) are currently on fire. She described it as "their 9/11." Horrible.

Posted 11/25/2008 04:24:00 PM by Douglas

Hilarious old print ads made back when misogynisim wasn't pejorative. Incredible what you used to get away with, considering how wrong it is now. But one thing that hasn't changed: It's perfectly acceptable to smack a bitch if she buys the wrong coffee.

Posted 11/25/2008 03:51:00 PM by Douglas

It's Tuesday, so that means there's another $800 Billion in bailouts.

The government, still struggling to manage a severe financial crisis, unveiled two new programs Tuesday that will provide $800 billion to try to help unfreeze the market for consumer debt from home mortgages to credit cards.

The announcements by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department represented the latest modifications to the largest government bailout in history, a program designed to keep the troubled financial system from dragging the country into a deep and prolonged recession.

Is anyone keeping score? What does that bring the total up to? This says $5 Trillion, but that was a month ago. Heck, that's just $17grand each!

Posted 11/25/2008 03:47:00 PM by Douglas

Late 2008, and medical science has finally discovered a way to get Ann Coulter to shut her festering pie hole.

a jaw injury has rendered talking head Ann Coulter silent. According to the New York Post's Page Six, the commentator broke her jaw and it is now wired shut.

These are truly incredible days we live in.

Posted 11/25/2008 03:42:00 PM by Douglas

Funny video of an ex-con making mashed potatoes. And hey look, there's Snoop Dogg!



Those potatoes sound horrible! Is she going to eat that crap, or spread it on toast? Stick of butter, cream cheese, milk and cream? Geesh.

Posted 11/24/2008 09:28:00 PM by Douglas

The Big 12 South: Or the year Texas, Texas Tech and OU respectively threw rock, paper and scissors and the BCS had to pick a winner.

With the Big 12 South possibly headed toward a dreaded three-way tie between Oklahoma, Texas and Texas Tech, coaches and officials from all sides are looking for the nearest soapbox.

If the Sooners, Longhorns and Red Raiders win their final regular-season games this week, they'll finish tied atop the Big 12 South. The South representative would be decided by which team is ranked highest in the second to last BCS standings. The Big 12 South winner will play Missouri in the Dec. 6 Big 12 championship game in Kansas City.

There's no way to call it. There's an outside chance OU might lose to Oklahoma State this week, but it's not possible in this universe that Baylor or A&M is going to pull an upset. I don't usually agree with homosexual necrophiliac pedophiles, but Bob Stoops is right:

"If you can't move us in front of Texas because they beat us, then you have to keep Texas Tech in front of Texas," Sooners coach Bob Stoops told reporters after the Texas Tech win. "If it's logical for one, then it's logical for the other."

Yep. Fucking BCS. It's horrible.

Posted 11/24/2008 08:49:00 PM by Douglas

The economy is approaching the etch-a-sketch moment: Time to pick it up, give it a shake, and start over.

The U.S. government is prepared to provide more than $7.76 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers after guaranteeing $306 billion of Citigroup Inc. debt yesterday. The pledges, amounting to half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.

The unprecedented pledge of funds includes $3.18 trillion already tapped by financial institutions in the biggest response to an economic emergency since the New Deal of the 1930s, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The commitment dwarfs the plan approved by lawmakers, the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. Federal Reserve lending last week was 1,900 times the weekly average for the three years before the crisis.

$7.75 Trillion? Where do people think this money is going to come from? Like there's a big government bank that's just full of money? Why not just ask for a Kazillion Bazillion dollars, ass.

Posted 11/23/2008 05:13:00 PM by Douglas

News flash: Your elected officials aren't very smart.

US elected officials scored abysmally on a test measuring their civic knowledge, with an average grade of just 44 percent, the group that organized the exam said Thursday.

Ordinary citizens did not fare much better, scoring just 49 percent correct on the 33 exam questions compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI).

Here's the quiz. It's surprisingly specific, but still, 44% is pretty durn low. I missed four (88%). I had no idea that the 16th amendment wasn't part of the Constitution, but oh well.

Posted 11/23/2008 04:59:00 PM by Douglas

If you can't make it through the day without seeing pictures of your wife naked, you need to secure it.

Phillip Sherman of Arkansas learned that lesson after he left his phone behind at a McDonald's restaurant and the photos ended up online. Now he and his wife, Tina, are suing the McDonald's Corp., the franchise owner and the store manager.

