ISIS And Ebola

The words ain't coming, so here's a couple of pictures that say the same thing I was going to write, but quicker.

Here's one more, just for fun.

Last Night's Dinner

A little more elaboration regarding last night's dinner:

The guest of honor was a guy I used to work with back in the 1980s. We worked closely together, but weren't close friends - more than casual acquaintances, less than bosom buddies. We respected each other professionally and enjoyed each other's company, but for some reason never became tight.

Over the years we moved on to other jobs and eventually lost touch. Thirty years later we found out that we'd both moved to the same small Texas community. Small world, indeed.

There's a reason I'm bringing this up. We just found out that my friend is being treated for prostate cancer. I heard the news shortly after the end of the Kilted to Kick Cancer campaign. It personalized the disease and the campaign for me. Last night marked the midway point in his treatment - 40 days of radiation therapy. He's doing well - no nausea or hair loss, no weight loss, still feels good and has plenty of energy. The prognosis is guardedly optimistic.

So guys, please do yourself a favor and get checked early and often. Gals, make sure your guy does what he's supposed to do. And if you have a little spare change, please consider donating it to a good cause. Or maybe even go a little farther and get involved.

Your prostate, or the prostate of someone you love, will thank you.

Busy Busy Busy

Hosted a dinner for some old friends last night. Spent most of the day cleaning, prepping, and cooking. Dinner consisted of bacon wrapped pork loin; antelope medallions with blackberry reduction sauce; baked sweet potatoes topped with butter, lime, and cilantro; roasted veggie medley; and a strawberry spinach salad. Oh yeah - accompanied by garlic bread and wine.

Lots and lots of wine...

Desert was a chocolate macadamia nut torte with homemade whipped cream and Blue Bell ice cream (from contented cows).

 Sorry, no pictures, but recipes are available upon request.

Regular blogging will return after digestion is complete - probably some time in the next day or two.

Happy Birthday To All the Squids Out There

Today is the 239th birthday of the greatest Navy the world has ever known - our very own United States Navy!

The United States Navy traces its origins to the Continental Navy, which the Continental Congress established on 13 October 1775, by authorizing the procurement, fitting out, manning, and dispatch of two armed vessels to cruise in search of munitions ships supplying the British Army in America.

In 1972 Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt authorized recognition of 13 October as the Navy's birthday.

Happy Birthday, swabbies. Don't celebrate too hard...

FOD 2014.10.13

Think back to the 2012 presidential election. obama was re-elected by an impressive margin. In his subsequent State of the Union address he laid out a grandious vision for a progressive second term. He was poised to usher in a new era of sweeping liberalism.

And then it all collapsed.

The problems came in waves. The attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, took place eight weeks before the election, but the many inconsistencies in the administration’s narrative dogged Obama into his second term...

The controversy over the talking points revived a scandal that the administration had hoped was behind them. At a press briefing just days before the new revelations, Carney had dismissed a question about the attacks six months earlier by claiming, “Benghazi happened a long time ago.”

Then in May 2013 the IRS scandal broke.

... a damning report from the Treasury Department inspector general was made public. And those responsible for the targeting, it soon became apparent, were not “line officials in Cincinnati” but senior IRS officials in Washington.

Top Democrats in Washington had been publicly calling for the IRS to scrutinize Tea Party groups. But White House officials denied any role in the targeting, and President Obama was quick to condemn it. “Americans have a right to be angry about it,” he said. “And I’m angry about it.” The targeting, Obama said, was “inexcusable.”

Three days later, the public learned that the federal government was spying on reporters. The Department of Justice had obtained phone records for nearly two dozen reporters and editors from the Associated Press as part of an investigation into alleged leaks of classified information...

Days later, the Washington Post reported that the Department of Justice had gone even further in another investigation, closely monitoring the activities of Fox News correspondent James Rosen... Amid the ensuing controversy, Attorney General Eric Holder, who had previously testified to Congress that he had never contemplated the prosecution of a member of the media for disclosing classified information, admitted having approved the Rosen warrant application...

Less than a month later, the Guardian and the Washington Post, working from documents stolen by Edward Snowden, published detailed accounts of surveillance programs conducted by the National Security Agency...

These controversies were one part of Obama’s collapse. His failing policies were the other. Four years after Obama signed the stimulus into law, unemployment remained high and economic growth was anemic...

And then came health care. The Obamacare rollout in October 2013 was an unmitigated disaster. The front‑end of the HealthCare.gov website didn’t work. The back-end hadn’t even been built. Serious security issues made potential enrollees reluctant to sign up. And many of those who signed up did not initially make premium payments.

The promise that President Obama made more than three dozen times as he worked to pass Obamacare​—​“if you like your plan, you can keep it, period”​—​was inoperative. Worse, it was clear that Obama knew when he made the promise that he would break it. Analyses the White House itself conducted had concluded that millions of Americans would not be able to keep their health care plans, whether they liked them or not. The very structure of Obamacare requires the cancellation of plans that do not meet the standards of coverage mandated by Washington.

