Off topic but interesting, at least to me

The major supermarket chain Albertson's is removing the self-checkout lanes from all of its stores that currently use them.

Good.  We've never used those lanes at any store on principle.  If retailers want the peasants to do part of their job for them they can at least give those who choose to use such lanes slightly lower prices than those who prefer to wait for a human cashier.  There's no advantage otherwise, and anyone in that industry who argues that self-checkout lanes are somehow "faster" has never watched a clueless customer helplessly scan the same item over and over, fruitlessly (pun intended) search for the right produce code, try to locate where to insert the money or otherwise hold up progress for the people waiting behind them, who inevitably end up doing even worse.

A snapshot of life

Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Los Angeles, California
7:15 p.m.

Seen posted on the door of an art gallery in Little Tokyo:

The careless flicking of leftover food bits by casual browsers is apparently quite the issue at this particular establishment.

On a related note, the food at the nearby Shabu-Shabu House is well worth however long the wait might be for you to get a seat.

Pay up

The Justice Department is refusing to pay $750,000 in damages to the insurance company that owns a 1995 Ferrari F50 supercar (one of only 50 in the U.S.) after FBI Special Agent Fred Kingston totaled it while ostensibly "moving it to a different garage", prompting the company to file a lawsuit seeking to be compensated for its loss.

The car had been recovered five years after had been reported stolen (and the insurance company had paid out the claim, thus taking ownership), and the FBI had custody of it pending the outcome of the criminal investigation.  No problem there, and of course such items have to be moved from time to time.

But -

Kingston had thought it a good idea to invite his good buddy Assistant U.S. Attorney J. Hamilton Thompson along for the joyride "short ride", and according to Thompson's email detailing the incident they were just moseying along, no doubt like a couple of grandmas out for a Sunday drive, when "Just a few seconds after we left the parking lot, we went around a curve and the rear of the car began sliding" and they and the car ended up wrapped around a tree and some bushes.

(Pictures are from the article)

Why are we not terribly convinced that these two were doing nothing more than ferrying evidence from one garage to another?  Oh, probably from Justice's blatant stonewalling of the insurance company: 

"The Justice Department recently responded to the lawsuit  by saying it is not liable for certain goods when they're in the hands of law enforcement. 

The government also has refused to release most documents related to the crash, saying most records are exempt."

Of course they are.  How convenient.

The case is scheduled to be tried this month.  We will be very interested to learn just how the government is going to argue that it should enjoy immunity from the very kind of obvious liability it so often goes after private companies for criminally shirking.

The horror of it all

A group of about 15 Pennsylvania 8th-graders on a recent field trip to the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland ended up at a Hooters restaurant for lunch because no one eatery in the area could accommodate the entire 100-kid party, and thus the chaperones (which included women) had to scramble to find enough places for the students to eat.

"Superintendent Wayne Brookhart says that while he wishes the group's coed chaperones had chosen another restaurant, he has not received any complaints from parents."

So where's the story?  Given the recent heat wave on the East Coast, those kids probably saw more skin on the sidewalk outside the restaurant.

We personally find the wings at Hooters to be fairly pedestrian, but their New Orleans Shrimp dish is really quite scrumptious.  We're sure those pupils enjoyed the same prompt and attentive service we receive when patronizing that establishment.

That's some expensive tutoring

The White House has spent close to $100,000 of taxpayer money (violating another campaign pledge in the process, this one to end no-bid contracting and mandate a competitive bidding process on all jobs valued at over $25,000) to apparently help Dear Leader learn how to successfully read from his security blanket teleprompter.

President George W. Bush is constantly labeled by some as the dumbest man to ever occupy the Oval Office, yet we don't seem to remember his administration employing people to teach him to read from a machine.

"Spending records show that the company was hired under three contracts since late 2009 and has received a total of $60,000. The records variously describe the company as providing 'speech preparation training,' 'speech writing services' and 'speech coaching services.'"

The White House employs seven speechwriters at an annual cost of over $600,000, according to the article.  What do they do all day?

It's about time

After spending about four years and over two million dollars in legal fees fighting legitimate requests to do so, Dear Leader finally releases his long-form birth certificate, presumably in response to recent overwhelming bad press over the issue precipitated by Donald Trump.