The suit was filed Friday and seeks a jury trial and $3 million in damages for suffering, embarrassment and the cost of having to move to a new home.

You want fries with those McNuggets?

Posted 11/23/2008 03:03:00 PM by Douglas

Think about this the next time you have that steak rare.

Posted 11/23/2008 02:55:00 PM by Douglas

I know I'm going out on a limb on this one, but I'm going to take a stand: This is just too much bacon.

Just in time for the winter season comes a recipe that is sure to bring bacon lovers some warm holiday cheer. Turbaconducken. That’s right — a chicken stuffed in duck stuffed in a turkey, all wrapped in bacon. Otherwise known as a bacon-wrapped turducken. Just how did we create this meaty madness? Read on.

Angioplasty sold separately.

Posted 11/23/2008 02:50:00 PM by Douglas

This headline used to be a stupid question. Not anymore.

Should you keep paying your mortgage?

If you have significant equity in your home, absolutely.

If you don't, it's getting harder to answer that question, especially when our government keeps giving people who owe more than their homes are worth so many reasons not to pay.

Even if you can pay, there used to be something called pride that would compel people to pay their bills.

I think you're an idiot if you seriously consider that article.

Posted 11/22/2008 06:16:00 PM by Douglas

News flash: a catastrophic earthquake would be catastrophic. Film at 11.

People in a vast seismic zone in the southern and midwestern United States would face catastrophic damage if a major earthquake struck there and should ensure that builders keep that risk in mind, a government report said on Thursday.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said if earthquakes strike in what geologists define as the New Madrid Seismic Zone, they would cause "the highest economic losses due to a natural disaster in the United States."

FEMA predicted a large earthquake would cause "widespread and catastrophic physical damage" across Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee -- home to some 44 million people.

Yep, and if my aunt had a dong, she'd be my uncle. I guess the midwest is tired of the Gulf Coast stealing their thunder and collection of FEMA money. Yes, we all know the biggest earthquake was in Missouri. But Missouri loves company, and California actually gives people a reason to live there. Don't forget about the subterranean earthquakes in Miami.

Labels: Earthquakes

Posted 11/21/2008 09:30:00 PM by Douglas

Citibank well on its way to becoming a penny stock.

Citigroup's stock plunged below $5—a 13-year low—and the banking giant's troubles may be just beginning.

Most institutional investors and pension funds are barred from owning stocks below $5. So if Citigroup's stock remains below that level, it could trigger a wave of selling that would send the share price even lower.

"That's the danger of crossing that $5 threshold," says Owen Malcolm, senior vice president of Sanders Financial Management in Atlanta. "They're (Citigroup) already in trouble. It could get worse."

And that was yesterday. It closed under $4 today. This is going to get ugly.

Posted 11/21/2008 09:09:00 PM by Douglas

Apparently this isn't as rare as you might think. [h/t]

A KITTEN with two faces that meows out of both mouths at the same time has been born in Perth.

The kitten was delivered in a vet's surgery after its mother had complications with the birth.

The two-faced feline was one of three in a litter and appears to be doing well.

Apparently I've made mention of this phenomenon here, here and to a lesser extent, here. One thing's for sure. I need a better joke than "twice the pet, half the mess!"

Posted 11/20/2008 05:45:00 PM by Douglas

By far, the dumbest discrimination case in the history of the western world.

Online dating service eHarmony said Wednesday it will launch a new Web site which caters to same-sex singles as part of a discrimination settlement with New Jersey's Civil Rights Division.

The settlement is the result of a complaint New Jersey resident Eric McKinley filed against the online matchmaker in 2005. McKinley, 46, said he was shocked when he tried to sign up for the dating site but couldn't get past the first screen because there was no option for men seeking men.

"It's very frustrating and it's very humiliating to think that other people can do it and I can't," he said. "And the only reason I can't is because I'm a gay man. That's very hurtful."

So, it's discrimination if a private company doesn't provide you a service that you want? Is he going to sue Playboy for not printing pictures of dudes he can fap to? Is he going to sue McDonald's for discriminating against him for not serving filet mignon? Jiminy Cricket is this stoopid.

Neither the company nor its founder, Neil Clark Warren, acknowledged any liability. Under the settlement, eHarmony will pay New Jersey state division $50,000 to cover administrative costs and will pay McKinley $5,000.

McKinley called the settlement "fabulous" and said he was happy with the outcome. He's considering signing up for the new site once it launches.

I bet it really was FABULOUS!!!