Obama knew this. So did his aides. And so did Republicans, who warned repeatedly and with great urgency that people would lose plans they liked.

The problems with Obamacare were so bad that they elicited public criticism from Obama’s two living Democratic predecessors. “His major accomplishment was Obamacare and the implementation of it is now questionable at best,” said Jimmy Carter. Bill Clinton urged Obama to keep his word. “The president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got.”

The Obama presidency has seen many low points, but this has to have been one of the lowest​—​Jimmy Carter questioning Obama’s competence and Bill Clinton questioning his integrity. (emphasis added)

The administration scrambled to avoid a full collapse of the law. They suspended enforcement of the employer mandate. They granted the IRS authority to provide tax credits to those insured through the federal exchange despite the fact that the plain language of the law provided tax credits only to those who were insured through state exchanges. They provided carve-outs and exceptions to other aspects of the law on an ad hoc basis.

The scandals and policy challenges that shaped Obama’s fifth year have derailed his sixth. New revelations about the IRS and Benghazi scandals​—​widespread “computer crashes” among IRS employees investigated by Congress and Benghazi documents that further undermine the administration’s claims​—​have kept the stories alive despite the flagging attention of the establishment media.

Many of the policy decisions of yesterday have become the crises of today, particularly overseas... 

Obama boasted that he had ended the war in Iraq. The administration erected obstacles to an agreement with Baghdad that would have left a residual force in Iraq, and Obama celebrated the fact that he was the president who had brought all U.S. troops home from Iraq.

A year before he began his second term, Obama sent Robert Ford to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Syria with the hope that Bashar al-Assad would be a reformer. Instead, Assad responded to peaceful protests with the systematic slaughter of moderate rebels who opposed him. Obama called for Assad’s ouster but declined to do anything that would produce that result. He insisted that the movement or use of chemical weapons would be a “red line” for the United States, but balked when presented with evidence that Assad had repeatedly used those weapons.

In the face of U.S. inaction, moderate rebels turned to Islamic extremists for help, and jihadists flocked to Syria to join the fight. With better weapons, more experience, superior organization, and steadily flowing funds, the jihadists began to crowd out other elements in the Syrian opposition. Al Qaeda and likeminded groups saw an opportunity to seize territory and expand their efforts, and in due time the Islamic State controlled vast sections of Iraq and Syria.

The Obama administration dismissed or sidelined intelligence officials who contradicted the official line by warning about the growing threat from al Qaeda and the Islamic State. But that threat soon became too big to ignore.

In an announcement that at once made clear the administration’s failures on Iraq, Syria, and al Qaeda, Obama ordered airstrikes on jihadist targets in the region. The tide of war was rising once again.

The scandals and policy failures have had a devastating effect. With two years left in his presidency, Obama has no agenda. The major new investments and initiatives that he spoke of after his election never happened. Gun control measures he pushed went nowhere. Immigration reform​—​at least the comprehensive variety that Obama demanded​—​is dead. As the investigations of old scandals continue, new ones have taken their place on newspaper front pages across the country: the chronic failures of the VA and, most recently, a serious cover-up involving the Secret Service.

When he’s not on the golf course, the president seems to spend most of his time fundraising for vulnerable Democrats, threatening executive action on those things he can’t accomplish by leading, and working to minimize crises of his own making.

This is a failed presidency.

Speaking of barry and the golf course:

The First Duffer reached a milestone Sunday, playing his 200th round of golf since taking office, according to CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller.

It's not like there's an outbreak of a deadly disease threatening the country or anything...

Sunday Funnies 2014.10.12

I hate to do this to y'all, but I have a terrible weakness for puns...

I once loved a girl, but she and I were quite different. Sadly, things didn't work out.

She was only a whiskey-maker, but I loved her still.

I tried talking about our future but she just kept bringing up my past. It was a tense conversation.

True story - those of you who have been following this blog for a while know that I used to work in the financial industry before I moved to academia. You might say that I used to be a banker, but I lost interest.

Speaking of losing interest:

A little bathroom humor:

When I get naked in the bathroom, the only thing that gets turned on is the shower.

Brace yourself. Here come the really bad ones.

'I got lost in the streets of Paris,' he said ruefully.

I was leaving a store and had my arms full of packages. A clown held the door open for me.

What a nice jester.

 "A Farewell to Arms" is Ernest Hemingway's novel about an American soldier in Italy during World War I. He falls in love with a nurse in the hospital, decides to go AWOL, and rows all night with her in a boat from Italy to Switzerland to evade the authorities.

His girl friend was sitting in the stern of the boat, and he was rowing in the middle. At one point he said, "Cathy, I love you."

She said, "Pardon?"

He said, "I said I love you."

She still didn't hear him, so he removed an oar from the lock, moved up to the stern, resumed steering the boat from that position, and said again, "I love you."

She said, "I love you too, but why are you standing there sculling when you can do so much better rowing where you were?"

He said, "You are undoubtedly right: I just sculled to say I love you."

