Posted 3/27/2008 09:24:00 PM by Douglas

Now dancing for your tips and your tips only, a sixth grader.

The city cannot shut down a Dallas strip club just because a 12-year-old danced nude there.

The city ordinance that regulates sexually oriented businesses does not allow authorities to revoke the license of such a business for employing someone younger than 18.

"There's a laundry list of things we can use to deny or revoke a license, but having a 12-year-old dancing in their establishment is not one of the things that automatically enables us to revoke their license," said Lt. Christina Smith, a Dallas police vice unit commander who oversees licensing of such establishments.

I suppose the question is what can they shut down a club for?? If a 12 year old girl dancing totally nude for money isn't one of them, what is?

Posted 3/27/2008 09:05:00 PM by Douglas

Please check your nipple ring safely in the overhead compartment.

Hamlin said she could not remove them and asked if she could instead display her pierced breasts in private to the female agent. But several other male officers told her she could not board her flight until the jewelry was removed, she said.

She was taken behind a curtain and managed to remove one bar-shaped nipple piercing but had trouble with the second, a ring.

TSA was obviously being jerks, but why on earth would anyone even attempt to comply with this? It gets better.

"Still crying, she informed the TSA officer that she could not remove it without the help of pliers, and the officer gave a pair to her," said Hamlin's attorney, Gloria Allred, reading from a letter she sent Thursday to the director of the TSA's Office of Civil Rights and Liberties. Allred is a well-known Los Angeles lawyer who often represents high-profile claims.

Somehow, I knew Gloria "Shrill Femanist Attorney" Allred would be involved with this one.

Posted 3/23/2008 05:22:00 PM by Douglas

I thought this article was from 1994 when I first looked at it. Yeah, that whole "internet" thing. It's probably not going to work out.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

Funny. A CD-ROM may not replace a great teacher, but it'll do wonders to replace several crappy ones.

Consider today's online world. The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation.

Usenet? That really takes me back.

Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping--just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete[sic]. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet--which there isn't--the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

Isn't this just adorable? I guess not everyone can have quality editing that corrects spelling mistakes. I guess he's never heard of Amazon or PayPal, either. But then again, he writes for Newsweek, the Parade Magazine of print weeklies. Or maybe he could get a job selling encyclopedias.

Posted 3/23/2008 05:00:00 PM by Douglas

Everything you never wanted to know about rechargeable batteries

Posted 3/23/2008 04:50:00 PM by Douglas

Celebrate your inner Jackson Pollock.

Posted 3/22/2008 12:29:00 PM by Douglas

The Supreme Court heard arguments in District of Columbia v. Heller this week, which is remarkable since it's the first time since 1939 a second amendment case was tried before the court. I doubt that this decision will strike down laws banning machine guns and any type of "arms" that would require a trailer hitch to transport, but it's interesting none the less. Now for my all time favourite gun-grabber logic:

Under the lower court’s analysis, he noted, categories of weapons that would have been considered “arms” by the Second Amendment’s drafters could not be banned today. He added that it would be hard to argue that machine guns did not fall into such a category, “given that they are the standard issue weapon for today’s armed forces and the state-organized militia.”

Imagine for a moment what would happen if someone even implied that the first amendment only ensured the right to methods of free speech that were available when the Constitution was drafted. Your right to practice religion was only ensured if your religion was around before 1789 (Sorry, Mormons). It's ridiculous to think the Second Amendment doesn't protect my right to own a fully automatic weapon just because Thomas Jefferson didn't have one.

Posted 3/22/2008 12:17:00 PM by Douglas

There's something about a "Happy" superfund site that just don't sound right.

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed that land over a plume of underground contamination beneath downtown Happy be designated a Superfund site, which would allow the agency to clean the pollution and track down its cause.

Crews battling a 1962 fire at the Attebury Grain Storage Facility in downtown Happy inadvertently polluted the Ogallala Aquifer with several chemicals common in fire extinguishers, according to the agency.

The contaminants spread to several public and private wells, leading to the closure of one city water source in 1991 and failed drinking-water standards at several other wells, according to the agency.

