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"It's too bad stupidity isn't painful."
Volume 15, Number 32, August 22, 2010
(I don’t know if you noticed, but there was no column last week [or the week before]. Since no one asked where it was, I guess not getting it posted wasn’t a big deal. But just in case you did miss it, this one will be longer than usual.)
Greetings, and thanks for joining me for another week. Starting us off are a few news stories you may have missed. First, most everyone has heard the mainstream story of the flight steward who flamboyantly stormed off his job. As more time passes, maybe what really happened will emerge, but Steven Slater has become something of a folk hero for one reason and one reason only – he did what so many people would like to do. There’s already talk of a movie. Where’s the call for his running for president! Isn’t that how it works? Someone’s hot for fifteen minutes and suddenly it’s like they are the Second Coming (*cough*Joe the Plumber* cough*) Are people really that stupid and vacuous? They sure are! (More on him below.)
Next, a "psychic" hunting the body of a missing child found the headless torso of an adult woman instead. Cheryl Carroll-Lagerwey discovered the woman near a park creek after searching for a six-year-old following a gruesome vision. Aboriginal elder Cheryl said: "I had a dream about a little girl being murdered and that her body was about here." Cops who were looking for the young girl since she vanished from her home near Sydney, Australia, almost two weeks ago may now get Cheryl involved in the search for the girl. A Detective Chief Inspector said: "It's interesting that a woman had a feeling it was worth coming to this particular part of the park." (www.thesun.co.uk)
Finally, a two-year-old Indonesian boy has developed a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit. There is a video on the web of the boy casually puffing away as he frolics on his tricycle. Said the child's mother, "If he doesn't get cigarettes, he gets angry and screams and batters his head against the wall" (maybe he’s trying to quit?) The boy's father, noting the kid's pudginess, seems not to sense the problem: "He looks pretty healthy to me." An additional concern is financial: Ardi will smoke only one particular premium brand, at a cost of the equivalent of about $5.50 a day. [New York Daily News] (BTW, if you are really feeling the money pinch, you’d best not be smoking, drinking, drugging, getting tattoos, etc. Just sayin.’)
The Need for Parental Licensing: Earlier this year, as punishment for her 12-year-old son's bad grade in school, Georgia mother allegedly forced the boy to club his pet hamster to death with a hammer. Lynn Middlebrooks Geter, 38, was arrested after the kid told his teacher, who called the state children's services agency. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
Seriously, as a Justice of the Peace, one thing I often say is that it’s (too) easy to get married, but it’s tough staying married. Similarly, it’s (too) easy to create a child, but to raise and be responsible for a child is not. Rights, shmights! If one creates a child, that person needs to be responsible. Too many are NOT! Things are not getting better, folks.
The little things – my desk chair that only sometimes lets me lean back; the occasional slowness of the Internet (or my computer); most ads in general; political ads in particular; a cable company that has lessened my viewing by 5 channels but raised the rates (*cough*TWC*cough*); the immaturity and stupidity of so many on Facebook; greedy people’s bonuses; humidity; getting a 3:30 AM bail call; bosses without a human side; people who think they know better than you how you should live your life; why so much has to be so expensive.
Oops! Chef Christopher Turla was just trying to get a laugh, but he got a $335 ticket instead after health inspectors saw a video of him kissing and licking toads in the kitchen of his Davenport, Iowa restaurant. The video shows the chef with two small toads on a kitchen prep table at the restaurant Osaka. He kisses the toads a few times, licks them, then stuffs them in his mouth. Turla says it was just a joke. But the Scott County Health Department wasn't laughing when they issued the hefty fine ($335 is hefty?). Food inspectors say toads carry several diseases and that Turla had the toads in his mouth and then back in his hands on the prep table. The restaurant owner says he'll pay the ticket. He also says Turla is just a funny guy who needs some more training about restaurant sanitation. Gee, you think? (www.cbsnews.com)
Interesting debate – was the sentence too harsh? The ninth conviction was the breaking point for one Texas judge who earlier this week sentenced a habitual drunken driver to life in prison. Bobby Stovall, 54, was driving his truck in Round Rock, Texas, when he weaved through several lanes of traffic and hit another vehicle, injuring the driver. It was later determined that Stovall had a blood alcohol concentration of .32, four times the legal limit in Texas. And while that DWI was certainly enough to get Stovall in trouble with the law, when the judge found out the defendant had eight prior DWI convictions across several different counties in Texas, he ordered up a life sentence for Stovall. "This is someone who very deliberately has refused to make changes and continued to get drunk and get in a car and before he kills someone we decided to put him away," said Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley. (For the details: http://abcnews.go.com/US/texas-man-life-sentence-ninth-dwi/story?id=11395058)
UPDATE to a Bit above: Here’s a big surprise: Steven Slater, that flight attendant who slid from an airplane to fame last week, now employs the services of one of Hollywood's top public relations representatives. Howard Bragman, Chairman of media and public relations agency Fifteen Minutes, confirmed to CNN that he is now representing Slater and will help him assess offers to appear in proposed television programs inspired by Slater's dramatic exit from a JetBlue plane at New York's Kennedy Airport after he cursed a passenger over the public address system and deployed the emergency slide. "There are probably 25 reality show offers on the table at this point," said Bragman. (CNN)