To add to the punishment in Purgatory, Satan decided to make all the tormented souls listen to elevator music.

The Hells Are Alive With the Sounds of Muzak.

A farmer lived in ancient Rome. He was working in the fields one day when he came across a giant strawberry, about one foot wide and 18 inches high. He thought this would be a novelty that many would want to see, so he took it home, washed it off, and set up a display in a case. He advertised the giant strawberry far and wide, and people came from all over to see the exhibit. He charged admission and made a pile of money.

However, he failed to report his earnings to the tax authorities, so they came to his farm to confiscate the exhibit. When they arrived at his door, he said, "I suppose you have come all this way to admire my exhibit as well?"

"No," they said. "We've come to seize your berry, not to praise it."

I apologize for the terrible puns.

The last one - I promise.

Sorry...

Twofer: Tis the Season, and Rise of the Machines

Yesterday I went into the local Lowes hardware store to pick up a few things. Imagine my shock and horror when I saw that they already had the Christmas decorations on display. The store itself wasn't decorated (yet), but the Christmas merchandise was laid out and on sale.

Is it just me, or does this happen earlier every year?

In other news:

When I first saw the headline below I freaked out. I've endured multiple MRI scans, and will undoubtedly undergo more in the future. At times they can be unpleasant, but up until now I never worried about being shot by the machine.

RISE OF THE MACHINES: MRI Scanner Disarms Officer And Fires His Weapon

A medical device—apparently developed by Cyberdyne Systems—disarmed an off-duty police officer, took possession of the weapon, fired it, and refused to let it go until it’s power was, um, terminated.

Don’t freak out just yet, however: there’s a very scientific explanation for everything:

An off-duty police officer went to an outpatient imaging center (not affiliated with our institution) in western New York State to have an MR imaging examination ... The officer was carrying a model 1911 A-1 compact.45 caliber semiautomatic pistol.

The officer notified the technologist that he was carrying the weapon before entering the MR dressing room. The technologist told the officer to take the gun with him. The technologist intended to meet the officer in the MR patient waiting area before the examination and secure the weapon in that room, where he felt it would be safe. However, the officer apparently misunderstood and took the gun into the MR suite. The technologist was entering the officer’s personal data into the computer and did not see him entering the MR suite.

Once the officer was inside the MR suite, the gun was pulled from his hand as he attempted to place the gun on top of a cabinet 3 ft (0.9 m) away from the magnet bore. The gun was immediately pulled into the bore, where it struck the left side and spontaneously discharged a round into the wall of the room at the rear of the magnet. Fortunately, no one was injured. Although the gun struck the magnet bore, only minimal cosmetic damage occurred to the magnet itself. The MR unit had full functional capability immediately after the gun discharged. The weapon’s thumb safety was reportedly engaged when the gun discharged.

An unsuccessful attempt to remove the gun from the magnet resulted in the gun being pulled to the right side of the magnet. The decision was then made to power down the magnet to remove the gun.

Yes, not only did the rogue magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner disarm the officer, it craftily got around the problem of not having thumbs to disengage the thumb safety, and managed to fire the 1911 with the thumb safety engaged.

When the firearm was removed from the magnet, the gun was still in a cocked and locked position. An empty cartridge was found in the chamber. The presence of an empty cartridge in the chamber is highly unusual. If the thumb safety were not engaged and the weapon fired normally by depressing the trigger, the normal backward recoil of the slide should have automatically ejected the empty cartridge, and a new live round should have automatically been chambered. As discussed earlier, the thumb safety performs two functions: it prevents the sear from releasing the hammer, thereby preventing the hammer from striking the firing pin; it also locks the slide in place, preventing retrograde motion of the slide and automatic ejection of the empty cartridge. Thus, the presence of an empty cartridge in the chamber confirms that the thumb safety was engaged at the time the gun was fired. Given that the thumb safety was engaged when the gun discharged, it is also likely that the normal trigger and hammer mechanism of firing the gun was bypassed because the thumb safety would have also prevented release of the hammer.

The gun likely discharged as a result of the effect of the magnetic field on the firing pin block. The firing pin block was probably drawn into its uppermost position by force of the magnetic field. The firing pin block has to overcome only light pressure from a relatively small spring to release the firing pin. The pistol was likely drawn into the magnetic field so that the muzzle struck the magnet’s bore first. With the firing pin allowed to move freely in its channel, the force of the impact on the muzzle end was sufficient to cause the firing pin to overcome its spring pressure and move forward to strike the primer of the chambered round.

 I guess the moral of the story is leave your shooting iron in the car when getting an MRI.

Friday Follies Happy Hour 2014.10.10

A blast from the past - sure to infuriate modern easily-offended types.

It also reflects what's probably going through the minds of the 3000 U.S. troops sentenced assigned to Ebola duty in Africa...

Sick Of This

I'm getting tired of posting stuff about Ebola, but as long as obama fails to keep the country safe by banning, or at least quarantining, people from Ebola-infested regions, stories like this one will continue to pop up.

