Posted 6/29/2008 02:26:00 PM by Douglas

Lessons in political marketing: Don't make ads that are so damn stupid.

Is U.S. Sen. John Cornyn's Big Bad John campaign video a big black eye for him?

His staff says absolutely not, painting the attention-getting video as a "winner." But Democrats are reacting with glee to the video, which includes Cornyn in a cowboy hat and fringed jacket, plus a rewrite of the song to include lines: "He rose to the top in just one term, kept Texas in power, made lesser states squirm. Big John. Big John. Big John. Yeah, Big Bad John."

He looks like a total idiot. Like what a Hollywood Jew would think a Texan looks like. What a freakin' joke.

Of Beckwith's suggestion that those who don't like the video are anti-Texan, Miller said, "I grew up in Amarillo and went to school in Austin. I don't know a whole lot of Texans who would look at that ... and think that it helps John Cornyn."

I don't know who would look at that and buy an insurance policy from him, much less vote for him for the senate.

Posted 6/28/2008 03:00:00 PM by Douglas

The Power of Christ Compels You! To not sue if your church gets into some wacky shit.

A North Texas Pentecostal church should not be held liable for emotional trauma a former parishioner suffered as a youth when church members physically restrained and touched her during two exorcism attempts in 1996, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday.

The high court's decision reverses a $300,000 judgment a jury ordered paid to Laura Schubert in 2002. Schubert was 17 at the time when fellow parishioners at the Pleasant Glade Assembly of God Church in Colleyville, in an attempt to rid her of evil spirits, held her down and "laid hands" on her body as she struggled to break free.

"The key point of this ruling is that we don't have a right to have our standards of reasonableness foisted upon some other religion," Dallas attorney David Pruessner said.

Reasonableness? Time for me to start my own religion, protected by the First Amendment. Sacred beliefs of my church: It's a sin to pay taxes or entry fees to Zoos or Tractor pull competitions.

Posted 6/28/2008 02:39:00 PM by Douglas

Fuel prices are through the roof, acreage of farmland previously used to grow wheat and soy are now sowed in a corn-based ethanol clusterfuck, and the corn that was used to make everything else we eat, from Coke to beef, is now being sent to the distillery. But what's to blame for increasing food prices? You guessed it, lazy, lazy bees.

Food prices could rise even more unless the mysterious decline in honey bees is solved, farmers and businessmen told lawmakers Thursday.

"No bees, no crops," North Carolina grower Robert D. Edwards told a House Agriculture subcommittee. Edwards said he had to cut his cucumber acreage in half because of the lack of bees available to rent.

Business opportunity: Rent-a-bee!

In 2006, beekeepers began reporting losing 30 percent to 90 percent of their hives. This phenomenon has become known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Scientists do not know how many bees have died; beekeepers have lost 36 percent of their managed colonies this year. It was 31 percent for 2007, said Edward B. Knipling, administrator of the Agriculture Department's Agricultural Research Service.

Colony Collapse Disorder?!? Holy Crap, I didn't know the government had a name for it already. Now that CCD has a name, I'm sure they'll figure out a solution long before the food riots.

Labels: Bees

Posted 6/28/2008 02:16:00 PM by Douglas

From the "sounds like a lot, but really isn't" department:

Americans drove 22 billion fewer miles from November through April than during the same period in 2006-07, the biggest such drop since the Iranian revolution led to gasoline supply shortages in 1979-80.

The headline says 30 billion, so let's run with that. 30 billion miles in five months? That's nothing. Assuming these miles were driven at 10 miles per gallon, that's roughly 150,000 barrels of crude oil. Over five months. We burn 20 million barrels of oil a day. I mean, it's cute and all, but that's a 0.00000087% decrease in usage. So it makes for a good headline, but "market forces at work to decrease oil dependency?" Not so much.

Posted 6/27/2008 05:48:00 PM by Douglas

Want to fire up a shit load of charcoal, but don't have time for this? How about this one.

