Archive of posts tagged News

Dealing with Harry Baals

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Ft. Wayne, Indiana, is looking for a name for its government center. And they’ve opened it up to suggestions via the city’s feedback Web page.

The top suggestion so far? Name it after the city’s longest-serving mayor, Harry Baals.

Baals – pronounced “balls” by the then-mayor but “bales” by his descendents – became the Republican nominee for mayor in 1934 and was elected for three successive terms. He returned to politics in 1951 by winning a fourth term but died in office in May 1954. His accomplishments include elevating the railroads in town and negotiating the contract with the Army to establish Baer Field as an air base.

The city’s Deputy Mayor, Beth Malloy, says the building won’t be named after the former mayor. Apparently, she doesn’t care for Harry Baals.

A lot of people, though, like the idea of Harry Baals on a building.

I don’t live in Ft. Wayne, so I don’t have a say in the matter. I could go to the feedback site and make suggestions. But I won’t. And I could encourage you to go to the feedback site and make suggestions. But I won’t. The residents of Ft. Wayne should decide for themselves how they feel about Harry Baals.

The voting, by the way, ends this week. And the 10 finalists from the voting will be given to the mayor. I wonder how his staff will handle Harry Baals. Or the other finalists.

If they do select the former mayor’s name, there will be some residents that won’t like it, I’m sure. It may be that many residents of Ft. Wayne will just have to learn how to live with Harry Baals.

Pancho Villa’s finger

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Out in the West Texas town of El Paso
Someone is selling a Mexican finger.

Okay, I apologize to the memory of Marty Robbins for that.

But someone is trying to sell Pancho Villa’s finger. You know about Pancho Villa, right? Killed Americans. Was supported by Germany during World War I. That Pancho Villa.

Anyway, a pawn shop in El Paso is trying to sell Pancho Villa’s finger.

That got me thinking… What other famous body parts might be on sale in the future?

What other body parts might be found in a pawn shop one day soon? Or which ones would you like to see?

Catapults

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According to reports, Mexican drug smugglers are using catapults to fling marijuana into the U.S.

National Guard troops operating a remote video surveillance system at the Naco Border Patrol Station observed several people south of the International Boundary Fence preparing a catapult and launching packages over the International Border fence, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

This sounds like some Mythbusters episode. And, it sort of was. It was 5½ years ago and the episode was Border Slingshot:

Can illegal immigrants fire themselves 200 yards across the border and into the United States with a slingshot so accurate that it can land the human projectiles safely on a carefully placed mattress?

So, why have we gone from shooting Mexicans across the border to shooting pot across the border?

Economics. With the current job market, there is a bigger demand for pot than there is for Mexicans. We don’t need as many Mexicans to do crappy jobs. We have pothead Americans that will do that.

But, the slingshot, catapult, or trebuchet could be used in another way. So far, it’s only been used to send things into the U.S. Why not use it to send things out of the U.S.?

Useless things. Like what, you ask?

  • Obama.
  • People that voted for Obama.
  • Season nine of “Dallas” (if you are my age, you’re still pissed about that).
  • The ending of LOST.
  • Kos.
  • MSNBC.
  • Dennis Kucinich.
  • Harry Reid.
  • The New York Times.
  • Yappy little rat-dogs.
  • Oprah.
  • Julian Assange.
  • Janet Napolitano.
  • Al Sharpton.
  • David Duke.
  • Cecil Newton.
  • Liberals.
  • Ron Paul.
  • Ron Paul supporters.
  • Meghan McCain.
  • The weird chick from the Progressive commercials.
  • The Geico Gecko.
  • Any Aflac commercial that doesn’t have either Earl Billings or R. Lee Ermey in it.
  • People that call soccer “football.” (Yes, I know, and I don’t care.)
  • Berkeley, California.
  • Most of the rest of California.
  • Moderates.

We don’t have to fire them into Mexico. We could fire them into Canada. Or the ocean. Or, if the slingshot is powerful enough, back to their boyhood home. The landing might be a little rough, though. Be sure to bring a pillow, Barack.

Tracking Web browsers

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What’s the latest security issue with Web browsers? Knowing where you’ve been. And telling.

You know how on a Web browser, you can hit the back button and it’ll take you to the page you were just on. And how you can do that over and over? For a bit, anyway?