The potential spread of Ebola into Central and Southern America is a real possibility, the commander of U.S. Southern Command told an audience at the National Defense University here yesterday.

“By the end of the year, there’s supposed to be 1.4 million people infected with Ebola and 62 percent of them dying, according to the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention],” Marine Corps Gen. John F. Kelly said. “That’s horrific. And there is no way we can keep Ebola [contained] in West Africa.”

If it comes to the Western Hemisphere, many countries have little ability to deal with an outbreak of the disease, the general said.

“So, much like West Africa, it will rage for a period of time,” Kelly said.

This is a particularly possible scenario if the disease gets to Haiti or Central America, he said. If the disease gets to countries like Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador, it will cause a panic and people will flee the region, the general said.

“If it breaks out, it’s literally, ‘Katie bar the door,’ and there will be mass migration into the United States,” Kelly said. “They will run away from Ebola, or if they suspect they are infected, they will try to get to the United States for treatment.”

Also, transnational criminal networks smuggle people and those people can be carrying Ebola, the general said. Kelly spoke of visiting the border of Costa Rica and Nicaragua with U.S. embassy personnel. At that time, a group of men “were waiting in line to pass into Nicaragua and then on their way north,” he recalled.

“The embassy person walked over and asked who they were and they told him they were from Liberia and they had been on the road about a week,” Kelly continued. “They met up with the network in Trinidad and now they were on their way to the United States -- illegally, of course.”

Those men, he said, “could have made it to New York City and still be within the incubation period for Ebola.”

Kelly said his command is in close contact with U.S. Africa Command to see what works and what does not as it prepares for a possible outbreak in the area of operations.

Many thanks to General Kelly for saying out loud what many people with common sense are thinking. It'll be interesting to see what happens to his career trajectory after the obama administration realizes he is not parroting the party line.

And if the possibility of 'innocent' infected people flooding across our border isn't bad enough, there's the possibility of deliberate acts of bio-terrorism.

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria terrorists may use “carriers” to spread the Ebola virus as part of a low-tech biological terror tactic, according to national security and health experts.

Capt. Al Shimkus, a retired professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, told Forbes that ISIS/ISIL fanatics may infect themselves with the Ebola virus to use it as a suicide bio-weapon against the West. Shimkus says that the Islamic State terrorists wouldn’t even have to “isolate” the virus, but instead could send a few operatives into an Ebola outbreak region and intentionally expose themselves to the rampant virus.

Several experts say this is a “plausible theory,” because ISIS fighters could contract the virus and then openly travel to Western countries to spread Ebola as part of a suicide mission...

“In some ways it’s a plausible theory – IS fighters believe in suicide and this is a potential job for a suicide mission,” Professor Anthony Glees, the Director at Buckingham University’s Center for Security and Intelligence Studies, told Forbes. “They are sufficiently murderous and well-informed to consider it, and they know that we’ve been remiss in the UK.”

In May 2013, Amanda Teckman, author of the paper “The Bioterrorist Threat of Ebola in East Africa and Implications For Global Health and Security,” wrote that “The threat of an Ebola bioterrorist attack in East Africa is a global health and security concern, and should not be ignored.”

Rest assured, though, that American workers will rally to protect us from such threats ... or maybe not.

Airplane cabin cleaning crews at New York’s LaGuardia International Airport began a 24-hour strike on Wednesday, citing, in part, possible exposure to the Ebola virus.

 Around 200 Air Serv employees who work on domestic flights to LaGuardia began their strike on Wednesday evening. The group is seeking to unionize, and they said health and safety issues on the job - including exposure to blood, feces, and vomit without protective gear - are the main reasons. They are also concerned about possible exposure to the Ebola virus, which claimed its first victim in the United States on Wednesday.

“The whole country is shivering, worried about the problems of Ebola,” said Hector Figueroa, President of 32BJ Service Employees International Union, according to CBS New York.

“Airport workers are on the front line of protecting the public, to protect the public we have to protect the workers.”

Cabin cleaners per plane at LaGuardia have been reduced by up to half, and the time to clean planes has been cut down to as little as five minutes, workers said, as reported by CBS New York.

Sigh ... back to Granddad's remedy for everything...

I Wouldn't Wish This On A Dog

True to its past record of taking swift and decisive measures in times of crisis, the obama administration has sprung into action in addressing the potential Ebola outbreak in the United States.

Customs and Border Protection -- the agency charged with safeguarding U.S. borders and airports -- will take the lead in the new effort. Its officers will escort travelers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to a separate area then ask them questions about their health and possible exposure to Ebola.

A non-contact thermometer, placed over their forehead, will be used to take the travelers' temperature. A fever is one of the symptoms of Ebola.

If there are any red flags, such as the person has a high temperature or there's something on health questionnaire that suggests they might have been exposed to the virus, the traveler will then be evaluated by a CDC public health officer on site.

Oh great. The same government that can't build a functioning healthcare web site, that can't protect our consulates, that can't secure our borders, will now protect us from further Ebola contamination by asking people how they feel (how would you feel after a transcontinental flight?) and taking their temperature.