Now was that so hard?

Off topic but interesting, at least to me

Comedy gold.  This one's a must-see.

UPDATE:  Embed not working.  Here's the direct link to the video.  You won't be sorry.

Right on target

Tam comes up with a gem of a description of our dunce of an Attorney General:

"And what does Eric Holder have to do with this? I swear, the man is increasingly proving himself incompetent to operate anything more complex than a glass of water; I wouldn't trust him with a burnt-out match, let alone a whole Justice Department. He's gotta have juicy pictures of Obama doing something awful or he'd have been under the bus long ago."

We laughed out loud.

A Mr. Ryan J. Stephens of Mason, Ohio is challenging his misdemeanor ticket for barking at a police dog through a cruiser window.  His attorney's argument is that Stephens's action was protected speech, which therefore makes unconstitutional the city ordinance under which he was charged.

The lawyer's position is most likely correct.  Getting into a drunken shouting match with a canine seems not much different than having a verbal exchange with another person, and it's certainly not (yet) against the law to behave like a jackass.

Out of the mouths of demagogues

"Over the last 2 and a half years, change turned out to be tougher than we expected,"

- President Barack Obama, at a campaign fundraiser in San Francisco this morning where he was heckled by his own supporters.

Boy, those rainbow-farting unicorns are a real pain to produce, aren't they? 

Dear Leader is finding out that being President is quite a bit harder than he apparently thought it was when he was merrily throwing bomb after rhetorical bomb at George W. Bush's administration during the 2008 campaign, even though he wasn't running against the former president. 

We wonder if, in light of this and other similar recent events, if Mr. Obama now will be forced to revisit a few of his more fanciful promises to his growing-ever-more-restless faithful. 

If so, we're sure they'll take it with the grace and class they've shown to date.

Porn for me, but not for thee

"An Indonesian lawmaker who helped pass a tough anti-pornography law resigned Monday after he got caught watching sexually explicit videos on his computer during a parliamentary debate."

Poetic.

It never fails -  it's always the single-issue zealot politicians who get caught indulging in the very "sinful" vices they wish to deny the rest of the peasants.

On a similar note, that "God Hates Fags" preacher in Kansas who protests at military funerals is so far in the closet he's having adventures in Narnia.

That's gotta sting

Outstanding.  Simply brilliant.

This blooper isn't getting as much attention, oddly enough

Remember back in 2005 when President George W. Bush, on a visit to China, attempted to exit a room only to find the doors locked?



The worldwide mainstream liberal press had a field day mocking Bush for his supposed stupidity, even though the then-president had no way of knowing those doors were secured.

Well, Dear Leader had the exact same thing happen to him yesterday, only this time it was the president's own Oval Office he was trying to enter.



We await the upcoming torrent of jokes at his expense.

Every law infraction is now "terrorism", at least to certain Feds

A North Carolina man named Bernard von Nothaus was convicted in federal court this past week on charges of coining and distributing his own silver dollars, which violates both the Constitution as well as the U.S. Code. 

While his unlawful actions were indeed deserving of punishment, they most certainly did not represent "a unique form of domestic terrorism", as U.S. Attorney Anne M. Tompkins amusingly crowed in her triumphant press release announcing the verdict.

We look forward to seeing what other fairly minor crimes (such as possessing a single found bald eagle feather, maybe?) will be the next dastardly deeds to be breathlessly (and incorrectly) described as "terrorist acts" by such masters of hyperbole as Ms. Tompkins.

A happy ending

If only every home-invasion story resolved itself so nicely:

"A man who broke into a house in Portland, Oregon, called police -- afraid the homeowner may have a gun.

The suspect, Timothy James Chapek, was in the bathroom taking a shower when the homeowner returned to the house Monday night, Portland police said in a statement."

Chapek was subsequently "rescued" by the cops and placed under arrest, according to CNN.

The important point to take away from this story - criminals are generally afraid of law-abiding citizens who carry firearms for self-protection, and the prospect of running into such a person is an effective deterrent for most nuisance crooks.

Credit where it's due

“Well, the Second Amendment in this country is part of our Constitution, and the president of the United States is bound by our Constitution. So I believe in the Second Amendment. It does provide for Americans the right to bear arms for their protection, for their safety, for hunting, for a wide range of uses."  (emphasis ours)

President Barack Obama, March 3, 2011.