Posted 11/20/2008 05:27:00 PM by Douglas

What would you do if you were fighting an eviction of your property? Hire an attorney? Protest? Contact the local media? I know! How 'bout cutting off your own head with a chainsaw!

The last resident in a block of flats due to be demolished cut his own head off with a chainsaw to highlight the 'injustice' of being asked to move out, an inquest heard today.

Desperate David Phyall, 50, plugged the electric chainsaw into the mains and attached a timer to the socket.

He then wrapped sellotape around the machine's trigger to secure it in the 'on' position and tied the handle of the saw to a table leg to hold it steady.

That'll do it!

Posted 11/19/2008 06:34:00 PM by Douglas

It's world toilet day! Celebrate accordingly!

A non-profit organization in Singapore has declared Wednesday World Toilet Day, Agence France-Presse reported.

But this is not a laughing matter, according to The World Toilet Organization, which was founded in 2001 and aims to make the world aware of sanitation issues.

I had some okra at lunch today, so I'm going to really appreciate toilet day here in a little bit.

Posted 11/19/2008 06:26:00 PM by Douglas

Why would you hit your girl with a sandwich? Sometimes it's all you've got handy.

A man faces a domestic battery charge after allegedly hitting his girlfriend with a sandwich as she was driving.

Police said the 19-year-old man became angry and hit the woman in the arm and face with a sandwich, knocking her glasses off, as she was driving along Interstate 95 on Friday.

Gonna need some more info on this one. What kind of sandwich was it? Was mustard involved?

Posted 11/19/2008 05:42:00 PM by Douglas

Interesting, yet long account of the emergence of the athletic program at The University of Texas at Austin. I'll sum up 8,400 rambling words: money.

It meant that the women’s rowing team, which produced exactly zero dollars from ticket sales, received the equivalent of twenty full scholarships and could routinely take more than thirty athletes to competitions two thousand miles away. What made this formula even more unusual was its goal: to allow every one of UT’s teams to compete for a national championship every year.

Gotta wonder if that's a good use of money.

Posted 11/18/2008 10:07:00 PM by Douglas

Cool! Giraffe fight!



Something about that makes me think this video may have some credibility.



And don't miss this one.

Posted 11/17/2008 05:51:00 PM by Douglas

Finally! I've thought this should have been a word for a long time.

The expression of indifference or boredom has gained a place in the Collins English Dictionary after generating a surprising amount of enthusiasm among lexicographers.

The origins of "meh" are murky, but the term grew in popularity after being used in a 2001 episode of "The Simpsons" in which Homer suggests a day trip to his children Bart and Lisa.

"They both just reply 'meh' and keep watching TV," said Cormac McKeown, head of content at Collins Dictionaries.

The dictionary defines "meh" as an expression of indifference or boredom, or an adjective meaning mediocre or boring. Examples given by the dictionary include "the Canadian election was so meh."

Edna would approve:

Meh.

Posted 11/17/2008 05:44:00 PM by Douglas

It's 2008, people. Pirates?! Really, pirates?

Somali pirates hijacked a supertanker hundreds of miles off the Horn of Africa, seizing the Saudi-owned ship loaded with crude and its 25-member crew, the U.S. Navy said Monday.

The hijacking highlighted the vulnerability of even very large ships and pointed to widening ambitions and capabilities among ransom-hungry pirates who have carried out a surge of attacks this year off Somalia.

Ya know what we need? Some Ninjas to flip out and stop choppin' their heads off.

Labels: Pirates

Posted 11/17/2008 05:32:00 PM by Douglas

Most animals are scared of humans but then again, humans aren't killer whales!

Rock on, crazy penguin!

Posted 11/16/2008 04:29:00 PM by Douglas

The big three bailout. Yeah, I'm sick of hearing about it, too, but crap, why won't they talk about the elephant in the room.

Hardline opponents of an auto industry bailout branded the industry a "dinosaur" whose "day of reckoning" is near, while Democrats pledged Sunday to do their best to get Detroit a slice of the $700 billion Wall Street rescue in this week's lame-duck session of Congress.

The companies are seeking $25 billion from the financial industry bailout for emergency loans, though supporters of the aid for General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC have offered to reduce the size of the rescue to win backing in Congress.

And I'm sure they'll get it. UAW is far too well connected to lose at this stage in the game, but the word "Union" only appeared once in that story. Where's Honda's bailout? Where's Toyota's bailout? They make cars with American labor in (Southern) American states, but the main difference? No Unions. It's not 1890 anymore and we don't have Mr. Burns taking away our bathroom breaks. It's time the American companies figured this out, because if they don't, the Japanese companies that are already here are already making money.