I feel safer already.

In related news:

Madrid (CNN) -- Teresa Romero Ramos sought out help three times.

Finally, one week after first seeing a doctor, Romero found out why she felt so sick: She had Ebola.

Even after her Ebola test came back positive at Madrid's Alcorcon hospital, Romero had to wait.

According to a worker at that hospital, Romero lay in the emergency room -- exposed to other patients as well as medical staff, going back and forth -- for eight hours before being transferred to a hospital in the Spanish capital that specializes in infectious diseases.

She is the first person to contract the deadly virus outside Africa.

That Romero may have gotten Ebola while doing her job is a major cause of concern, especially if she did -- as she told Spanish newspaper El Mundo -- follow the necessary protocols while caring for the missionary.

As she battles the deadly virus, Romero has company.

Five others related to her case were also at Carlos III hospital as of late Wednesday, including two doctors and a male nurse admitted earlier in the day, Carlos III hospital said in a press release.

The nurse's assistant is the only one confirmed to have Ebola. Besides the three new cases, the others include the woman's husband, judged to be at high risk of infection, and a nurse from the same hospital.

Already, there's one victim in this case: Romero and her husband's dog, Excalibur.

It's not known if Ebola can be passed through canines. The WHO has said, though, that it's infected chimpanzees, gorillas, fruit bats, monkeys, forest antelope and porcupines. Yet human infections, to date, have not been linked to dogs.

Nonetheless, health authorities felt they had to take action in case Excalibur had the disease ... Madrid health authorities put down the dog Wednesday.

So the Spanish government acted quickly to kill a dog, when there is no evidence that the virus can be transmitted by canines. Yet that same government - and ours - refuses to restrict or quarantine humans traveling from the infected regions.

Excuse me. I feel the need for a shot or two of 'preventive medicine'...

Our Fate Is In The Stars

Bill and Hillary are now the proud grandparents of Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky.

However, with all the attention being given to the First Grandparents, the husband/father's parents have been overshadowed. But a little research makes one wonder if the union of Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky was a marriage or a merger.

Even before Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky headed home from the hospital on Monday, we had seen the first photos of her with her “over the moon” new grandparents, Bill and Hillary Clinton. But where were the machatonim?

In case you’re wondering, machatonim is a Yiddish word that describes a relationship for which there is no equivalent word in English: the parents of your child’s spouse. And in the case of the Clintons, the machatonim are two longtime friends and allies: Marjorie Margolies and Edward Mezvinsky.

Marjorie is a women’s rights activist and former Congresswoman from Pennsylvania who served a momentous single term in 1993-95 after her deciding vote for the Clinton budget cost her her seat. She ran but lost in the Democratic primary this spring, despite vigorous support from both Clintons. Her former husband, Edward Mezvinsky, served two terms in Congress from Iowa — but also served five years in prison after being convicted of fraud in 2001. They were divorced in 2007.

The poor kid has a convicted felon on her father's side and two people who should be convicted felons on her mother's. Let us hope that little apple Charlotte falls very, very far from those particular trees. However, initial omens are not promising.

Baby Charlotte’s natal horoscope shows influences from her grandfather, Bill Clinton, her grandmother, Hillary, her mother, Chelsea and father, Marc Mezvinsky ... Baby Charlotte will grow very close to her grandfather, Bill Clinton, where she will get many practical tips on life and career. She will come to him often to discuss plans and ideas and they will have fun together. She will feel the most emotional closeness and joy from her mother, Chelsea, (a water sign Pisces with Scorpio rising), and grandmother (a Scorpio) because this baby’s natal moon is in Scorpio.

The baby has Mars in Sagittarius ... this is the sign of her father, Marc Mezvinsky, so she will have lots of interactions with him—he will be a source of energy and intellectual debate. Sagittarius is a fire sign, and Charlotte is an air sign, elements that go well together. Mars holds a special place in the baby’s chart, but when overly activated by other transiting planets, Mars does also rule strife, so at times she might not agree with her father, and they will have some spirited debates. She will go to him for mental stimulation, but as said, to be comforted and to feel emotionally secure, she will go to her nurturing water sign Pisces mother or water sign Scorpio grandmother Hillary.

Baby Charlotte has the sun in Libra, the sign that her grandfather, Bill Clinton, has rising. (Bill Clinton also has many planets in Libra, known to bestow charm and intelligence—Jupiter, Venus, Neptune and Mars. This is another reason why Bill Clinton will have such a strong bond with baby Charlotte.) With a grandmother who has been Secretary of State and a grandfather who was a former President, this baby comes from political royalty, and surely family highly skilled in the art of compromise. Indeed, baby Charlotte will grow up to be a master at give and take, and will always search for—and find—the right answer to any delicate question.  This baby could make a skilled politician someday because she would create a win-win situation for both sides, a talent many hope to achieve and few can muster.

There you have it. According to noted astrologer Susan Miller, we'll be stuck with another generation of Clintons.

God help us...

We're Number One!