Toxic groundwater? I think Happy isn't as happy as it sounds. It may be the "town without a frown," but kidney, liver and nervous system damage isn't an acceptable alternative.

Posted 3/22/2008 12:15:00 PM by Douglas

For some reason, I bet this guy got his ass kicked on a regular basis in high school.

Posted 3/22/2008 12:13:00 PM by Douglas

Sir Arthur C. Clarke died last week.

In 1945, while a radar technician with the RAF, Clarke originated the notion of communications satellites, describing in most particulars the machines which control modern telecommunications; he was later to regret that he had not patented the idea (though, as a serving officer, he could not in any case have done so).

I'm disappointed that the Telegraph fails to point out that it's called a geostationary, or "Clarke" orbit.

Labels: Telegraph Obits

Posted 3/22/2008 12:10:00 PM by Douglas

Welcome to the worker's paradise.

Tellingly, in 1958, the island nation's per person wealth was higher than any East Asian country or colony, save Japan.

Thus in 1958, Cuba was almost as rich as Japan, one and half times as wealthy as Singapore, richer than Hong Kong, and three times as prosperous as South Korea.

Fifty years later, Cuba is one of the poorest countries in Latin America.

Gotta give it to Fidel for sticking with his failed system, but geez, 17 years after the Soviet's system fell apart, you'd think he'd get the message.

Posted 3/20/2008 05:50:00 PM by Douglas

As long as we're talking about "global" warming, isn't it time someone started measuring the temperature of our globe's oceans? Someone has.

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.

This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.

In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.

Robots. Always with the misleading robots. Well, water has about four times the heat capacity of air, so it's easy to see how an increase would take a lot longer to become measurable.

Who knows how this is going to play out, but I sure hope Al Gore lives long enough to see how wrong he was. Or at least long enough to have to give up his gas guzzling limo.

Labels: global warming

Posted 3/20/2008 05:31:00 PM by Douglas

College: Where it's better to be brown than smart.

The University of Texas at Austin has been forced to offer admission to a record number of Texas high school students using just a single criterion — class ranking — and that has hurt the university's ability to increase its racial and ethnic diversity, the school's president said Wednesday.

On Wednesday and in testimony before a House panel a day earlier, Powers said the university could attract a more diverse student body if it was not forced by the state, under a decade-old law, to accept every student with a high class rank.

Yeah, it ain't a perfect system, and even with the top 10%, Podunk High School in Tumbleweed, Texas, is going to crank out two or three students that might want to make it down there to the Puzzle Palace on the Colorado. How dare Texas citizens send their top academic achievers to the state's flagship university just because they got good grades when there's a more deserving minority out of state? It gets better:

"Only about one in four students admitted under the top 10 percent law is African-American or Hispanic, so there's a natural limit if we don't have discretion in who we can go after," he said. "It's a capacity problem."

If you damn white people would just stop going to college, we'd have all the room we needed to achieve our goal: A student body that looks like a Benetton ad.

Posted 3/20/2008 05:20:00 PM by Douglas

Some pictures from my weekend travels. Some things really are backwards in a small town:

For a three-legged dog, he's actually quite spry:

No, his name is not Tripod. I think it was Bob. Get it?!? Bob?!? Get it??? You don't get it, do you?

Posted 3/20/2008 05:11:00 PM by Douglas

Got my notice from the IRS today. I'm going to receive $1,200 for no damn reason. Too bad it's not going to be here by April 15th so I could give it right back to them. Too bad it's not anywhere close to my tax bill this year. Kinda reminds me of this. I'm tired of showing up to the bar.

Posted 3/20/2008 05:07:00 PM by Douglas

More on the adventures of our troubled dollar:

The U.S. dollar's value is dropping so fast against the euro that small currency outlets in Amsterdam are turning away tourists seeking to sell their dollars for local money while on vacation in the Netherlands.

That's because the smaller currency exchanges -- despite buy/sell spreads that make it easier for them to make money by exchanging small amounts of currency -- don't want to be caught holding dollars that could be worth less by the time they can sell them.

You can always use them for toilet paper. . .