On Meet the Press this morning Andrea Mitchell was the only one that even hinted at this being a Union problem.

MS. MITCHELL: Without a secret ballot, is a big concession to labor, and that is gong to be one of the, one of the early fights in this Congress. And Barack Obama is going to have to make a choice on all these things as to whether he can find ways around it, and can answer the economists' argument "Why is Toyota successful?" which is producing American jobs. It's just that they're not union jobs.

Wake up, Detroit. If your competitors are making money and you're not, it ain't just the economy.

Posted 11/16/2008 04:23:00 PM by Douglas

The Great Books of Western Civilization. Not so much, really:

Whereas the Britannica justified its hulking presence in the home as a reference tool, however, the Great Books made a more strident demand — they wanted to be read.

Hutchins and Adler’s Great Books were a mixture of books you wouldn’t dream of reading; books you think you ought to read but know you never will; and many books that, if you haven’t read them already, you would admire and possibly enjoy.

I'm sure Newton and Aristotle would be thrilled to know their life's work is propped up under the short leg of the couch in some trailer house in Des Moines.

Posted 11/16/2008 12:01:00 PM by Douglas

It's always good to look back and find the guy that was warning us all along about the impending doom. Meet Peter Shiff. I don't know what's worse: That he was 100% correct, or listening to the FoxNews ass-hats actually laughing at him like a petulant child:



Be sure to watch to the 6:45 point when the FoxNews "analysts" recommend Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs. Good call, morons.

Posted 11/15/2008 11:51:00 AM by Douglas

Labels: dumb internet quiz

Posted 11/15/2008 10:15:00 AM by Douglas

And now for no reason, Robert Doisneau.

Posted 11/15/2008 10:10:00 AM by Douglas

If you kids don't straighten up I'm going to haul all your asses to Nebraska.

Nebraska officials said they're concerned about an apparent rush by parents to drop their teenage children off at hospitals before lawmakers change the state's troubled "safe haven" law.

Four children have been dropped off at Nebraska hospitals in the last two days.

The latest cases came on the eve of a special session of the Legislature on Friday to add an age limit to the law. On Thursday, a boy, 14, and his 17-year-old sister were dropped off at an Omaha hospital; the girl ran away from the hospital, officials said. A 5-year-old boy was left by his mother at a different hospital, officials said.

Nebraska's safe haven law was intended to allow parents to hand over an infant anonymously to a hospital without being prosecuted. Of the 34 children who have been dropped off at hospitals, officials said not one has been an infant.

All but six have been older than 10, according to a Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services analysis.

Good for them for giving people that would normally throw children in the dumpster an option, but it looks like it might have backfired. But this would look great on the "Welcome to Nebraska" signs on the highway:

"Please don't bring your teenager to Nebraska," Gov. Dave Heineman told CNN. "Think of what you are saying. You are saying you no longer support them. You no longer love them."

You better take you trash on to Kansas!

Posted 11/15/2008 09:40:00 AM by Douglas

Some great pictures of the full moon and the shuttle launch yesterday:

Posted 11/13/2008 05:33:00 PM by Douglas

I don't know what idiot proposed this, but hopefully it will die a quiet death.

Federal bank regulators have rejected a request by banks and consumer advocates for a program to let lenders forgive huge portions of credit card debt.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency rejected the request for a special program that would allow as much as 40 percent of credit card debt to be forgiven for consumers who don't qualify for existing repayment plans.

Thank god Citibank and Chase have better lobbies than idiots with credit card debt. This isn't going to help the banks at all if those debts are repaid. Maybe they'll get some of the money, but everyone that pays off a card is just going to run it up again.

Posted 11/13/2008 05:16:00 PM by Douglas

Love your treadmill but feel imprisoned by its lack of relative motion? Well prepare to get liberated.



That's just stupid enough to work.

Posted 11/12/2008 05:56:00 PM by Douglas

Gay dudes, in a fraternity? Say it ain't so.

The University of Texas now has its first and only gay fraternity.

Delta Lambda Phi, a nationally recognized gay fraternity, was inducted at UT earlier this year.

If standing in a circle beating each other on their naked asses and dropping cherries into shot-glasses with their butt cheeks is something straight frats do, I can't even imagine what these guys are up to. But I bet their Oscar parties are FABULOUS!!!