Sometimes blogging can be a little frustrating. Take today's post, for example. I was all set to comment on this story.

Feds Wonder Why Fat Girls Can’t Get Dates

The federal government is spending nearly a half a million dollars to find out why obese teenage girls have a hard time getting dates.

Probably for the same reason obese teenage boys have a hard time getting dates. To you and me the answer may be self-evident, but apparently not to the feds.

Anyway, as I was out running errands I listened to Sean Hannity. He spent quite a bit of time talking about it. So I had to find something new and fresh. Fortunately, there's a local-boy-makes-good story that I think you'll find interesting. But first, let me set the stage.

This has not been a good year for Texas football. On the college scene, the Longhorns and Aggies both lost this weekend (Baylor and TCU won ... yawn...). In the NFL, the Houston Texans are stumbling along towards another mediocre season, while the Dallas Cowboys are playing way above their heads. They've won just enough games to set their fans up for another heartbreak at the end of the season. Just when all seemed lost, Jason Hurta of nearby New Braunfels stepped up and won a national championship for the Great State of Texas.

Add another name to the roster of Texas sports champions. Jason Hurta recently won the national Masskrugstemmen championship in New York's Central Park with a U.S. record time of 14 minutes, 2 seconds.

Never heard of Masskrugstemmen? In German it translates, essentially, into “beer-stein holding.” So a Masskrugstemmen is a contest to determine who can hold a liter of beer with an outstretched arm the longest.

Simple, nein?

The Masskrugstemmen is one of a number of events popularly associated with Oktoberfest, the two-week festival of beer, music and sausage that originated in Munich, Germany, where it's held each year from late September to early October.

This part of the state was settled by Germans in the mid-1800s. We still carry on a number of German traditions, including Oktoberfest.

The rules are pretty simple. Contestants must hold the handle of a beer-filled stein with their arm straight and parallel to the ground. Any spillage results in immediate disqualification. Last man or woman standing wins.

Jason Hurta of New Braunfels is the national champion of Masskrugstemmen, a German sport in which contestants hold with extended arm a 1-liter stein filled with beer for as long as possible. (Photo credit San Antonio Express-News)

Hurta said the heavy glass stein filled with beer weighs about 5 pounds, which doesn't sound like much until you've been holding it for more than a few minutes.

“I'd never even heard of a Masskrugstemmen until I saw a postcard promoting the event at the Friesenhaus restaurant in New Braunfels,” said the 40-year-old financial planner.

Almost on a whim, he decided to enter ... He also figured the $20 entry fee was worth it because, even if he lost, he'd get to keep the heavy glass mug and drink the liter of beer.

He held the stein for 4 minutes, 15 seconds, good enough to win.

Hurta spent much of the summer training for the finals. Instead of a 5-pound weight, he'd hold 10 pounds. And instead of using only dumbbells, he'd occasionally hoist a glass stein like the one used in competition.

“You've got to hold the handle, not the stein itself, so I wanted to get used to doing that,” he said.

His work paid off, and during the New Braunfels finals, he smoked the competition, holding his stein for 10 minutes, 10 seconds.

He continued to train and, by the time he arrived in New York, he was able to hold out more than 12 minutes.

There were 13 competitors and about 3,000 people in the audience for the finals, held as part of the city's Steuben Day festivities. Hurta said he was surprised when all but he and another guy, representing the Bierhaus in New York City, had dropped out after only about 8 minutes.

The announcer had fun playing the Texas versus New York angle as the two passed the 9-minute mark, then 10 minutes, 11, 12. The crowd roared when they broke the national record of 12:24. Finally, at 13:46 the other guy folded, dropping his stein to the table. Hurta continued on for several more seconds, dropping his stein and roaring with happiness at the 14:02 mark.

For his efforts, he wins an all-expenses-paid trip for two to Munich.

Good for Jason, but it begs the question of why hold a stein of beer at arm's length for almost 15 minutes when instead you could be drinking it.

Besides, the true Masskrugstemmen masters would scoff at only holding one...

FOD 2014.10.06 - Michelle Edition

barry is inept and incompetent. michelle is petty and vindictive. What a combination. How did they ever find each other? How did they ever end up occupying the White House?

Anyway, michelle is in a snit and refusing to 'help' democrats running for the U.S. Senate.

Michelle Obama mad at Democrat Senate candidates and refuses to campaign

In spite of First Lady Michelle Obama’s popularity...

Okay, I have to interrupt here. Who says she's popular? No one I know can stand her. The only woman who is more despised by the folks I know is hillary ... and maybe 'Hanoi Jane' Fonda.

Back to the story...

... she has been absent from the Democratic senate candidates’ campaign trails for the most part. While part of the reason, according to the New York Times on Sunday, is that the First Lady claims to hate to be away from her daughters, it is also suggested that there are other reasons for her absence. There are those that suggest that any mention of the name Obama is not wanted by some of the candidates – as President Barack Obama’s latest job approval rating has dropped to an incredibly low 38 percent.