I don't think this guy understands the concept of fire, and also, if he's using pressed sawdust (Kingsford) I question his intentions with a coal grill in the first place.

Sounds like a great way to get a third degree burn.

Posted 6/27/2008 05:34:00 PM by Douglas

After 217 years, the Supreme Court finally upheld that All amendments to our constitution apply to the individual, not the collective. But you gotta go to The New York Times if you really want the full bore, knee-jerk opinion.

In a radical break from 70 years of Supreme Court precedent, Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, declared that the Second Amendment guarantees individuals the right to bear arms for nonmilitary uses, even though the amendment clearly links the right to service in a “militia.” The ruling will give gun-rights advocates a powerful new legal tool to try to strike down gun-control laws across the nation.

Well, no. If that were the case, why are firearms completely legal for everyone to buy and own, except in certain jurisdictions like DC and Chicago? But I digress.

This is a decision that will cost innocent lives, cause immeasurable pain and suffering and turn America into a more dangerous country. It will also diminish our standing in the world, sending yet another message that the United States values gun rights over human life.

Oh wake up. Knife violence cause knife deaths. Cars cause car deaths. It's horrible when it happens, but no one wants to ban cars or knives. I can't verify the veracity of this web site, but if you want to find the "real killers," we'll go after Toyota instead of Colt.

I have no doubt that there are regions of the country that are living in fear of "gun violence." Such as our nation's capital. But I don't think, nor does the Supreme Court, that taking guns away from law abiding citizens is the answer. Do people in these "high-crime" ridden areas receive some kind of solace in knowing they were shot with and illegal firearm? I think not.

Banning anything is the sure-fire way to ensure you'll never get rid of it. Check prohibition. Check the War on Drugs. Check the DC and Chicago gun bans.

It never works.

Posted 6/22/2008 03:20:00 PM by Douglas

Time again for a celestial event at the sundial:

Some dumbass didn't realize that we're under Central Daylight Time, so I was there an hour early. But then the time came.:

The summer solstice showed no less shortage of dorks/Druids. This year, there was guy who apparently leaves his mother's basement and/or his D&D game to check out a sundial. He asked another dork if "anyone is going to try to balance an egg on its end." Dumbass. Not only are you wrong, but you've got the wrong day. Oh well.

See ya in December.

Posted 6/22/2008 02:17:00 PM by Douglas

The Republicans are getting worried about Bob Barr running for president. They should.

A fiery former GOP congressman who gained national prominence for doggedly pursuing impeachment of President Clinton has some Republicans worried he'll play spoiler in a tight presidential contest.

Bob Barr's Libertarian Party bid for the White House is the longest of long shots, but political experts say he may be able to exploit the unease some die-hard conservatives still feel about Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee-in-waiting. Combined with the surge in turnout among Democrats during the primaries and a difficult political climate for Republicans, they see what could be a recipe for trouble for the GOP.

Bob Barr is but one ingredient in the GOP's recipe for trouble.

"No reasonable conservative is going to vote for anyone except McCain," Gingrich said.

Holy Crap!?! For once I am in complete agreement with Newty-Noot. No one voting for McCain is either reasonable or conservative.

Posted 6/22/2008 01:46:00 PM by Douglas

Hey, idiots: when your government has a "surplus", guess where that money comes from? That's right, you!

House Speaker Tom Craddick and State Comptroller Susan Combs have talked about a projected surplus in next year's session. Craddick said it would be about $15 billion but Combs corrected him saying it would be no more than $10.5 billion.

$10.5 billion? I mean $9.7 billion. I have a feeling this number is going to get smaller every time they talk about it.

But despite some cloudy economic forecasts, Isett and other lawmakers are happy that at least for now there is a projected surplus, just like last year.

Uh, maybe your taxes are too high? If you collect more than you can spend, doesn't that mean you collect too much? It seems like lowering taxes would be a better solution to this problem instead of struggling on finding a place to blow the money.