Posted 3/20/2008 05:01:00 PM by Douglas

All's fair in love, war, and elections, but this seems like a dirty trick, even for Republicans.

As if Democrats didn't have enough problems deciding upon their presidential nominee this year, now they must contend with the possibility that Republicans are deliberately crossing party lines to prolong the bitterly contested race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. In recent weeks, conservative talk radio stars Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham have urged loyal listeners to vote for the much-despised Clinton in open Democratic primaries so as to prevent Obama from sealing the nomination, and there are some indications that their calls have already been heeded in states like Texas and Mississippi.

Well, good for them. It could come back to bite them on the ass, in that if it comes to a coin toss, Hillary might actually win the nomination, and John "Let's Stay in Iraq for 100 years" McCain could lose.

Posted 3/13/2008 05:58:00 PM by Douglas

The war on drugs continues, unabated. You'd think that a naturally occurring plant (NOT weed, this time) would have to be illegal for its owner to be arrested, but you'd be wrong:

A legislative bill that would make Salvia divinorum an illegal drug in Nebraska has little chance of passage during the last six weeks of the legislative session.

Lincoln Police on Monday made a Salvia bust anyway.

Citing a state statute that prohibits Nebraskans from selling certain compounds that will induce an intoxicated or otherwise mind-altering state, officers executed a search warrant on Exotica, 2441 N. 48th St. The Lincoln store sells the herb, a cousin of sage, generally smoked to create a short-term hallucinogenic experience. Exotica owner Christian Firoz said four officers entered his store early Monday evening, took all his Salvia and issued him a citation for selling certain compounds.

When are we as a society going to grow up and quit funding these jack-booted thugs that have nothing better to do with their lives than to delude themselves into thinking they're stopping people from getting high? But it gets better:

State statute 28-420 bans the sale of any substance which will induce an intoxicated condition when the seller “knows or has reason to know that such compound is intended for use to induce such condition.”

I guess Budweiser and Wild Turkey are banned, too? Oh, silly me, they must mean intoxicating substances the state doesn't tax the shit out of and make they own money off of their "intoxicating conditions."

Think of all the money we'd have if they stopped funding the asinine drug war and started taxing the shit out of it like they do alcohol and tobacco, the worst mind altering drugs out there.

I can dream, can't I?

Posted 3/13/2008 05:41:00 PM by Douglas

Truly bizarre story of a drunk deputy that killed himself on the freeway. Of course, there's more to this story:

An on-duty undercover Harris County sheriff's deputy who was killed in a car crash last month was legally drunk, according to autopsy findings.

Tests show Deputy Craig Miller's blood alcohol level was about three times the legal limit for driving on Feb. 21 when he crashed into a commercial truck on a Katy Freeway access road, said Bill Hawkins, an assistant Harris County district attorney. A motorist is legally intoxicated when their blood alcohol level is 0.08 or above.

I would assume a post mortem BAL test would be relatively conclusive in determining just how drunk a person was, so I can't imagine that this would be up for debate at this point. But here we are:

"Craig's accident and the ongoing investigation have raised many questions and inconsistencies," the Miller family wrote in a prepared statement. "The most current results of the investigation do not equate to his actions prior to the accident, or are they in any way consistent with the husband, father and friend and professional that he was widely known to be."

Well maybe not, and it's horrible that this widow is going to raise their children without a father, but there's the way things ought to be, and there's the way things are. Especially when his life and the lives of his family aren't the only ones affected by his actions.

Jose Jesus Vieyra is in jail charged with criminally negligent homicide. Sheriff's office investigators have said Vieyra caused the crash by crossing three lanes of traffic in front of the deputy. A grand jury has yet to act on the case.

``It's outrageous,'' Vieyra's attorney Ronald Helson said. ``Anybody who is driving a motor vehicle with that much alcohol in their system, that's the most outrageous thing about this.'' He said it is a tragedy that the deputy was killed but that he doesn't believe his client was at fault.

So what happens when two parties are doing something illegal, yet one of them is way more illegal than the other? I would think being triple drunk trumps an illegal lane change (if that's what he did) on any day of the week.