Posted 11/12/2008 05:45:00 PM by Douglas

If you have to be reminded by your pastor to have sex, guess what? You're really not that interested in sex to begin with.

The pastor of a mega-church says he will challenge married congregants during his sermon Sunday to have sex for seven straight days — and he plans to practice what he preaches.

"We're going to give it a try," said the Rev. Ed Young, who has four children with his wife of 26 years.

"God says sex should be between a married man and a woman," Young said. "I think it's one of the greatest things you can do for your kids because so goes the marriage, so goes the family."

Well, research has shown it's one of the best things if you want to have kids, but I hope he's not advocating doing it in front of the children. That could be bad.

Young said he will deliver his seven-day sex challenge while sitting on a bed in front of his Dallas-area church campus.

Yuk. A bead in the pulpit. That's a bit much. I know these "suburban mega-churches" will say whatever they can to get souls through the door, but this is a bit much.

Posted 11/12/2008 05:39:00 PM by Douglas

Fifty weird buildings from around the world. #14 is in Galveston. At least used to be. And I've blogged before about Korea's scariest hotel, #23.

Also, here are some other pictures of improbable architecture.

Posted 11/10/2008 05:57:00 PM by Douglas

Only undergarments in their original packaging will be acceptable for return.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin spent part of the weekend going through her clothing to determine what belongs to the Republican Party after it spent $150,000-plus on a wardrobe for the vice presidential nominee, according to Palin's father.

Palin and John McCain's campaign faced a storm of criticism over the tens of thousands of dollars spent at such high-end stores as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus to dress the nominee. Republican National Committee lawyers are still trying to determine exactly what clothing was bought for Palin, what was returned and what has become of the rest.

What in the hell does the RNC want with it? Are they going to save it for their next token broad they run in 2012?

Posted 11/10/2008 05:35:00 PM by Douglas

So the conservatives blew it. Let me be the first to day, "duh." But where was this article in 2002, P.J.?

Let us bend over and kiss our ass goodbye. Our 28-year conservative opportunity to fix the moral and practical boundaries of government is gone--gone with the bear market and the Bear Stearns and the bear that's headed off to do you-know-what in the woods on our philosophy.

An entire generation has been born, grown up, and had families of its own since Ronald Reagan was elected. And where is the world we promised these children of the Conservative Age? Where is this land of freedom and responsibility, knowledge, opportunity, accomplishment, honor, truth, trust, and one boring hour each week spent in itchy clothes at church, synagogue, or mosque? It lies in ruins at our feet, as well it might, since we ourselves kicked the shining city upon a hill into dust and rubble.

Well, it was your to lose, and it's lost. Bush's pathetic pandering to the middle cost the farm. But it's not too late to get it back, is it?

The free market is a bathroom scale. You may hate what you see when you step on the scale. "Jeeze, 230 pounds!" But you can't pass a law making yourself weigh 185. Liberals think you can. And voters--all the voters, right up to the tippy-top corner office of Goldman Sachs--think so too.

It's so over.

Labels: P.J. O'Rourke

Posted 11/10/2008 05:35:00 PM by Douglas

Baylor gives law degree to a dog.

When Amy Jones received her law degree from Baylor University, her playful service dog, Skeeter, got the same honor.

As Jones got her juris doctor on Saturday, Skeeter received an honorary law degree.

"Amy has busted through brick walls, and Skeeter has been faithfully by her side every step of the way," law school Dean Brad Toben said. "Skeeter has become a part of our community and part of our family here at the law school."

McCuiston said Skeeter will occasionally add a growl to a professor's lecture for added emphasis.

Boy, sometimes the jokes just write themselves.

• Curb your attorney.
• When is your dog not man's best friend? When he sues you for breach of contract.
• Man, you're lawyer's a real bitch!
• Why does your lawyer lick his balls? Because his butthole smells like a lawyer.
• Why do Baylor dogs go to law school and Korean dogs get eaten? Korean dogs got first pick.
• Finally, an ambulance chaser than can actually catch them!
• Looks like the average I.Q. of Texas lawyers just went up a tick.
• New question on the Texas State Bar Exam: Are you afraid of vacuum cleaners? [actually, that was added in 2004]
• New from Armani: A $400 flea collar.
• And in the immortal words of Bob Barker, don't forget to have your attorney spayed or neutered.
• Your honor, counsel is badgering the witness!

And, so forth.