Posted 6/22/2008 01:39:00 PM by Douglas

So I missed the sandcastle contest this year, but when I checked their website, I think it was a good thing, as I think I would have thrown up on the beach had I made it down there. Why? Green sandcastles.

Our goal for next year is to continue the effort in environmental responsibility by eliminating the use of fuel-powered generators used to pump water from the surf into the sand sculpting sites.

Join us as we strive to reduce our carbon footprint.

So several hundred people driving to Galveston and gas powered water pumps are destroying our planet? Why not advocate driving to Galveston without their air-conditioners in their SUVs? That would reduce their carbon foot print, too. I'm just so sick of these sanctimonious leftys that think they're doing their part for the earth if they recycle their latte cups. Turn off your home's A/C if you really want to reduce your carbon footprint. Let's see how dedicated to this premise these whiners really are.

Posted 6/20/2008 08:25:00 PM by Douglas

Looking for a way to conveniently and reliably electrocute yourself? Wait no more.

Posted 6/20/2008 07:50:00 PM by Douglas

Increased security plus stupidity equals less safety.

"How well does government do in helping the market to improve what it does?" asked Clifford Winston, an economist at the Brookings Institution and the author of the 2006 book "Market Failure Versus Government Failure." "The research consistently finds that, in fact, government efforts to correct market failures have little effect, or actually make things worse."

"There is a tendency for people to say, 'If things are safer, then I will take more risk,' " he added. "It does not have to involve government interventions: Drugs are developed to reduce blood pressure, so people say, 'Okay, I can eat more, and it does not matter if I gain weight, because I can take this pill.'"

Well, duh. I don't think anyone wants to kill themselves, but as long as we're taken care of, why the hell not?

Posted 6/20/2008 07:38:00 PM by Douglas

I need a nap.

Posted 6/20/2008 07:38:00 PM by Douglas

Country music isn't just a Southern thing. But it's not that Yankee's are any different than Southern red necks: They're hicks too.

"The myth," Jennings says, "is that country music is purely a white, rural, and Southern art," whereas the reality is that "country musicians come from all over," from California (Merle Haggard) to Nova Scotia (Hank Snow) and just about all stops in between. Country music of what Jennings accurately calls the "golden age of twang" isn't about Dixie, though there's plenty of Dixie in it. It's about country:

"Country music made between about 1950 and 1970 is a secret history of rural, working class Americans in the twentieth century -- a secret history in plain sight. . . . Country music knows that the dark heart of the American Century beat in oil-field roadhouses in Texas and in dim-lit Detroit bars where country boys in exile gathered after another shift at Ford or GM. Bobby Bare might've pleaded in 'Detroit City' that he wanted to go home. But we all knew he wouldn't, that he couldn't. Country profoundly understands what it's like to be trapped in a culture of alienation: by poverty, by a [lousy] job, by lust, by booze. . . . If you truly want to understand the whole United States of America in the twentieth century, you need to understand country music and the working people who lived their lives by it."

Country music is America. For some reasons, Southerns are more aware of that.

Posted 6/20/2008 07:25:00 PM by Douglas

I don't think Google is making us stupid, it's just smarter than you are.

I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets—reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)

Huh?

Posted 6/16/2008 04:57:00 PM by Douglas

I have never been employed in a role of public trust to predict the future. I am not making light of the science of meteorology or the importance it has on our lives. But these ass-clowns need a big glass of shut the fuck up.

Imagine a Category 3 hurricane striking the western end of Bolivar Peninsula. The storm surge would raise water levels by 6 feet in Galveston Bay and along Galveston Island, according to computer models.

Now, imagine the same storm striking a mere 20 miles down the coast, just past the Galveston seawall. The surge would push as much as 17 feet of water into Galveston Bay and 13 feet along much of Galveston Island, clipping it from behind even if the seawall buttressed the initial waves.

The two landfall scenarios just 20 miles apart would mean the difference between excellent surfing conditions in Galveston and monstrous, fatal waves of water.