Well, the browser can do it because it keeps up with where you’ve been. And, some Websites can have code that tracks where you’ve been.

Lot of browsers report where you just came from. Suppose you clicked a link to come to this Website, your browser probably included the page you were on in the HTTP_REFERER header (yes, it’s correctly misspelled as “referer”). But this security issue isn’t that. It’s the actual reading of the Web browser history.

Didn’t know they could do that? Yeah, well they can. For lots of browsers anyway. LikeInternet Explorer and Firefox. And older version of Chrome and Safari.

The report adds to growing worry about surreptitious surveillance by Internet companies and comes as federal regulators in the U.S. are proposing a “Do Not Track” tool that would prevent advertisers from following consumers around online to sell them more products.

The researchers found 46 sites, ranging from smutty to staid, that tried to pry loose their visitors browsing histories using this technique, sometimes with homegrown tracking code. Nearly half of the 46 sites, including financial research site Morningstar.com and news site Newsmax.com, used an ad-targeting company, Interclick, which says its code was responsible for the tracking.

Oh, and I’m not saying we have any of that kind of tracking code here, but some of you people are freaks. Seriously. I can’t believe the places some of you go.

I do wonder, though, what would happen if WikiLeaks got hold of this information for, say, the president? Or some of his cabinet? So, I did some digging. And here’s what I found.

Obama’s most-visited Websites?

Joe Biden’s most-visited Websites?

  • Trick question. His computer is an Etch-A-Sketch.

I’m sort of afraid to ask, but … what do you think are the most-visited Websites by some high-profile people? Oh, and you may not want to include a link. Or I may not want you to.

NASA discovers life on Earth

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Hello, I’m Dwayne Brown, NASA’s token black guy. And I’m here to introduce a bunch of white folks who called this news conference to announce that they’ve discovered life on Earth.


Seriously. These crackers here have taken your hard-earned money that your Congressmen gave them and, rather than look for life on Mars or, as some in the media speculated, Saturn’s moon Titan, they went to some lake in California and found microbes.


Hell, you can find all sorts of strange life in California. I mean, it’s freakin’ California! You ever walk the streets of some of those towns?


Tell you what. Let me let these so-called “scientists” tell you themselves about what they’ve wasted your money on. Which one of you wants to go first?
Continue reading ‘NASA discovers life on Earth’ »

Jesus and the ants

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Sounds like some band from Athens, doesn’t it: Jesus and the ants.

Maybe Seattle. Or Manchester.

Actually, it’s part of an exhibit that was at the National Portrait Gallery, which is part of the Smithsonian. I’ve been to the Gallery of Art, but never to the Portrait Gallery, so I can’t say if otherwise it’s worth a darn.

Anyway, they’ve had some exhibit going on there called “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture.” And that right there is the problem. Who says “portraiture” anyway? A bunch of snot-heads, that’s who. You hear somebody use “portraiture” in a sentence, hit them in the head with a stick. They’ll thank you for it. Or I will. Either way, you’ll be thanked.

But, about Jesus and the ants. One of the exhibits of portraiture is a video. Go figure. And, in the video, is an image of Jesus covered in ants. Only, now the Smithsonian has pulled the video. The guy in charge said “I regret that some reports about the exhibit have created an impression that the video is intentionally sacrilegious. In fact, the artist’s intention was to depict the suffering of an AIDS victim. It was not the museum’s intention to offend. We have removed the video.”

Which means it’s not his fault he had a video of Jesus covered in ants. It’s the fault of Fox News. Or blogs. Or Bush. Or someone else.

I think pulling the video was a mistake. I think they should have found some video of Mohammed covered in ants and included it. Somehow, I suspect that the problem would have been solved in short order, without any Christian having to say or do anything.

Dealing with life on Titan

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NASA has some big announcement today. And there’s speculation that they found life in outer space.

Where? On Titan, according to the stories.

Why do the news-like people think that’s what NASA’s big announcement will be? Because of some article NASA posted back in June. It included this NASA-speak:

This lack of acetylene is important because that chemical would likely be the best energy source for a methane-based life on Titan, said Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., who proposed a set of conditions necessary for this kind of methane-based life on Titan in 2005. One interpretation of the acetylene data is that the hydrocarbon is being consumed as food. But McKay said the flow of hydrogen is even more critical because all of their proposed mechanisms involved the consumption of hydrogen.