Federal immigration officials have said Vieyra is in the country on a visitor's visa that has expired.

Ok, maybe not. Maybe if it was a cute blonde chick on her cell phone making a bad lane change that caused the wreck, we'd get back to our finger pointing at the evil drunk, but an illegal? Outlook not so good, amigo. But here's some evidence that Mr. Miller had a drinking problem:

An autopsy report included pathological findings that Miller suffered from acute alcoholism, according to an official who said he had seen the document.

When they cut you open after you die, it's hard to hide the fact your liver is the size of a free steak in Amarillo. But here's the real rub of the story:

Miller was off duty and at his home when his supervisor called and asked him to relieve another deputy at an undercover assignment. Miller did not expect to be called out that night, Billingsley said.

Miller would not have faced any disciplinary action had he refused and told his supervisor he had been drinking, Billingsley said. But Miller did not do so, and his supervisor did not notice any signs of intoxication during the phone call, sheriff's officials said.

``I knew him to be a good, dedicated employee,'' Billingsley said. ``This does not change the fact that he was killed in the line of the duty.''

Driving to work drunk off your ass is "in the line of duty" now? I had no idea. I guess I should start charging my commute time to my employer.

At 7:19 p.m., as Miller drove a leased Toyota 4-Runner along the inside lane of the Katy Freeway service road, he struck the back left portion of a box truck that had pulled out of a car dealership and veered into Miller's lane, sheriff's officials said. The deputy's SUV then glanced off one of the truck's dually rams, struck a curb, rolled over several times and landed on a concrete median.

This explains exactly nothing as to why Mr. Vieyra is sitting in jail.

Miller was not wearing his seatbelt.

I can forgive the man for just about everything else, but not this. Maybe as an alcoholic, he didn't realize how impaired he was, but there's no excuse for not wearing his seatbelt. After all, it's illegal!

Posted 3/12/2008 05:52:00 PM by Douglas

Turns out there was more to that broken plane story than Southwest admitted, initially:

Southwest Airlines said Wednesday that it had grounded 38 of its Boeing 737s after a review of maintenance records Tuesday night led it to question whether required testing had been done. The airline said the groundings forced it to cancel 4 percent of its flights on Wednesday.

The announcement suggests Southwest, in most regards considered the best-managed company in the domestic airline business, is having difficulty dealing with maintenance and recordkeeping problems that led to sanctions by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Southwest, which has about 530 737s in its fleet, was fined $10.2 million by the agency last week for continuing to fly planes after the carrier had discovered it had failed to perform required inspections. The proposed fine is a F.A.A. record.

Southwest did not say, in a statement issued on Wednesday, whether the 38 grounded planes were part of that prior problem, which involved inspections to detect cracks on the fuselage. A spokeswoman could not immediately be reached.

Well, it ain't cause they were out of peanuts, I'll bet.

Posted 3/12/2008 05:44:00 PM by Douglas

Here's a heartwarming Women's Herstory Month story for you: A quarter of teenage girls have the nasty women's disease:

The first national study of four common sexually transmitted diseases among girls and young women has found that one in four are infected with at least one of the diseases, federal health officials reported Tuesday.

Nearly half the African-Americans in the study of teenagers ages 14 to 19 were infected with at least one of the diseases monitored in the study — human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, genital herpes and trichomoniasis, a common parasite.

The two most common sexually transmitted diseases, or S.T.D.’s, among all the participants tested were HPV, at 18 percent, and chlamydia, at 4 percent, according to the analysis, part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Empowerment, ladies. Feel the power! Empower yourself without the itchy red bumps on your junk.

Posted 3/10/2008 05:26:00 PM by Douglas

I've been staying away from the story of the guy in Galveston that put his baby in the microwave, but I made the mistake of reading this story, and I think I threw up in my mouth a little bit. Turns out, the pre-trial motions don't center on the guy putting his baby in a hotel microwave, but rather whether or not the fact that he had sex with the mother of the microwaved baby, in the Galveston County Jail interrogation room, is pertinent to the trial:

A jury should not hear an allegation about sex in an interrogation room that occurred following the arrest of a man accused of burning his 2-month-old daughter in a microwave oven, a defense attorney argued today.