Posted 11/10/2008 01:22:00 PM by Douglas

Pretty funny video. And they wonder why we stop listening to them.

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

Posted 11/09/2008 03:11:00 PM by Douglas

Progress is never easy, especially when you're building an interstate highway. This story chronicles the heartbreak of I-40 through Amarillo, which opened 40 years ago this week.

In reality, I-40 displaced many Amarillo residents and workers by the time it opened here 40 years ago on Nov. 15, 1968. And many small towns suffered death-by-bypass.

The then-Texas Highway Department acquired about 770 parcels of Amarillo land - 500 of which included homes or businesses - so that I-40 could slice through the city on a much-disputed central route.

"The highway killed a lot of businesses, and it helped new businesses flourish," said 76-year-old Robert Templeton, an Amarillo lawyer who represented property owners in interstate-related eminent-domain cases. "People don't remember that Amarillo Boulevard was the main thoroughfare then, just like I-40 is today."

And then there's this:

Dubbed "Reese's Run-around" for its designer, the late Highway Department District Expressway Engineer Byron Reese, the interchange of I-40 and Interstate 27 became the last stand for two widows who lived with their daughters in Taylor Street homes condemned by the government in the fall of 1963.

"Every day, inexorable progress inches toward the white houses," the Amarillo Globe-Times reported.

Gilvin-Terrill Contractors crews worked around them for months, but at some point, each day delayed would cost the company a day's payroll, newspaper reports said.

Accompanied by a doctor and two nurses, Potter County Sheriff Jim Line and six deputies wrested the women from their homes on May 4, 1964. It was, the late sheriff said, "the most depressing job I have ever had to handle."

Eminent domain means progress for the masses, unless it's your house getting bulldozed.

Posted 11/09/2008 02:59:00 PM by Douglas

Not the first time found money has fucked up someone's life. Probably not the last.

A contractor who found $182,000 in Depression-era currency hidden in a bathroom wall has ended up with only a few thousand dollars, but he feels some vindication.

The windfall discovery amounted to little more than grief for contractor Bob Kitts, who couldn't agree on how to split the money with homeowner Amanda Reece.

It didn't help Reece much, either. She testified in a deposition that she was considering bankruptcy and that a bank recently foreclosed on one of her properties.

And 21 descendants of Patrick Dunne — the wealthy businessman who stashed the money that was minted in a time of bank collapses and joblessness — will each get a mere fraction of the find.

And now, the obvious question:

He's often asked why he didn't keep his mouth shut and pocket the money. He says he wasn't raised that way.

Found money is found money, dude. If the name on the envelope belongs to someone that's dead, take the money and run.

Reece testified in a deposition that she spent about $14,000 on a trip to Hawaii and had sold some of the rare late 1920s bills. She said about $60,000 was stolen from a shoe box in her closet but testified that she never reported the theft to police.

I guess "stolen" is better than "uh, I lost it."

Sounds like they should have watched this first, or maybe this.

Posted 11/09/2008 02:48:00 PM by Douglas

Government idiots with too much time on their hands: Dallas, for banning baggy pants:

Dallas Councilman Dwaine Caraway is on a mission: He wants those who wear low-hanging, baggy pants to pull them up.

As part of his ongoing campaign against saggy, underwear-exposing pants, the mayor pro tem held a summit on Saturday. More than 100 adults, children, students, ministers, law enforcement officers and representatives from local organizations attended the hours-long derriere affair.

I couldn't tell from that story what the hell they're advocating, other than trying to get people to look less like idiots, but is that the job of their elected officials? If people want to dress like a prison bitch, is that anyone's business besides their pimp?

Posted 11/09/2008 02:43:00 PM by Douglas

Life support becomes incredibly important when you're in a sealed vessel, even before the halon is deployed.

The victims suffocated after the submarine's fire-extinguishing system released Freon gas, said Vladimir Markin, an official with Russia's top investigative agency. He said forensic tests found Freon in the victims' lungs.

Lev Fyodorov, a top Russian chemical expert, agreed that the Freon pushed oxygen out, causing those inside to die of suffocation. But he wondered why the individual breathing kits that everyone on board is supposed to have did not keep people from dying.

That's gotta be a horrible way to go.

Posted 11/08/2008 02:44:00 PM by Douglas

The OED lists their top ten annoying phrases.

The phrases appear in a book called Damp Squid, named after the mistake of confusing a squid with a squib, a type of firework.