So it seems predicting said landfall becomes critically important when you're tasked with evacuating the fourth largest cities in the nation. Ya think?!?

For the Houston area, the worst-case scenario is a hurricane moving northwest and striking the Southeast Texas coast just west of Galveston Island. Such a Category 3 storm, according to storm-surge models, would bring maximum winds over downtown Houston and push a 20-foot surge into Galveston Bay. In such a scenario, everywhere from Channelview to downtown Houston to Bay City would be vulnerable to a surge, and millions would be asked to leave.

At one point during Hurricane Rita's evolution, that kind of scenario looked likely. But the storm turned north and came ashore near the Texas-Louisiana border. The evacuation from the Houston area proved deadlier than the hurricane.

Yeah, remember that? You yelled run! on a crowded freeway and 120 people are dead because of it. As mayor of a city of four million people, your job duties extend beyond kissing babies and cutting ribbons at shopping centers. An evacuation plan means you have a plan, not just telling people they should leave. But it gets better.

The storm surge forecasting tool, known as the Sea, Lake, and Overland Surges from Hurricanes model, is accurate to within 20 percent if given perfect information about a storm's landfall time and location. But such information is rarely perfect.

Three days out — roughly the minimum time needed to call a mass evacuation in the greater Houston area — the error is about 150 miles.

For those keeping score, a difference of a mere 20 miles is the difference between me sitting in my back yard watching the wind blow my neighbor's yard furniture and me sitting on my roof waiting for a helicopter, yet they won't know within 150 miles by the time I need to know so I can get the fuck out. Am I the only one that sees a problem with the math, here? So what are the geniuses doing with this great information?

So are the SLOSH model forecasts, but the folks running them would prefer to keep them out of the public's hands, at least prior to landfall. They don't want people who live outside areas projected to get the worst flooding to feel a false sense of comfort.

I missed that the first time I read it, but their computer model is named SLOSH.
SLOSH?!? As is what the bay is going to do to my house, or how I'm going to die in my attic? Could you be more specific? Also, if SLOSH is so inaccurate that you can't even tell the people its results, why the hell do you bother wasting your and our times with it?!? We've all got a nickel we can toss in the air to figure out if we need to evacuate or not. I just had no idea my nickel was just as accurate. Finally, here's the money quote:

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

Finally! A self-congratulatory government worker admitting their own obsolescence. You don't matter. Shut up.

People on the Gulf Coast are going to do what they've always done. Most of those in low-lying areas are going to get the hell out of here at the first sight of a storm. Those that stay will probably die if the storm hits. What we don't need is government fear-mongers scaring the shit out of people that live 50-70 miles inland clogging up the roads for those that live 11 feet above sea level.

Posted 6/15/2008 03:06:00 PM by Douglas

There's a lot of people on cable news that yell at each other like a bunch of poo-flinging monkeys, but Tim Russert was the real deal.

Behind the scenes, Mr. Russert’s colleagues at NBC News soon learned that he had a gift for making the most complex political machinations understandable and compelling.

I always thought his broadcasts were like talking to someone smarter than you that was trying to explain something to you while not talking down to you. The soulless humanoids on FoxNews and CNN could learn a lot from Russert.

Posted 6/15/2008 02:43:00 PM by Douglas

Pluto is still not a planet.

It is the new classification that has been sanctioned for the object that was formerly known as the "ninth planet".

It is nearly two years since the International Astronomical Union (IAU) stripped Pluto of its former status as a "proper" planet.

Now an IAU committee, meeting in Oslo, has suggested that small, nearly spherical objects orbiting beyond Neptune should carry the "plutoid" tag.

As with most things in the universe, it's not just about size: It's about the motion.

Labels: Pluto

Posted 6/15/2008 02:34:00 PM by Douglas

They gave us four pounds of sugar for the price of five, and we said nothing. Then a pound of coffee suddenly only had 13 ounces in it, still we said nothing. But if they think they can pass of 14 ounces of beer for a pint there's going to be blood in the streets.