Good to know that that President agrees with the great majority of law-abiding Americans on this issue and not with fringe anti-gun groups such as the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center, which ironically expended enormous amounts of effort and money to get him elected.

What must those organizations think of their golden boy now?  Probably in the same way that the rest of the core supporters (gays, anti-war activists, illegal-immigration advocates, those desiring single-payer health care, racial minorities, etc.) Dear Leader has so cavalierly thrown under the bus lo these last two years rate him, we'd venture to guess.

From the Department of Glaringly Obvious Headlines

"Chris Wallace to Obama on Libya:  Stop saying 'unacceptable' if you're not going to do anything about it"

Looks like another member of the major media is becoming unafraid to point out that the emperor has no clothes.

"According to Wallace – without action, it paints the president in an unflattering light.

'It makes you look impotent,' Wallace said."

Ouch. 

"Host Don Imus wondered if Obama’s reaction to Libya was 'measured' or, as some Fox News personalities have suggested, wimpy. Wallace explained it was measured, leaning toward wimpy"

Ladies and gentlemen, we have apparently just sat down for a screening of "The Carter Administration II - Return of the Wimp".

Off topic but interesting, at least to me

"Playboy Mansion visitors come down with mystery illness"

An as-yet-undiscovered venereal disease, we'd venture to guess.

We're just kidding - the cause of the partygoers' distress is speculated to be Pontiac fever, a (fortunately) less-severe form of Legionnaire's Disease.

Better divert a little of your many Playmates' generous allowances into getting those AC ducts and hot tubs cleaned out, Hef.

How embarrassing for those charged with upholding traffic laws in Ye Olde Nanny State

The police departments of two adjacent communities in England, Staffordshire and Cheshire, have had a grand total of 238 car accidents in the last 18 months. 

In their own parking lots.

The careless cops over there have cost their taxpayers close to $200,000 in total damages over that short period, and here's the only mention of discipline we can find in the article: 

"Now some officers have been told to improve their driving standards."

Wow.  We're certain that mild scolding will certainly make them look where they're going next time.

These are the very "professionals", mind you, that are given special powers and charged with enforcing traffic laws and writing tickets to the peasants of that country.  How are they supposed to accomplish those tasks when they can't even make it out to the road without getting in fender-benders?

Amusing

The leftist publisher of Harper's magazine spends years extolling the virtues of unions in general (and the United Auto Workers in particular), then gets all bent out of shape when his staff signs up to join that very same UAW:

"[John "Rick"] MacArthur contested the entire staff's right to unionize, arguing that editors and assistant editors who make up about half of the editorial team were management and thus did not qualify. Staffers couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony: The staunch defender of unions, who in a 2009 Harper's piece called the UAW 'the country’s best and traditionally most honest mass labor organization,' was now on the other side of the table as the 'worst kind of factory owner,' as one staffer put it to me." 

Poetic justice indeed.

"MacArthur recently told me in an e-mail: 'I was taken by surprise and I thought it was rude that they didn't schedule a meeting to discuss it.'"

We hate to have to break this obvious news to Mr. MacArthur, but disgruntled workers don't usually "schedule meetings" with management to announce to them their upcoming plans to certify union representation.

This incident sounds uncannily like what apparently happened some years ago when the writing staff working on liberal activist (and similar champion of unions) Michael Moore's The Awful Truth television show similarly tried to obtain union representation:

"When two of the show’s young writers, who had been given the title Associate Producer, took steps to join the Writers Guild (the powerful union for movie and TV writers), Moore took them aside. 'I’m getting a lot of heat from the union to call you guys writers and pay you under the union rules,' Eric Zicklin recounted Moore’s words for MacFarquhar. 'I don’t have the budget for that,' Moore threatened them, 'But if they keep coming down on me that’ll mean I’ll only be able to afford one of you and the other one’s gotta go.'"

How quickly these hard-line socialist media barons' warm and fuzzy feelings regarding unions change once it's their own money that's threatening to be siphoned out of their deep pockets in order to finance those lucrative union benefits, pension plans and other perks.