What I read into all that is that there are some chemicals disappearing on a moon orbiting a planet that’s 9-1/2 times as far away from the sun as the Earth is.

Is there life on Titan causing those chemicals to disappear? Nobody knows.

But what if there is? Is it dangerous life? It might be. Every movie I’ve every seen about life on other planets involves them trying to kill us, so I don’t trust them.

We need to kill Titanians first. And, I think Obama has a plan to do just that.

NASA has been doing outreach to Muslims.

NASA has been planning a one-way space ship trip.

What do these two things mean?

Obama is going to have NASA send suicide bombers to Titan to blow it up.

Damn infidel microbes.

See? Obama knows what he’s doing after all. He’s the mostest smirt presidential president we’ve ever had.

What to do about WikiLeaks

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Everyone is shocked — shocked! — to discover that WikiLeaks has continued to release secret and confidential documents despite the urging of the Obama administration.

It’s almost like Obama can’t make people act nice by asking them. Didn’t the whole world listen to the 2008 campaign? Obama can stop the oceans from rising; he should be able to stop Iran from developing nukes and Julian Assange from releasing documents that are harmful to the U.S. interestes.

Unless, of course, Obama isn’t really interested in American interests. But that’s silly. I mean, it’s not like he grew up in another country. It’s not like Obama is interested in a post-America world. It’s not like he’s bowing to foreign leaders.

No, there’s no evidence whatsoever that Obama is secretly cool with the WikiLeaks releases. And, despite Obama being the most awesome thing since man descended from the trees and discovered TiVo, Assange went ahead and released the documents.

Now that the impossible has happened, what can Obama do about it?

  • Blame George Bush
  • Go golfing
  • Play basketball
  • Send Joe Biden to talk to Julian Assange
  • Increase pat-downs at airports
  • Go on vacation
  • Extend the healthcare law
  • Send SEIU personnel to “talk” to Julian Assange
  • Go golfing
  • Let tax cuts expire
  • Email Assange a Microsoft Windows virus
  • Release the GTMO detainees
  • Go golfing
  • Give an speech, using a woman who will lose her job in six months as a prop

Perhaps there are other things Obama can do to temper the damage of these leaks and prevent future leaks. Ideas? Anyone?

The difference is … you are getting screwed

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Saw a news story recently about a man who hired a couple of whores who then took his money without, um, completing the deal:

After he placed payment on a stereo, one of the prostitutes showed him her chest, but the second did not perform oral sex, Haden said. The women took the money and left.

The police arrested him for “patronizing prostitution.”

This is a lot like the people who voted for Obama that are now complaining.

I mean, many of us on the right told people that it was a bad idea to vote for Obama. But, being of age and everything, a lot of people went ahead and did something really stupid. The parallels are obvious.

Only, while police can arrest people for paying for hookers, we can’t arrest people for voting for socialist idiots. And we shouldn’t. I’m all for hitting Obama voters with a stick, but not for arresting them. As long as when you hit them with a stick, you do it hard enough to knock some sense into them. You don’t want to waste a stick.

Anyway, I don’t mind people who voted for Obama suffering the consequences of their actions. I just don’t like having to suffer the consequences of their actions with them. I mean, I didn’t pay money to a couple of hookers and get ripped off; why should I be out any money?

But, in politics, that’s not how it works. If you throw away your vote like this guy threw away money at whores, you get screwed. Along with everybody else. But not in the good way.

AARP, Obamacare, and karma

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Remember when Obamacare was being considered by the Congress? And AARP was supporting it? And all the supporters said how much it would make everything better and how it would get prices under control and it would be just so awesome?

Well, now AARP has sent information to its employees saying that their insurance was going up … because of Obamacare:

In an e-mail to employees, AARP says health care premiums will increase by 8 percent to 13 percent next year because of rapidly rising medical costs.

And AARP adds that it’s changing copayments and deductibles to avoid a 40 percent tax on high-cost health plans that takes effect in 2018 under the law. … Shifting costs to employees lowers the value of a health care plan and acts like an escape hatch from the tax.

To be honest, I don’t mind those that supported Obamacare getting bit in the ass by Obamacare — they are such big asses, after all.

I like laughing at stupid people. It’s fun.

Oh, and AARP? Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Don’t forget your towel!

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Did you see that NASA is planning to send a ship on a one-way trip to another planet?