Prosecutors say witnesses saw Joshua Mauldin, 20, of Warren, Ark., have sex with his wife in an interrogation room at the Galveston County Jail several days after he was accused of placing his daughter in a microwave oven for 10 to 20 seconds on May 10 last year.

"This is just another attempt to demonize him," Cammack said outside the courtroom. Assistant District Attorney Xochitl Vandiver said jurors should know about the alleged sexual encounter between Mauldin and his wife, Eva Marie Mauldin, because it reflected his state of mind. "That piece of information is relevant to the defendant's guilt," Vandiver said.

I'll admit I'm a simple man, but a guy that's looking at a long time in a Texas prison having sex with his wife in the jail doesn't really go to "demonize" him more than say, oh, I don't know, putting his own baby in a motel microwave. Maybe it's just me. But here's where I threw up a little bit:

Cammack denied that alleged sex act occurred and said a DNA test of the chair in the interrogation room tested positive for someone other than Mauldin or his wife.

There's enough love pudding on a jail room chair to actually test?!? Not only that, but it didn't belong to either of the two people you saw doing the Vertical Act of Love™?!? Just how much baby batter is laying around the interrogation room at the Galveston County Jail than you can't 'nail' this down?

Posted 3/10/2008 05:12:00 PM by Douglas

Why on earth would a tiny Texas town of less than 4,000 people possibly need a police force armed with fully automatic rifles?

The nine police officers who patrol between the town's two stoplights have seen their training and weapons upgraded in recent years. Namely, the department now has an automatic rifle. An M-16, to be precise.

While it's unusual for such a small police agency to own a gun that powerful, Police Chief Ronnie Lawson says it's an appropriate upgrade because highways funnel more than vehicle traffic through this agricultural community.

"Before, there was never the threat there is now," Lawson said, adding that terrorists could possibly hitch a ride on one of the drug or immigrant smuggling routes that run through Jourdanton. "There's all types of possibilities."

Oh good lord. It's possible that Osama been forgotten is going to land his dual pronged amphibious air assault on suburban Jourdanton, but that doesn't seem very credible. You don't even have an exit off I-37, for Chrissake. But good job on filling out the right paper work to get free government money, Ronnie. But for the money quote, gotta go next door to neighboring Pearsall, Texas (pop 7,100) and Police Chief Joel Gonzalez:

Pearsall Police Chief Joel Gonzalez doesn't see the need for heavy firepower, such as M-16s, in his community. In his 11 years with the department, officers have only used a shotgun once to shoot at a snake, he said, so he'd rather focus his officers' energies on training and knowing the locals. Gonzalez also worries about the message big firepower would send in a small community.

"I know that every department wants to be prepared, but I really don't feel like we should escalate to that level," he said.

Wow, what a refreshing voice of reason. Too bad no one is listening.

Posted 3/10/2008 05:03:00 PM by Douglas

Here's a shocker: Boeing is going to appeal the loss of the $40 Billion tanker deal to Airbus.

The Boeing Company said Monday that it would seek to overturn the award to rival manufacturers of a multibillion-dollar contract to build aerial refueling aircraft.

“Our team has taken a very close look at the tanker decision and found serious flaws in the process that we believe warrant appeal,” Jim McNerney, Boeing’s chairman, president and chief executive, said in a statement on the airplane giant’s Web site. “This is an extraordinary step rarely taken by our company, and one we take very seriously.”

The company said it would file a formal protest on Tuesday asking the Government Accountability Office to review the Air Force’s decision to award the tanker contract to a team of Northrop Grumman and the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company.

Boeing had been favored to win the $35 billion contract — which could eventually be worth far more — so its defeat to the Northrop Grumman-EADS team was a stinging blow not just to Boeing’s corporate pride but its long-range outlook as well. So its announcement that it will appeal was not that unexpected.

When all the dust clears from this, I bet they get it. But this is big message for them to get their act together.

