The Absurdity of the Big Three Bailout in One Sentence

If the taxpayers of this country wanted you to have their money (or had it to give), a good indicator would have been that they were actually buying your cars.

Didn’t we already vote on this when we decided not to buy?

More here:

The federal government has no business running a car company. Congress has proven their inability to be fiscally responsible in any context. Five hundred thirty five CEOs of GM will only screw it up futher.

HT Michael Silence

From Bartlett Grove Park–Another Naked Idiot

I’ve commented here before about how stupid you must be to allow someone to film you naked and not keep the one and only copy for yourself. Common sense risk management should tell you that it may end up on the internet. But letting someone photograph or film your privates in a public place with the intent of posting it on the web is even dumber–especially when that place is a playground. That’s what these geniuses did in Bartlett Tennessee.

Action News 5 was unable to locate the “model.” She writes on the web-site that the pornographic shoot took place just last week.

Give it, I don’t know, 2 hours or so and someone will identify her and post something on their blog or a message board about it. Probably no jail time involved, but I’d bet a heavy fine will come out of this.

Seriously, on a playground? And you’re stupid enough to say which playground? I guess there’s a reason why you are, ahem, “modeling” and not practicing medicine.

The news report calls this video “porn”. I don’t think a naked skank on a slide really qualifies as porn, but I guess community standards are what apply here.

Penn and Teller Call Bullshit on Al Gore

Check out this great clip from Penn and Teller’s show “Bullshit”. Al Gore is such a clown, but the scary kind of clown. Penn and Teller, on the other hand, are funny.

Good pub for the Tennessee Center for Policy Research here, which highlights Gore’s overuse of power while trying to make everyone else in the world feel guilty about their habits.

Oh wait, he bought carbon credits (from himself) to offset his consumption.

Knoxville’s Miracle Mile? Huh?

Wh-wh-WHAT?  KnoxTalks has the lowdown on an NBC reporter making the statement about the stretch of Kingston Pike between Sequoya Hills and UT:

“people call it The Miracle Mile”

C’mon.  Making things up to make a news story more interesting is soooo 2003 New York Times.  But I’ll play along by making my own completely false and ridiculous statement and see if I get some play on big blogs for my nifty wordsmithing…

Big media clowns make up so much stuff about Knoxville, we call them all Jayson Blair.

Find me one Knoxvillian who has ever called this stretch “The Miracle Mile and I’ll buy you both dinner at The Varsity, which everyone knows is the place where all Knoxville locals eat.  It’s located out there in the new Turkey River development.

You Can’t Say That On…Anywhere

So I haven’t posted for a couple of days because I’ve been in the land of damn-these-people-drive-like-maniacs, aka the ATL.

I’m also way behind on reading, but I just came across a post that is really disturbing. Apparently, it’s now considered bad form to use the phrase “life insurance policy” and “Barack Obama” in the same sentence–not because of what it says, but because someone may read it the wrong way. It reminds me of that fateful day when the word “niggardly” was stricken from the English language because people who didn’t know what it meant (I didn’t at the time) were too lazy to look it up.

It’s so much easier to just get offended first and ask questions later, no?

Mongolian Spots and CPS

I just got a phone call from a friend who was upset to the verge of tears. She’d had Child Protective Services called on her by the daycare that she’s used for more than three years for her first child, and most recently for her six week old baby. Why did they call CPS? Because they mistook the Mongolian spots on her baby’s back for bruises.

I’m not expecting everyone who reads this to know what Mongolian spots are, so here’s a quick explanation. They are birthmarks that occur on almost every baby of East Asian decent and are common in other races as well. They look a lot like bruises, as the photo above demonstrates. (More on Mongolian spots at Wikipedia).

Mongolian spotBut Mongolian spots aren’t bruises. And while I’m pretty sure that the average person who hasn’t seen them before doesn’t know what they are, I would definitely expect the director of a child care facility to know exactly what they are, especially when this facility exists in a THE family fitness center (you can probably guess the one) that presumably services a variety of members from different ethnic backgrounds.

How embarrassing for her, not only to have CPS called on her because of someone else’s inexcusable ignorance at their job, but also because she is an instructor at this facility and was leaving her children with her co-workers while she taught her class.