That makes sense. These days barry is about as toxic as Ebola.

The other reason being thrown about is the notion that Michelle Obama is mad at many of the Democratic senate candidates. The reason she is allegedly ticked off at many Democrats is because they aren’t playing into her nutrition initiative. Mrs. Obama’s initiative has to do with nutrition - and stomping out childhood obesity – which all plays into her extremely unpopular public school lunch menus. Since last school year, according to the Washington Post, Mrs. Obama has found a great deal of discontent among school districts throughout the country in regard to her program's negative impact on student lunches and snacks.

Stomping out childhood obesity is good. Forcing kids to eat what you think they should - and taking that decision out of the hands of parents and local schools - is not.

While the First Lady has shown up recently to support some governor-hopefuls on the Democratic side, she has been hard to find rallying for the senate candidates. According to the Daily Caller, Mrs. Obama is frustrated with the current Democrats in the U.S. Senate because they aren’t behind the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.” The Act is Mrs. Obama’s signature issue, according to the report...

Mrs. Obama is also said to be extremely upset with approximately 10 Democrats from states where potatoes are a big part of the state’s economy. Some of the Democrats - where potatoes equate to big business and money in certain states – have hooked up with Republicans. They have joined Republicans to fight against the Obama administration’s effort to ban white potatoes from the list of foods which the WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program assistance recipients can purchase with federal funds.

Seriously?!? She wants to forbid people on food stamps from buying potatoes? If she's gonna do that, I have a whole list of things WIC recipients should be forbidden to purchase. In fact, it might be easier just to list the things they should be allowed to get.

ground beef
whole chickens
fresh produce
frozen or canned veggies and fruits
soup
bread
flour
sugar
coffee
milk
rice
beans

If they want anything else they can get a job and buy it.

Some persons close to the situation regarding Michelle Obama’s reluctance to campaign have tried to subdue the negative claims surrounding the situation. They say that, besides the First Lady wanting to spend more time with her daughters, she doesn’t like the toxicity of politics – for lack of a better term. Many doubt this claim because she seems to be quite “at home” and even in her glory when she’s at a podium spewing her political views before the masses.

The bottom line is that Mrs. Obama is not very visible in this election cycle - as former First Lady Hillary Clinton was very visible in 1998 when the Democrats had a similar uphill battle. The reasons for her absence are likely a combination of reasons. Granted, she probably does want to spend more time with her family. Yet, she is most likely also holding a grudge against the Democratic politicians who are not supporting her health initiatives - which have enough friction without the Democrats joining in with the hate. Of course, it is also very easy to believe that some of the Democratic candidates don’t want the public reminded of the name “Obama” with the president’s current job approval rating in the tank.

The bottom line is that she's petty, vindictive, and lazy. She's also unwanted by democrat candidates who are trying to put as much distance between the obama name and themselves as possible.

Who can blame them?

FOD 2014.10.06

As I was reading the following story I found myself nodding my head in agreement and muttering "Right on, brother" under my breath.

After I finished reading it, I noticed the by-line. It was written by Piers Morgan, British 'journalist,' failed CNN talk show host, and general all-around progressive twit.

If obama has lost the likes of Morgan, he doesn't have much left in the way of supporters.

The real scandal is a President who is so complacent about protecting Americans

President Obama this week committed professional suicide.

Let me explain.

There is a theory in politics that once a leader has fired 50 or more people from his or her administration, he or she is finished.

The reason being that by creating so many enemies ‘outside the tent’, the tent itself becomes too deluged with poisonous bile to avoid sinking into a quagmire of back-stabbing ignominy.

Obama went a lot further than firing 50 people.

He managed to single-handedly alienate 200,000 employees in the American intelligence agencies by going on 60 Minutes and ruthlessly chucking them all under a bus over the rise of terror group ISIS.

"James Clapper (Director of National Intelligence) has acknowledged that they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria," he said, when asked how ISIS’ influence could have spread so fast.

As Governor Chris Christie pointed out, by saying ‘they’ rather than ‘we’, Obama tried to distance himself from any personal responsibility or accountability for what has been a catastrophic failure to act over the greatest terror threat facing the world since Osama Bin Laden.

A more shameless, reprehensible display of buck-passing it would be hard to find from a sitting President.

And for what purpose?

All that will happen now is that those maligned intelligence agencies will exact cold-blooded revenge on Obama by drip-feeding negative stories about him until he’s gone.

It’s what they do.

The truth is that Obama is the one who underestimated ISIS, plunging his head ostrich-like into the sand and hoping they would go away without having to do anything to actually make them go away.

There were clear, unambiguous public warnings made nearly a year ago in front of the Foreign Affairs Committee that ISIS was on the march in Syria and Iraq.

But perhaps Obama missed them.

Hardly surprising when we discover yesterday that he has only attended 42.1 percent of his Presidential Daily intelligence briefings.

Obama prides himself on a ‘leading from behind’ American strategy to confronting global terrorism and the current chaos raging throughout the Middle East.

But refusing to intervene in conflicts like Syria has so far proved to be spectacularly self-defeating.