The researchers who compiled the list monitor the use of phrases in a database called the Oxford University Corpus, which comprises books, papers, magazines, broadcast, the internet and other sources.

The database alerts them to new words and phrases and can tell them which expressions are disappearing. It also shows how words are being misused.

And because I'm bored and the Horns are beating the crap out of Baylor (suck it, squirrel!) I thought I make my own list of shit that I hear all the time that pisses me off. Here we go, in no particular order:

• My bad. In the early 90s, I thought this was just something that stupid rednecks in my hometown said. Boy was I wrong, and it just won't die.
• Asian. I have no problem with Asia, per se, but why do people use Asian when they mean Oriental? "The Orient" is a fairly descriptive term to denote a region, food, people and culture. "Asian" encompasses everything from Vietnam to Russia, from Mongolia to Turkey. Why use a less descriptive term?
• Supposebly. This is just retarded, yet I hear it all the time, by adults (a-dolts?) that are supposebly educated. If they only knew how stupid they sounded.
• Amazing. Do the people, generally under 25 years old, realize it deflates the meaning of this superlative when they use it to describe not only the second coming of Christ, but also fat-free yogurt?
• It is what it is. Of course it is, jackass, what else would it be? This phrase is the verbal equivalent of abject silence, so just shut up next time.
• Wal-Marts. Gonna go down to the Wal-Marts. Well which one? This one is kind of funny, actually.
• Itself. I know dumb people use more words when they want to sound less stupid, but this one has got to go. Normally found at the end of spoken sentences, people think it lends credence to their point itself. It doesn't.
• PIN number. Or VIN number, or ATM machine. Why the hell bother making an acronym (or initialism) out of it if you're still going to use the word? I actually heard someone use the term "Personal PIN Number" once.
• If you will. Why give the other party in the conversation veto power to the silly crap you're espousing? Every time I hear it, I immediately say "nope, I'm not going to this time," which is usually followed by a blank stare, not unlike a dog that's been shown a card trick.
• Literally. This word doesn't mean what most people think it means. Literally. I read a story about subprime mortgages "picking up people by their ankles and literally shaking money out of their pockets." Really? I'd like to see that. Literally.

That's enough of that crap, and the game's over, anyway. Now if only Alabama and Tech would lose, it'll be a great day!

Posted 11/08/2008 01:14:00 PM by Douglas

Two more big banks go teats up.

The tally of failed banks in 2008 rose to 19 as the government announced that a Texas and a California bank had been shuttered Friday night.

Franklin Bank, a Houston, Texas-based bank and Security Pacific Bank, a Los Angeles, Calif.-based bank were shut down by state regulators Friday, marking the 18th and 19th bank failures this year.

Is there some irony in these bank failures? I sure hope so.

Ironically, Lewis Ranieri, the 61-year-old co-founder and chairman of parent Franklin Bank Corp., is credited with inventing mortgage-backed securities two decades ago, the AP reported, back when he worked at Salomon Brothers, where he is a former vice chairman.

Wow, so how's that workin' out for you, asshat? Does this mean he has to pay back some of the millions of dollars he's made over the last two decades? But to get a real indication of how bad this is, keep reading:

Prosperity Bank, based in El Campo, Texas, will assume all of the deposits of the failed Texas bank, including those that exceed the insurance limit and brokered accounts. Depositors of the failed bank will automatically become depositors of Prosperity.

A bank in a town of 11,000 is buying out a failed bank worth $5 billion? Sleep tight, American economy.

Posted 11/08/2008 11:57:00 AM by Douglas

Caribou Barbie takes off her campaign face and really talks to the press.

As for the vice presidential campaign, Palin denounced criticism from unidentified McCain campaign aides as "cowardly." She said she found it frustrating trying to respond to false allegations when she didn't know who was making them.

"It's ridiculous," she told reporters. "You guys report based on anonymous sources, so it's hard to have a defense."

Cowardly? Cowardly was not taking more heat from the press, Katie Couric not withstanding, during exciting two months of your campaign. But honestly, was she really this stupid?

She also denied a report that she didn't know Africa was a continent, not a country, and that she didn't know the members of the North American Free Trade Agreement — the United States, Canada and Mexico. She remembered discussing both Africa and Obama's stance on NAFTA with people preparing her for her debate, she said. Anything reported as a gaffe was taken out of context, she said.

"That's cruel. It's mean-spirited. It's immature. It's unprofessional and those guys are jerks if they came away with it, taking things out of context, and then tried to spread something on national news. It's not fair and it's not right."