According to news reports, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding a NASA project to send some people on a one-way trip:

In a talk at San Francisco’s Long Conversation conference, Simon “Pete” Worden said DARPA has $1M to spend, plus another $100,000 from NASA itself, for the program, which will initially develop a new kind of propulsion engine that will take us to Mars or beyond.

There’s only one problem: The astronauts won’t come back.

The 100-year ship would leave Earth with the intention of colonizing a planet, but it would likely be a one-way trip because of the time it takes to travel 35 million miles

Who would make the trip?

  • hairdressers
  • tired TV producers
  • insurance salesmen
  • personnel officers
  • security guards
  • public relations executives
  • management consultants
  • telephone sanitizers

Well, actually, I’m not sure about that list. That may be a list from somewhere else entirely.

But, as long as NASA is sending a ship on a one-way trip, why not use that list? Or something like it? Why not turn the 100-Year Starship into a B-Ark and include the useless third of society? I think we could include:

  • Democrats
  • MSNBC anchors
  • daytime TV talk show hosts
  • moderates
  • liberals
  • bloggers
  • community organizers

Any other suggestions?

Now that we know the cause, we can fix it

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They found out what causes people to be liberal. It’s in the genes.

According to scientists at UC San Diego and Harvard University, “ideology is affected not just by social factors, but also by a dopamine receptor gene called DRD4.”

The number of friends you have as a child also factors in, according to the study. Which means that if, while immature, you have influences from other immature people, you become a liberal. Which proves that liberalism is immaturity squared.

Now that they’ve found out what causes it, we can cure it.

I propose that we fund gene therapy projects that will get rid of that gene. Or those with it.

Sure, a bunch of pansies on the left might object to my saying that, so, let’s compromise. We’ll start by getting rid of those with the gene in a small sample.

What say we start with a national test group of 535. We can remove those in that sample group that have the gene, and we can do that on the first Tuesday in November. And, we can have smaller study groups at the state and local levels at the same time.

Let’s try that and see how it goes. If things get better, we can then expand it to the rest of the country.

When this trend hits the White House…

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You’ve heard about Steven Slater, the JetBlue steward (they prefer “flight attendant”) who got fed up with rude people, grabbed a beer, deployed the emergency slide, and left, quitting his job.

That led to the fake story of “Jenny,” the woman who was reported to have quit her job by sending an email with messages on a dry-erase board, detailing why she quit. It was a hoax, but a lot of people fell for it, and, if it’s like many hoaxes, it’ll surface again.

The thing is, people believed the “Jenny” story because they want to. And Steven Slater shows how plausible it is.

Most adults, as much as they might like to, won’t actually do something like that. Sure, we all dream of the day we can leave the job, often ending the notice with the phrase “and the horse you rode in on.” But we won’t. We’re adults.

But not everyone is. Have you looked at the White House lately?

There’s a president to never had a real job in his life, and is shown every day to be in way over his head. You got a first lady who dresses like someone shopping at Wal-mart at 2:00 AM. There’s a press secretary who’s so frustrated that not everyone is as enamored with the president as he that he says critics (specifically those on the left) should be tested for drugs. There’s skateboarding down the halls of the presidential mansion. There’s Joe Biden (nuff said). And the list goes on.

The obvious conclusion is there’s not a responsible adult in the group.

What does that mean?

Well, adults don’t act like Slater. But none of the White House crew is adult. So, when one finally snaps, what will it be like?

Who would you like to see quit the White House in a huff? And how?

Pre-emptive strike?

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Barack Obama has called for Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY/15) to “end his career with dignity.”

[Direct link]

“I think Charlie Rangel served a very long time and served, uh, his constituents very well, uh, but these, uh, allegations are very troubling, and, you know, he’s somebody who is at the end of his career, 80 years old; I’m sure that, uh, what he wants is to be able to, uh, end his career with dignity, and my hope is that, uh, happens.”

The president made the remarks CBS Early Show anchor Harry Smith, and the interview will be broadcast this weekend, but a clip of Obama’s response was broadcast on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric yesterday.

What does this mean?

I think Andrew Breitbart must have a video somewhere.

Is the left is trying to outsmart Breitbart by thowing each under the bus before a new video breaks? Even those that deserve it? If so, and if Breitbart succeeds in causing the left to self-destruct, even Frank J would forgive him.