Beer prices at bars and restaurants have risen over the past few months, as prices of hops and barley have skyrocketed and retail business has slowed alongside the economy.

Some restaurants have replaced 16-ounce pint glasses with 14 ouncers -- a type of glassware one bartender called a "falsie."

And customers are complaining that bartenders are increasingly putting less than 16 ounces of beer in a pint glass, filling up the extra space with foam.

Rage, RAGE against the shrinking of the pint!

Posted 6/12/2008 09:15:00 PM by Douglas

For the first time since the first EVAs in the mid 60s, Americans are going venture out into the void of space in a suit not built by Hamilton.

Oceaneering International Inc., best known for providing deep water services and products to the oil and gas industry, has been chosen to design and make the next generation of spacesuits for NASA, the space agency announced Thursday.

The Houston-based company beat out Exploration Systems & Technology, a jointly owned company between ILC and Hamilton Sundstrand, the United Technologies subsidiary that had been the primary contractor for NASA spacesuits since the 1960s.

Sometimes 40 years of experience in life support engineering isn't enough.

The $745 million contract has three phases and calls for a total of 109 suits, 24 of which will be the lunar suits.

That's an expensive suit.

Posted 6/12/2008 05:40:00 PM by Douglas

It's a fact: Poor people spend money on stupid shit.

So the researchers went back to Thorstein Veblen, who coined the term conspicuous consumption. Writing in the much poorer world of 1899, Veblen argued that people spent lavishly on visible goods to prove that they were prosperous. “The motive is emulation—the stimulus of an invidious comparison which prompts us to outdo those with whom we are in the habit of classing ourselves,” he wrote. Along these lines, the economists hypothesized that visible consumption lets individuals show strangers they aren’t poor. Since strangers tend to lump people together by race, the lower your racial group’s income, the more valuable it is to demonstrate your personal buying power.

To test this idea, the economists compared the spending patterns of people of the same race in different states—say, blacks in Alabama versus blacks in Massachusetts, or whites in South Carolina versus whites in California. Sure enough, all else being equal (including one’s own income), an individual spent more of his income on visible goods as his racial group’s income went down. African Americans don’t necessarily have different tastes from whites. They’re just poorer, on average. In places where blacks in general have more money, individual black people feel less pressure to prove their wealth.

For this reason and this reason alone, I welcome the looming recession. The less money people have to blow on custom rims for their cars, tanning, and smoothies can only strengthen us as a nation.

Posted 6/12/2008 05:29:00 PM by Douglas

For the Jews & Gentiles still adhering to God's will set down by Leviticus, it is, finally, OK to eat a giraffe:

Observant Jews yearning for something a little more exotic than usual to celebrate the festival of Shavuot may be excited to learn that giraffe milk has been pronounced as kosher. Vets treating a giraffe at the Ramat Gan safari park near Tel Aviv took a milk sample which formed curds, as required by religious law, reported the newspaper Yedhiot Ahronot.

It had already been established that giraffe meat was kosher since the giraffe, like a cow, both has a cloven hoof and is a ruminant.

Thank. God. And I thought all those Giraffe Burgers I've eaten were going to keep me out of heaven. Now I know it's the masturbation and binge drinking that's going to cast my soul into the eternal lake of fire.

Good to know.

Posted 6/11/2008 05:30:00 PM by Douglas

Music is memory, man. Anyone that's ever heard Schoolhouse Rock could tell you that. For some reason, the only reason I know what an adverb is today is from that damned cartoon. But check out the story, at least for the picture of The Beatles

It is these moments of "autobiographical memory" that seem central to our sense of self: without them, we cannot understand who we are or how we relate to other people. And when one of them comes to mind, we can reconstruct the sights, sounds, even the smells associated with it to an astonishing extent.