'Out of context,' huh? That's a big word for a blithering idiot.

Posted 11/08/2008 11:32:00 AM by Douglas

Forget waterboarding, when interrogating the Butcher of Baghdad, why not try some Nestle Tollhouse cookies?

For seven months, the only person Saddam Hussein saw was FBI agent George Piro, who said he used everything from his own mother's home-made cookies to manipulations of the fallen Iraqi dictator's ego in the hunt for answers.

You want some real torture? They should have made him my Great Auntie's peanut brittle. You could have paved a driveway with that stuff. Lord only knows what would happened if you ate it, but I think I'd rather have a car battery attached to my nuts.

Posted 11/07/2008 04:38:00 PM by Douglas

The best gift you can bestow on your children to guarantee their future success? Your own failure

The rags-to-riches story—that staple of American biography—has over the years been given two very different interpretations. The nineteenth-century version stressed the value of compensating for disadvantage. If you wanted to end up on top, the thinking went, it was better to start at the bottom, because it was there that you learned the discipline and motivation essential for success. “New York merchants preferred to hire country boys, on the theory that they worked harder, and were more resolute, obedient, and cheerful than native New Yorkers,” Irvin G. Wyllie wrote in his 1954 study “The Self-Made Man in America.” Andrew Carnegie, whose personal history was the defining self-made-man narrative of the nineteenth century, insisted that there was an advantage to being “cradled, nursed and reared in the stimulating school of poverty.” According to Carnegie, “It is not from the sons of the millionaire or the noble that the world receives its teachers, its martyrs, its inventors, its statesmen, its poets, or even its men of affairs. It is from the cottage of the poor that all these spring.”

Today, that interpretation has been reversed. Success is seen as a matter of capitalizing on socioeconomic advantage, not compensating for disadvantage. The mechanisms of social mobility—scholarships, affirmative action, housing vouchers, Head Start—all involve attempts to convert the poor from chronic outsiders to insiders, to rescue them from what is assumed to be a hopeless state. Nowadays, we don’t learn from poverty, we escape from poverty, and a book like Ellis’s history of Goldman Sachs is an almost perfect case study of how we have come to believe social mobility operates. Six hundred pages of Ellis’s book are devoted to the modern-day Goldman, the firm that symbolized the golden era of Wall Street.

Hunger is a hell of a motivation. Getting everything you want isn't.

Posted 11/07/2008 04:33:00 PM by Douglas

When renting an SUV, always opt for the additional insurance.

Posted 11/07/2008 04:22:00 PM by Douglas

Lord knows I'm not an Obama supporter, but after eight years of such an unapologetic arrogant twit, this made me laugh.

Posted 11/07/2008 03:58:00 PM by Douglas

I never would have thought about a news story that involved "Dolly Parton" and "broad-band" could ever come out like this.

Tuesday marks the end of a battle that has lasted for more than two years, with each side predicting apocalyptic consequences should it lose.

Not the fight for the presidency — the one pitting Google against Dolly Parton.

The titan of Silicon Valley and the queen of country are two of the many combatants in a high-tech dispute over precious slices of the nation’s airwaves. The issue comes to a head on Election Day, when the Federal Communications Commission votes on a proposal to make a disputed chunk of radio spectrum available for public use.

Google, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and other technology companies say the spectrum could be used by a whole new array of Internet-connected wireless gadgets. They say freeing it up would encourage innovation and investment in much the same way that the spread of Wi-Fi technology has. (This would generate more business for tech companies.)

But a coalition of old-guard media — from television networks to Broadway producers — is objecting to the proposal, saying it needs a closer look. The opponents argue that signals sent over those frequencies could interfere with broadcasts and wireless microphones at live productions.

Go get 'em, Dolly!

If the spectrum is set free, Ms. Parton says, chaos could reign on Broadway — in the form of static and other interference.

“The potential direct negative impact on countless people may be immeasurable,” Ms. Parton wrote in a letter last month to the F.C.C., urging it not to release the frequencies.

Come on, Dolly. When the evil Mr. Hart tried to oppress the secretarial pool in Nine to Five, did you write a letter? No! You smoked some weed and imprisoned him in his bedroom for six weeks, all the while singing about it. And when the mean old sheriff tried to shut down the Chicken Ranch in Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, did you write a letter? NO! You gave a busload of Aggies a shag on the house, all the while singing about it.

I can't believe I'm the one that has to tell Dolly Parton to use her assets.