When is enough enough? Atlanta police said a baby narrowly survived a recent drive-by shooting. Police said someone used an AK-47 to fire eight rounds into a house. One of the bullets landed inches from a sleeping baby, police said. Officers are not sure if the shooting was a random attack or if the shooter specifically targeted the family. No arrests have been made. No one else was hurt. Are gangs the US version of tribes in Iraq? (WSBTV.com)
A rare Win-Win: PETA was angry at Dodge for running an ad that had a chimpanzee in it, considering the history of abuse monkeys have suffered in the entertainment industry (they have). Not that any happened to this monkey (it didn’t), just to monkeys before it. Anyhow, Dodge digitally erased the monkey in the track suit.... but now there's just an empty suit walking over and pressing the dynamite lever (sounds like some politicians). Dexter's Michael C. Hall One link to the story: http://rumors.automobilemag.com/6676715/miscellaneous/suit-sans-chimp-dodges-witty-response-to-petas-commercial-objections/index.html)
A Michigan high school football team is holding preseason practices in the middle of the night (11 PM to 4 AM) to help its Muslim players practice both faith and football. The predominantly Muslim squad from Dearborn says the nocturnal schedule is a way for players to eat and drink while observing the holy month of daytime fasting known as Ramadan that started last week. I think this helps underscore one problem I have. While I have no problem with “diversity,” we are America and we should not have to adapt to others. If I chose to visit France, will everyone learn English for me? I don’t think so. (www.sport.espn.go.com)
Quiz time! Guess who spoke the following quotes: (1) “Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be-all, end-all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet.” (2) "So we discussed what was going on in Africa. And never, ever did I talk about, Well, gee, is it a country or is it a continent, I just don't know about this issue." (3) “I didn’t believe the theory that human beings – thinking, loving beings – originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea. Or that human beings began as single-celled organisms that developed into monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.” (4) "Shoot, I must have lived such a doggoned sheltered life as a normal, independent American up there in the Last Frontier, schooled with only public education and a lowly state university degree, because obviously I haven't learned enough to dismiss common sense." (5) "Go back to what our founders and our founding documents meant -- they're quite clear -- that we would create law based on the God of the bible and the Ten Commandments." (Give up? Answer is somewhere below.)
When a defendant showed up on a traffic charge, Judge Judy delivered a zinger: "If you drive like an idiot 'cause you're late for work, you're gonna have to pay for it." Then she piled on: "You can see your picture on the headlines of the Seattle Times, stupid young man who shouldn't be driving." BUT, this bullying Judge Judy was not Judge Judith Sheindlin, the tough-talking former New York City Family Court judge who has the top-rated judge show on syndicated television. It was Judge Judith Raub Eiler, her real-life doppelgänger, who sits at a county court in Seattle. According to one person: “Seattle's Judge Judy should have been tossed from the bench. She acted viciously, she was found to have violated the judicial canons and she did it again when she said she would not. It is also clear from the defense that she made in the Supreme Court that she still does not understand why her conduct was so offensive. That means she has no business being a judge.” (www.time.com)
After 13 years behind bars for trying to break in to a church kitchen to find something to eat, a man who became an example of the harsh sentences allowed by California's three-strikes law has been ordered released from prison. A Superior Court judge amended Gregory Taylor's sentence to eight years already served and the 47-year-old, who was sentenced in 1997 to 25 years to life, will be a free man in a few days. During an appeal, a dissenting state Supreme Court justice said Taylor was a 20th-century version of Jean Valjean, a character imprisoned for stealing bread in Victor Hugo's novel "Les Miserables." (Huffington Post) I am sure he’ll quickly be able to find a job and mend his ways….
Our schools are still broken and not getting better! New data show that fewer than 25% of 2010 graduates who took the ACT college-entrance exam possessed the academic skills necessary to pass entry-level courses, despite modest gains in college-readiness among U.S high-school students in the last few years. The results raise questions about how well the nation's high schools are preparing students for college, and show the challenge facing the Obama administration in its effort to raise educational standards. The administration won bipartisan support for its education policies early on, but faces a tough fight in the fall over the rewrite and reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind program.
(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703824304575435831555726858.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories)
Finally, two Iowa farms that together recalled more than half a billion potentially tainted eggs this month share close ties, including suppliers of chickens and feed. Both farms are linked to businessman Austin "Jack" DeCoster, who has been cited for numerous health, safety and employment violations over the years (then why is he still in business???) All we have to do to make a difference is DO THE RIGHT THING.
(Answer to quiz: these words are all from the woman who would be President – Sarah Palin.)
Later.
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