I have the pleasure of sitting through City Council meetings as part of my regular job (the one that pays the bills). Now thanks to the beauty of the internet and a magnificent compilation some dude put together, you can get some city council highlights yourself- courtesy of Santa Cruz, California.
It’s so hard to pick a favorite line, but here are a few frontrunners:
“Mister….I don’t like you”.
“They have fruit trees and vegetable trees. That’s where fruit and vegetables come from”.
The Best Week Ever!
Not sure why it is, but it seems like the most interesting things happen in Australia. From Brisbane, Australia, a woman spent a week wedged between her toilet and the bathroom door. I understand the physics of the wedgie, I just don’t understand the length of stay. Perhaps this is why women go to the bathroom in groups.
Those crazy Swedes
A Swedish couple ended up 400 miles off course while traveling in Italy. Instead of typing “Capri”, they typed “Carpi”. Certainly easy to understand how they confused an industrial town in Northern Italy with an island off the southwestern coast.
To help prevent any of you from making the same mistake, here’s a Yahoo map of the route from Carpi to Capri:
Kirk Ferentz is a big Twitter fan
Not so much. According to a Cedar Rapids Gazette report, when Iowa Head Football Coach Kirk Ferentz was asked about Twitter, he had the following response:
“Yes, I heard it mentioned on the radio coming into work this morning, Mike and Mike in the Morning, (football commentator Mark) Schlereth and his tweets and Twitters. I think I even have my usage of tweet and Twitter down. You never say never, but if you see me with a Twitter account, just hit me with a baseball bat. Go ahead, take a whack at me.
I don’t think anyone cares if I have Wheaties or Honey Nut Cheerios. I don’t think anyone cares what I had for breakfast, what I chose this morning.”
I can’t count how many times I’ve been sitting on the couch in my Snuggie, with the remote in one hand and a crackpipe in the other, and I thought to myself- when are they going to make a stylish Snuggie I can wear to business functions?
Tough week for race relations what with the debacle between the Harvard professor and the Cambridge Police, and of course this delightful exchange.
I’ve made my disdain for Barbara Boxer very public and obviously I’m delighted by the responses of Mr. Harry Alford in this exchange. The Democrats are engaged in a full frontal assault of race and class warfare and they should be called out on it much more frequently. Bravo to you Mr. Alford.
Ding Dong the Bill is Dead
Well, not exactly. It’s delayed at least. Reports today are that Obamacare won’t come to a vote at least in the Senate until the fall.
The Roughest Softball League in America
Sean Sanders, 28, was sentenced to 2 to 4 years in prison for criminally negligent homicide after striking an opposing player on the back of the head at the end of rec softball league game. That player died later of head injuries. Turns out at the time of the incident, Sanders was already on parole after serving four years for beating another man with a golf club. Time to try a new sport for Mr. Sanders. Let’s see how he does with another round of “don’t drop the soap”.
A Rabbi, a Mayor, and a Councilman walk into a bar…
Or the police precinct. 44 people in New Jersey were busted in a sting operation involving corruption and money laundering charges. Among the 44 arrested were five Rabbis and several Mayors. Additional criminal activity included black-market organ sales and good old fashioned bribery. Good to see organized crime is still alive and well in NJ.
Zooker gets the vote of confidence
Sort of. Illinois Head Coach Ron Zook received a one-year contract extension today locking him down through 2014. I’ll be shocked if he’s there past 2011 but congratulations on getting a beefier buy-out.
Yep, they get it.
North Korea totally gets it. We should totallllly continue inviting them over for tea. The North Korean Foreign Ministry dropped the following gems about U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:
“…she is by no means intelligent.”
“(Clinton) looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping.”
I missed quite a bit the few days I was out of town for work, but none better than this. In what couldn’t possibly be more poetic, during a soliloquy on health care the stage left teleprompter takes a dive. Enjoy:
As further proof that Team Obama is in big trouble with Obamacare, the dems played the Ted card this weekend. Senator Ted Kennedy came out with an extensive piece in Newsweek pushing support of Obamacare. It’s more of the same from the dems- scare tactics, political double-talking, and misdirection.
The misdirection must be particularly effective because they keep using it to rush bills through Congress. They continue to insist that the Republicans are for the “status quo” which couldn’t be further from the truth. And despite Republicans offering contrary views and plans, the line continues to get played.
Not that the Ted card is any different than the Republicans trotting out maligned Canadians and having them talk about how socialized medicine resulted in their stutter, but it clearly shows Obama’s promise of a different kind of politics was nothing but hot air.
I’m traveling for another day and unfortunately have a wicked pisssah of an internet connection (guess what city I’m in) thus the lack of posts. In the meantime, enjoy the latest installment of “Unnecessary Censorship” from Jimmy Kimmel.
According to reports, newsman Walter Cronkite passed away today at the age of 92. Cronkite is already getting the Michael Jackson treatment with wall-to-wall coverage on all the major cable news networks.
As has already been mentioned about 45 times on Fox News, the term “anchorman” originated with Walter Cronkite. As the story goes (aka Wikipedia)- the term was coined by producer Don Hewitt in response to Cronkite’s coverage of the 1952 Republican and Democrat national conventions.