One of the key triggers for such memories is music. "If you hear a song that you have not heard since your teenage years, it has the capacity instantly and forcefully to transport you back to that time," says Dr Catriona Morrison of the Leeds Memory Group, based at Leeds University's Institute of Psychological Sciences.

So when you can't think of the name of that song. . . does that mean you're screwed?

Posted 6/09/2008 06:30:00 PM by Douglas

Get your fat ass in one of our big'o planes! Thanks, long-time reader!

Posted 6/09/2008 06:21:00 PM by Douglas

Great photo-blog from the Boston Globe.

Posted 6/09/2008 05:54:00 PM by Douglas

Phase II report out last week. Read it here and here. New flash: Rumsfeld, Feith, and Wolfowitz, or the Trifecta of evil, mislead intelligence reports to make a case of the Iraq invasion. Shocking revelations. Or as Colbert said about McClellan's new book, "shocking that he thinks that's a revelation."

Posted 6/08/2008 05:22:00 PM by Douglas

Just goes to show that even in countries with draconian gun laws, people will find a way to improvise:

A man plowed into shoppers with a truck Sunday and then stabbed 17 people within minutes, killing at least seven of them in a grisly attack that shocked a country known for its low crime rate.

The lunchtime violence in the Akihabara district, a popular electronics and video game area, sent thousands of people fleeing.

The assault, which occurred on the seventh anniversary of a mass stabbing at a Japanese elementary school, was the latest in a series of knife attacks that have stoked fears of rising violent crime in Japan.

Not that he wouldn't have killed more people if he'd had some kind of firearm, but just once I'd like to hear Sara Brady or Rosie O'Donnell try to blame the knife in one of these attacks.

Reports said the attacker grunted and roared as he slashed and stabbed at Sunday shoppers crowding a street lined with huge stores packed with the latest in computers, electronics, videos and games.

Video games, eh? I wonder if this guy spent all morning playing minesweeper or Frogger? Isn't there some way we can blame violent video games for this one?

Posted 6/08/2008 12:58:00 PM by Douglas

P.J. O'Rourke goes to the museum:

The museum is full of noisy children and their caregivers, blended families, and whatever else we're calling kith and kin these days. A long, mouse-maze, airport security-style line must be endured to get tickets. The sculpture of a Masai spearman facing off against a crouching lioness has been shunted to a lonely corner, lest someone somehow take offense. Nowadays offense is taken--snatched and grabbed--as if offense were something valuable to own. And given our umbrage-filled presidential campaign, maybe it is. The brontosaurus has been pushed to the back (that is to say the front) of the main hall and isn't called a brontosaurus anymore. (Doubtless offense was taken by Chicago's Bronto-American community.) Nor is the skeleton of this vast vegan any longer engaged in post-mortem mortal combat with the bones of a tyrannosaurus rex. Modern kids are too loving and caring about dinosaurs to be exposed to such scenes of domestic violence.

It gets better, but pretty much what you'd expect from the "all cultures are equivalent, just different" crowd. Now excuse me while I got eat some baby hearts.

Labels: P.J. O'Rourke

Posted 6/07/2008 03:47:00 PM by Douglas

Wonder Woman, still fighting crime:

The actress who played Wonder Woman on TV in the 1970s says she didn't do anything extraordinary when she discovered a body this week on the Potomac River in Washington.

Lynda Carter tells The Washington Post she was alone in a boat when she saw the body Wednesday. She says she didn't have a cell phone with her, so she yelled to some fishermen and asked them to call police. Carter waited until rescuers arrived and directed them to the body.

I wonder if she put on some blue hot-pants when she fished him out of the river with a lasso of truth?

Posted 6/07/2008 03:40:00 PM by Douglas

Not a surprise that the GOP want to give the finger to Ron Paul supporters, I mean voters.

but let me just say to Ron Paul supporters everywhere, and on behalf of the New Right, get lost.

They realize even crazy people's votes get counted, right?

Posted 6/07/2008 02:11:00 PM by Douglas

Happy Birfday, Dav-e-o! You're old.