Posted 3/09/2008 06:01:00 PM by Douglas

As I've said before, defense contracts going to foreign companies doesn't really make much sense, so it's little surprise that it's taken Boeing a week and a half to pick their jaw up off the floor after this $35 Billion hit:

As a result, Boeing, the pride of American aerospace, was outmaneuvered on its home turf for a contract that could grow to $100 billion, becoming one of the largest military purchases in history.

Boeing received a detailed briefing from the Pentagon on Friday about why its bid fell short. Now it must decide by Wednesday whether to file a formal appeal.

Let the whining begin.

Boeing could also be forced to revisit the corruption scandal in 2004 that derailed a $20 billion deal for the company to lease refueling tankers to the Air Force. Two Boeing executives went to jail as a result, and the chief executive stepped down.

Yeah, remember those days? Back when it was more like a bad soap opera than a defense contractor.

Not just anyone in the world can make a plane the size of a 767 or an A330, but you'd think the DoD would have an interest in buying it from the country it's designed to protect.

Posted 3/09/2008 05:32:00 PM by Douglas

Sometimes it's obvious that your school's administration doesn't really give a shit about the students. Then other times, they have to put up a sign:

Posted 3/09/2008 05:25:00 PM by Douglas

Hey, what's that smell? I sure hope it's not bad for me.

Mayor Bill White challenged the area's chemical industry to reduce its emissions of toxic chemicals such as benzene four months ago and promised punitive measures if it failed to do so.

Since then, levels of the carcinogen benzene in the Houston region's air haven't fallen or even remained flat; they've gone up, the city says.

According to data collected by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and analyzed by the city of Houston, 13 air monitors that track benzene south and east of downtown, from Lake Jackson to Wallisville, saw increases in the amount of time that benzene concentrations exceeded healthy levels.

"It's not looking good," said Elena Marks, the mayor's health policy director.

That's OK, Houston. So you can't get Benzene out of the air that everyone has to breathe. At least you got cigarette smoke out of the bars.

Posted 3/08/2008 05:14:00 PM by Douglas

This is No Birthday Party for young men:

Posted 3/06/2008 06:21:00 PM by Douglas

Loopholes are generally for pussies that want to circumvent the law, but when they go to circumvent a stupid law, then let's get on with the show!

All the world's a stage at some of Minnesota's bars. A new state ban on smoking in restaurants and other nightspots contains an exception for performers in theatrical productions. So some bars are getting around the ban by printing up playbills, encouraging customers to come in costume, and pronouncing them "actors."

The customers are playing right along, merrily puffing away - and sometimes speaking in funny accents and doing a little improvisation, too.

The state Health Department is threatening to bring the curtain down on these sham productions. But for now, it's on with the show.

Nevermind the fact that people that want to smoke in a bar have to come up with such a lame excuse. If every other bar in town is non-smoking, that means everyone in this bar wants to smoke, and I'd guess in Minnesota it's pretty ball-droppingly unpleasant to step outside on the patio. So I'm sure the state is going to let this practice continue and let these adults live their lives as they see fit, no? No:

The Health Department this week vowed to begin cracking down on theater nights with fines of as much as $10,000.

"The law was enacted to protect Minnesotans from the serious health effects of secondhand smoke," Minnesota Health Commissioner Sanne Magnan said. "It is time for the curtain to fall on these theatrics."

Hey Sanne, shut your smokeless pie hole. Some people choose to smoke, and still other choose to smoke and make a living waiting on other smokers. Why not stop trying to tell these people how to live their lives?

Posted 3/06/2008 06:03:00 PM by Douglas

Ha ha! You lost! Now go back to whatever Neocon-hole you crawled out of. Also known as "Friendswood."

The old libertarian beat a "true Republican" by a 2 to 1 margin.

Despite an effort by Friendswood councilman Chris Peden to unseat the long-term congressman, Paul appeared to seal the Republican nomination for the District 14 seat by a 2-1 margin.

With no Democratic candidate filed for the District 14 spot, Paul will remain as the district’s representative.

Paul, who has served in congress on and off for more than 30 years, had a 40 percentage point lead when 94 percent of precincts had reported results.

“My message of limited government and upholding the constitution has once again been endorsed by the conservative-minded voters in my district,” Paul said in a written statement.