With the release of the penultimate Harry Potter movie (sort of), I thought it appropriate to put up a tribute to the series, albeit a somewhat juvenile and slightly twisted tribute. Grab some popcorn, dim the lights, and enjoy:
I don’t know how to describe this video but I find it remarkably compelling. Despite my best efforts, I can’t stop watching it. It’s more musically complex than nearly any pop song on the radio and has so much going on visually you’ve got to watch at least three times to catch it all. Enjoy:
Doing some more t-shirt shopping and came across this gem. Like several before, this one can be purchased at bustedtees.com. It’s perfect for a night on the town. Enjoy:
I can’t find code to put this video right up but it’s definitely worth a click. Everything about this ad is genius- the mohawk, the smoking accelerator pedal, the “need for speed” car, and the punchline. Click here and enjoy!
Often the difference between a good football season and a great one comes down to one or two plays. An injury here, a bad bounce there, maybe a little light marijuana trafficking here and there.
Following the early departure of one of the most gifted and dominant, albeit fragile, running backs in college football, one of the big questions for the Buckeyes heading into 2009 is the running back position. It’s Boom Herron’s job to lose and very murky after that.
The only other running back likely to see much of the field is Brandon Saine, but despite loads of potential, injuries and inconsistency have kept Saine from producing results.
The status of incoming Freshman Jamaal Berry is uncertain after his marijuana possession charge was knocked down to a misdemeanor. Assuming he doesn’t make any further missteps, he’ll at best be digging out of a hole for the first few months on campus.
Now word comes that the other highly-touted incoming Freshman Running Back Carlos Hyde isn’t going to be part of the 2009 Buckeyes because of academic issues.
The truth is in Tressel’s offense Freshmen running backs don’t see the field much anyways because of the emphasis placed on blocking assignments. That fact probably would hold true even more so this year with the expectations that Terrelle Pryor will be running the ball more himself.
Still, should either Herron or Saine go down because of injury or other issues, the offense could be in serious trouble. That lack of depth is a serious problem for any team, but especially for a team that relies so heavily on running the football. It will be something to watch during the season- a season that I can’t wait to get started.
$17,948,518 to be exact. That’s a facelift number that would make Joan Rivers blush (if the blood vessels in her face still worked that way).
As part of the stimulus package, a website was required to be created so that taxpayers could monitor the debt as it piled up day by day. That website is Recovery.gov. The website is operational; it’s fancy; in fact it’s far more complex and costly than this very website you’re reading right now (hard to believe, I know).
All Recovery.gov really needs to be is a couple of headlines and then a downloadable Excel file with all the stimulus spending data in it (Visicalc or Lotus 1-2-3 files for MAC users).
Instead, and as further proof that government shouldn’t be trusted with much more than changing a toilet paper roll, the GSA announced yesterday that they’ve awarded an $18 million contract to revamp the Recovery.gov website.
“Recovery.gov 2.0 will use innovative and interactive technologies to help taxpayers see where their dollars are being spent,” said James A. Williams, Commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service. “Armed with easy access to this information, taxpayers can make government more accountable for its decisions.”
Memo to Mr. Williams- thank you for letting us see where our dollars are being spent- $18 million on a website. That’s clarity. I can only hope that “Moderate and/or Fake Conservative Voter 2.0″ will vote a Republican into office in 2012.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) came out with their second report on the now 5-month old $787 billion stimulus package, and the headline is “pennies and lies”.
I might be a little fuzzy on the details, but I’m pretty sure President Obama didn’t promise 63% of the stimulus money to Medicaid and 13% to state budget stabilization. But that’s exactly how the spending has broken out so far:
63% to Medicaid
13% to State Fiscal Stabilization Fund
6% to Highways
5% to Other selected programs
13% to Other programs not in study
That’s all on top of projections that less than 25% of the stimulus money will get spent by year end. So much for shovel ready.
Regarding highway projects- the ones frequently touted as the big job-creators- as of June 25th, the Department of Transportation had obligated a mere $9.2 billion for projects and had reimbursed an even more minute $96.4 million.
$96.4 million sounds like a lot of money but to keep it in perspective, it’s only .012% of the total stimulus pot. That’s less than 1/8th of 1 percent.
Other cautions from the GAO report include a concern that auditing requirements in place don’t appropriately address the spending risk and that the federal website set up to monitor federal spending via non-federal entities uses unreliable data. So much for transparency and government accountability.
If you’re interested in reading the full GAO report, click here.
Making a further mockery of our Democracy, and thanks to the good people of Minnesota, Stuart Smalley is now a United States Senator.
The House of Representatives is one thing- there are plenty of space eaters in that body. The U.S. Senate is an entirely different matter- supposedly reserved for the political professionals and the Presidential candidate bullpen.
Even more significant is the now filibuster-free majority the Dems have courtesy of Senator Smalley (and the traitors that abandoned the Republican party). That means what was a mockery of alleged bipartisanship will now be a full out left-wing groping at the hands of Pelosi/Reed/Boxer & Co.
If you’re like me, you’ve liquidated your 401k and all personal valuables in order to buy enough gold ingots to build a wall around your house to keep out Acorn and the census workers. I’m feeling a bit of buyer’s remorse, so here are a couple of tips to help you avoid a similar fate:
1.) Don’t buy products from caterpillar-mustache-wearing fake karate expert criminals.
2.) Don’t be swayed by such empirically-provable statements as “…in these tough times, that’s more important than ever” and “…held value for over 5,000 years”.
For all the precision of Team Obama, they still can’t keep JoeJoe of the Bidens under lock and key. The latest installment of JoeJoe has him admitting the assumptions that formed the basis of their entire economic plan were faulty. Don’t take my word for it; here’s his quote:
“The figures we worked off of in January were the consensus figures and most of the blue chip indexes out there; We misread how bad the economy was.”
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer echoed the sentiments saying (the Democrats are) “disappointed with the results so far.”
Time to throw some more money at the problem fellas.
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