Bad For The Country?

When I got in my car today, Sean Hannity was on. I know, I know–but that’s the station I’d been listening to earlier. I’ve pretty much established what I think of him before, but what he and his guest, Bernie Goldberg, had to say today really drives homes those feelings. Although I don’t remember which one said it, the other was definitely in agreement. I’ll keep the quote to the part that I know is 100% correct so as not to unfairly portray these gentlemen:

“It’s bad for the country.”

Since you probably don’t listen to his show, you may wonder exactly what they were talking about.
Was it the federal government meddling in the education system? Was it the devaluation of our currency by the Federal Reserve? Was it the triumvirate of big government regulation-happy candidates to which they we have narrowed our realistic choices to?

Nope. Bloggers. But not every blogger is bad in their eyes, just those that disagree with them. Actually, they didn’t use the term “blogger”. I believe the phrase they used was “idiot with a computer and a modem.”

It seems that to Mr. Hannity and his guest, an idiot with a microphone has more right to an opinion than an idiot with a computer.

My favorite thing about free speech is that it allows me to speak my mind and spread my ideas if they are good. My second favorite thing about free speech is that it allows every idiot with a bad idea to expose himself as an idiot, and have his bad idea ripped apart.

For these reasons, I hope that Mr. Hannity and I both continue to enjoy the benefits of free speech.

Miami Drivers Unite!

Quick!  Take the opportunity this power outage has provided you to prove to the world once and for all that you are the biggest collection of jackasses alive.

We were just watching Fox News here at work and they’re showing a busy intersection (79th and 10th I think) where the stoplights are out.  People are just cruising right through at high speeds like total morons.

And what the hell is the police department doing?  They showed a couple of motorcycle cops cruise through exactly like the rest of the drivers.  It doesn’t take a PR genius to realize that this exact intersection is on worldwide TV and that you need to get this one taken care of–force the, ahem, “news” people to find another intersection to film idiot drivers.  Then again, I guess they’d only have to go a block or so to get the exact same footage.

All Your Children Are Belong To Us

At least one state senator, DiAnna Schimek, in Nebraska thinks so.

Her bill would require home-school students to take state-mandated tests or have their schoolwork assessed by an outside evaluator. If studentsprogress falls short academically, they would be sent to public or private schools.

That’s ironic.  One major factor in parents’ decision to homeschool in the first place is that the State doesn’t seem to measure up to their standards.  This would actually make sense if the schools and parents swapped roles–parents should be mandating standards to the State, not the other way around.

“Our responsibility is to see that the children of the state do have access to an education,” she said. “That’s a constitutional responsibility.”

The children of the state?  I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt–I’m sure she misspoke and meant to say “the children who live in our state”.  Surely.  And while I’m sure Nebraska is constitutionally bound to provide access, are they constitutionally bound to force participation?  My guess is no.

I don’t know anything about the governor of Nebraska except that he is correct in his assessment of the bill:

“The bill presents a heavy-handed, state government regulatory approach to this issue which, in my view, is not warranted,” Heineman said in a statement. “It dramatically infringes on Nebraska parents’ choices regarding the education of their children.”

According to the article, this lady’s husband is a lobbyist for a teachers’ union, but that doesn’t influence her.  Right.

She said her concern comes from the stories she hears about students who are kept out of public or private schools but receive little to no schooling.

She heard some stories.  She should have said that in the beginning.  My bad.  Never mind–totally justified.  It now makes perfect sense.

And I Ain’t Lost Yet

Billymac just got back from Vegas, and it sounds like he did pretty well at the poker tables. I’ve known and loved Billymac for years, and this is one reason why…

I like no, I LOVE, taking money from punk-ass kids that show up to a poker room wearing a track-suit, pulled down hat, wrap around sunglasses, and listening to their iPhones at the table.

My favorite stunt to pull at Vegas poker tables is to sit down and immediately start talking. I like to play up the fact that I’m a stupid hick. It’s not much of a stretch, and I’ve preparing for that role my entire life. That kid with the iPhone and glasses Billymac mentioned almost always falls for it, and I can usually take them for a while.

Invariably, a couple of people at the table realize after a while that I’m a somewhat intelligent hick.