Hmm, maybe the voters in the 14th District didn't want the same line of Neocon Republican smoke blown up their ass by someone that's just regurgitating the same shit we've been hearing for the last seven years?

Go back to the city council where you can't do any real damage.

Posted 3/06/2008 05:54:00 PM by Douglas

Another good sign of the looming depression and the implosion of the real estate market

Homeowners' portion of equity slipped to downwardly revised 49.6 percent in the second quarter of 2007, the central bank reported in its quarterly U.S. Flow of Funds Accounts, and declined further to 47.9 percent in the fourth quarter — the third straight quarter it was under 50 percent.

That marks the first time homeowners' debt on their houses exceeds their equity since the Fed started tracking the data in 1945.

Your value keeps going into the toilet and your ARM is going through the roof. Sounds like it's time to buy! Too bad no one has any money.

Posted 3/06/2008 05:38:00 PM by Douglas

After being pandered to their entire lives, Generation Y is in the work force, and what are they doing? Whining about it:

The presentation chronicles their love of space and the heartbreak of working at an agency that has had such a tough time connecting with the rest of their generation and getting them excited about space. It also talks about how important the under 30 crowd is.

Excuse me if I don't bust out crying. If you're not being engaged at work, don't just sit there and bang on your fuckin' high chair 'till someone tops-off your sippy cup. Do something. And that presentation they put together? Geesh, what utter dreck. Were they trying to prove they had ADHD? Quit cutting the Ritalin in half and go ahead and take the whole does. If their blog is any indication of their acumen, NASA is in bigger trouble than they know.

Posted 3/06/2008 05:22:00 PM by Douglas

With rare exception, no one wants to die in a plane crash, so most Southwest passengers might take interest in this story:

The Federal Aviation Administration proposed a record penalty, $10.2 million, against Southwest Airlines on Thursday because, it said, the carrier had misled officials about whether it kept flying older Boeing 737 planes for several days last year after failing to inspect them for cracks in the fuselage.

At least one F.A.A. employee was aware of Southwest’s misrepresentation, an agency spokeswoman, Diane Spitalieri said, and told the airline that it could keep flying the 737s but should inspect them as soon as possible. A supervisor at the F.A.A. who was aware of the arrangement has been removed from that job, the spokeswoman said.

So for whatever reason, the FAA knew about it, right? Sure SWA shoulda inspected (at the very least) but if the government oversight authority has information and authority to shut down operations, aren't they equally as culpable for endangering the public? SWA has a lot more to lose from a crashed plane than the FAA does, and the FAA has about as much to do with preventing a plane crash as the "employees much wash hands" sign does at keeping pee-pee out of the salad bar at Pizza Hut. So fine yourself, FAA.

Ms. Spitalieri said that four of the planes turned out to have four-inch cracks, big enough to require repairs, though no problems occurred when they were in use.

The airline said that it had found “the start of small cracking” on six planes.

F.Y.I. : There's no such thing as a small crack in the fuselage of any plane that I'm on. I'm just sayin'.

“We continued flying with the concurrence of F.A.A. and the F.A.A.’s approval of our plan to bring ourselves back into compliance,” Ms. Rutherford said.

She added that the airline had inspected “99.4 percent” of the area it was supposed to, but, because of an error in the computer program that tells inspectors what tasks to accomplish, skipped 0.6 percent.

“This was never an issue of a safety-of-flight concern,” she said.

Again, 0.6% is pretty small. . . . unless it's your plane!

Boeing, the builder of the planes, issued a statement Thursday saying that Southwest had asked it to verify that is was safe to fly the planes for up to 10 days until they could be reinspected.

“Boeing concluded the 10-day compliance plan was technically valid,” the statement said. “In Boeing’s opinion, the safety of the Southwest fleet was not compromised.”

So it looks like SWA and the FAA both dropped the ball on this, but it seems silly to fine them $10 million at this point. Of course, if this story was leaked after a SWA 737 crash, the settlement would be closer to $10 Billion.

Just get us there and don't crash. Is that too much to ask? And get rid of the honey roasted peanuts. They're terrible.