Posted 6/04/2008 05:36:00 PM by Douglas

Rest in one solid, saddle-shaped piece.

The Cincinnati chemist who invented the iconic Pringles potato chip can was buried in one.

Relatives revealed yesterday they honored Fredric Baur's bizarre last wish and buried part of his cremated remains in a Pringles can.

Baur was so proud of the tube-shaped container he patented in 1970 that he wanted one to accompany him to his grave, his children told the Cincinnati Enquirer.

The retired organic chemist and food storage technician died May 4 in an Ohio hospice. He was 84.

Baur also invented frying oils and a freeze-dried ice cream, but nothing came close to the crowning achievement of his Pringles can, his children said.

So was it regular, or sour cream and onions? I guessing BBQ.

Posted 6/04/2008 05:02:00 PM by Douglas

I'm so sick of this story I could puke blood. Long story short: People can't afford their lifestyles, but up in this round of CNN tear-jerkers: Pets.

Her greatest fear: that she could be forced to surrender the animals as she struggled to stretch her food stamps and Social Security income to meet the escalating cost of living.

Some hope was restored after she visited a local food pantry, which has started offering free pet food to help owners keep their animals out of shelters.

"I know a lot of people will probably say, 'Well, if you don't have enough money to be able to feed your animals, that you shouldn't have pets,"' said Bardsley, 53, of Franklin, as Hunter played in the living room with three of her grandchildren.

But, "Just because financially you may go downhill a little or a lot, doesn't necessarily mean you have give the part of your family that you love," she said.

Well, it kinda does. If you can't feed your kids, the State will take them away from you. Not so with your cats, but if you leave the door open long enough, they'll run out on your dumb, broke ass and go eat a squirrel.

OK, here's what pisses me off about this: They always target "fixed income" people to whine to the press about the increasing cost of living. Ya know who lives on a "fixed" income? Everyone. I'm sorry that people drawing retirement physically can't make more income, and if there was a way to exclude a certain subset of the population from inflation I'd vote for that (assuming I was in said group).

But what really alarms me is how the ignorant masses chose to blow their discretionary income. I have complete empathy for those that can't take care of their own needs. I just question what those needs are and how their money is spent. In my corner of Generica, there's a gourmet coffee/burrito shop, a custom chrome wheel shop, a cell phone store, a smoothie store, and a tanning salon on every damn corner. I'll feel bad for people that "can't make ends meet" when I can drive for more than 100 yards without seeing one of these festering money pits.

Posted 6/01/2008 05:33:00 PM by Douglas

Finally, some good news coming from the American West about the looming drought that's going to turn our bread basket into the vast wasteland of Rosie O'Donnell's appetite control: Finding old plane crashes.

A plane missing for 24 years was found partially submerged by canoeists on a receding, drought-stricken lake in the Texas Panhandle.

National Park Service officials said the Friday discovery on Lake Meredith was confirmed to be the fuselage of a small, two-seat Beech 77 that went missing during a two-hour flight on Jan. 27, 1984.

The 25-year-old pilot and a passenger died in the crash, according to a National Transportation Safety Board report.

In the first two days after the crash, one of the plane's wheels and a jacket believed to be the pilot's were found floating on the lake, the report said. The plane and bodies never turned up during a six-day diving search.

Park service personnel have closed the area around the wreckage so they can investigate the site, spokeswoman Rozanna Pfeiffer said in a news release.

Pfeiffer said Sunday more details might be released later in the day.

Lake Meredith, about 20 miles north of Amarillo, is at just 8 percent of its capacity of 500,000 acre-feet, according to the latest monthly report from the Texas Water Development Board.

Eight percent? Shit, wait 'till it hits five! Hell, Jimmy fucking Hoffa is more likely to turn up in the Texas Panhandle than a good rain.

Climate changing crime solving. Al Gore most just love this. Just wait 'till the Pacific Northwest looks like Eastern Colorado. You can run, but you can't hide, D.B. Cooper.