Posted 3/06/2008 05:04:00 PM by Douglas

Dare to dream, you crazy drunk:

From his front porch, John Milkovisch was able to see the beer truck heading for the local grocery, spurring him into action. “He’d run over there and clean them out,” recalled his son Ronald. “He never had less than 8 to 10 cases stacked up in the garage.”

From 1968 until his death 20 years later, Mr. Milkovisch, an upholsterer for the Southern Pacific Railroad, not only emptied 50,000 cans or more of his favorite beverage but also put the containers to good use, cladding his house and workshop with thousands of maintenance-free flattened beer cans (Falstaff was a favorite) and shading the sun with garlands of tinkling beer can tops and tabs.

Known to generations of sidewalk gawkers as the Beer Can House, the folk art monument was dedicated Thursday and will open to the public on Saturday for the first time since its purchase from the Milkovisch family and a seven-year restoration project totaling $400,000.

This is the first picture of him I think I've ever seen. I thought he'd be bigger. Shine on, crazy diamond!

Posted 3/02/2008 05:28:00 PM by Douglas

Wine snobs aren't just annoying. They're liars too.

SCIENTISTS AT CALTECH and Stanford recently published the results of a peculiar wine tasting. They provided people with cabernet sauvignons at various price points, with bottles ranging from $5 to $90. Although the tasters were told that all the wines were different, the scientists were in fact presenting the same wines at different prices.

The subjects consistently reported that the more expensive wines tasted better, even when they were actually identical to cheaper wines.

Well who in their right mind is going to blow a couple of hundred dollars on a bottle of wine if it tastes like Two Buck Chuck? You gotta convince yourself you spent that $198 for something.

Posted 3/02/2008 05:19:00 PM by Douglas

There's lots of good drinkers that have a chronic writing problem.

Drink rarely causes a writer to underestimate his talents. And tippling is a handy excuse: Inspired writing produced under the influence is still inspired. But you wrote a tissue of nonsense? Well, one overindulges.

The writer's life is solitary, but not the drinking writer's. In his 1975 memoir, "Here at the New Yorker," Brendan Gill portrays the magazine (where he worked for 40 years) as a society of first-class bingers. One colleague believed that vomiting was, like shaving and showering, a natural part of any morning routine.

Intoxication, if not the source of literary creation, creates a cerebral aura congenial to it. It recasts the glare of life in a softer hue. It soothes anxiety and other stultifiers of reflection. It warms the mind and thaws thoughts frozen in timidity. The fruit of the vine does not give us insight but aids our discovery of it; it can allow you to eavesdrop on yourself.

In the words of the great Frank Sinatra, "I feel sorry for people that don't drink: When they wake up in the morning, that's the best they're going to feel all day."

Posted 3/02/2008 05:18:00 PM by Douglas

Enter the ICHC online Poker Cats Contest!

Posted 3/02/2008 04:16:00 PM by Douglas

What's worse: a political attack ad, or whining about it?

Democrat Barack Obama accused rival Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday of trying to "play on people's fears to scare up votes" with a television ad showing sleeping children and asking who would be more qualified to answer a national security emergency call at 3 a.m.

"The question is not about picking up the phone. The question is: What kind of judgment will you make when you answer?" Obama said as he campaigned in Texas ahead of crucial contests here and in Ohio on Tuesday.

Yawn. Who really cares? This is the ad she really wants to run:

Posted 3/02/2008 04:03:00 PM by Douglas

Hillary on SNL last night. It was pretty lame, but Hillary's lame anyway, but how lame is it to screw up the line?

Saying she was appealing to all Americans -- whether they're from Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, Vermont, Pennsylvania "or any of the other states" -- Clinton opened the show with "Live from New York, it is Saturday night!"

Seriously, "It is?" Like her campaign and general demeanor, it's just awkward.

Posted 3/02/2008 03:25:00 PM by Douglas

Happy Birthday, Texas!

One hundred and seventy-two years ago, Texas won her independence as a free republic. On Saturday, local descendants of those seekers of liberty celebrated that anniversary.

You don't look a day over 160! Can't wait for the demisemiseptcentennial 2011.