Far from making America stronger, Obama has made the world’s greatest military power look weak.

So weak that these Jihadist thugs think they can behead American citizens with impunity in glossy snuff movies.

Imagine how emboldened they must have felt when Obama made his ‘heartfelt’ speech about journalist James Foley’s execution, and was then seen laughing and joking on the golf course SEVEN MINUTES later.

Obama has so far played golf 192 times since becoming President.

Even Rory McIlroy would struggle to match such enthusiasm for the game.

But Rory isn’t the Leader of the Free World, and with such a title comes huge responsibility.

The kind of responsibility that Obama seems so keen to shirk.

It’s time he got off the damn golf course, got up to speed with his intelligence briefings and focused on wiping out ISIS.

Before they wipe out more of the people he serves.

President Obama playing golf at Farm Neck on Martha's Vineyard in August just minutes after his speech about journalist James Foley’s execution by ISIS

Sunday Funnies 2014.10.05

It's October, and baseball's postseason playoffs are in full swing. America's pastime...

A doctor at an insane asylum decided to take his patients to a baseball game.

For weeks in advance, he coached his patients to respond to his commands.

When the day of the game arrived, everything seemed to be going well. As the National Anthem started.......the doctor yelled, "Up Nuts" And the patients complied by standing up.

After the anthem ...he yelled, "Down Nuts". And they all sat back down in their seats.

After a home run was hit, the doctor yelled, "Cheer Nuts". They all brokeout into applause and cheered.

When the umpire made a particularly bad call against the star of the home team, the Doctor yelled, "Booooo Nuts!!!" and they all started booing and cat calling.

Thinking things were going very well. The doctor decided to go get a beer and a hot dog, leaving his assistant in charge.

When he returned, there was a riot in progress. Finding his assistant, the doctor asked," What in the world happened? "

The assistant replied, "Well, everything was going just fine till a vendor passed by and yelled PEANUTS!"

A recent Scottish immigrant attends his first baseball game in his new country and after a base hit he hears the fans roaring run....run! The next batter connects heavily with the ball and the Scotsman stands up and roars with the crowd in his thick accent: "R-r-run ya bahstard, r-run will ya!" A third batter slams a hit and again the Scotsman, obviously pleased with his knowledge of the game, screams "R-r-run ya bahstard, r-r-run will ya!" The next batter held his swing at three and two and as the ump calls a walk the Scotsman stands up yelling "R-r-run ya bahstard, r-r-run!" All the surrounding fans giggle quietly and he sits down confused.

A friendly fan, sensing his embarrassment whisper, "He doesn't have to run, he's got four balls." After this explanation the Scotsman stands up in disbelief and screams, "Walk with pr-r-ride man! Walk with pr-r-ride!!!!"

At our annual company picnic, the marketing department always played a game of softball with the accounting department.

This year the accounting department won. But on the company bulletin board the next morning was the following notice.

The Marketing Department. is proud to announce that upon the conclusion of this year's softball tournament, we finished in second place overall, having lost only one game the entire season.

We would also like to take this opportunity to offer our condolences to Accounting for finishing next to last, having won only one game during the entire year.

Note the college logo on the cap...

I'd Like This Gift Wrapped Please

What a cool story. The government finally did something right for a change.

A 30 Ton Gift

The U.S. Navy's oldest nuclear aircraft carrier has given a piece of itself to one of the younger carriers in the fleet.

Huntington Ingalls Newport News Shipbuilding said this week that its workers had transferred an anchor from the USS Enterprise (CVN-65), the Navy's first and oldest nuclear carrier, to the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), a Nimitz-class carrier launched in 1988.

The Enterprise, which was launched in 1960, was inactivated in 2012 and is scheduled to be decommissioned in 2016. Once its nuclear fuel and reactors are removed, it will be cut up for scrap. It has been at the Virginia shipyard for the de-fueling process.

The Lincoln is in the same shipyard for what is called a refueling and complex overhaul. "During this multi-year process, every inch of the carrier is updated or refurbished, including its two massive anchors," the shipyard said in a statement.

When it was found that one of the Lincoln's 30-ton anchors needed to be replaced (side note: Why did the anchor need to be replaced? How do you break or wear out a 30 ton hunk of metal? Anyway, back to the story.) crews turned to the Enterprise, which had an exact match that would have been headed to the scrap heap with the rest of the five-decade-old ship.

"With this anchor, both ships will be linked, and Lincoln will carry Enterprise's spirit as it returns to the fleet," Chris Miner, Newport News' vice president of in-service aircraft carrier programs, said in a statement.

That anchor move may assuage some Navy enthusiasts, who have pushed for a new Navy vessel to carry the name Enterprise once the current ship finally leaves the fleet. The carrier now docked in Newport News is the eighth American warship to carry the Enterprise name. The Naval Vessel Register, the service's official list of ships, shows the Enterprise name assigned to hull number CVN-80, a proposed aircraft carrier yet to be authorized or funded by Congress.

Sigh ... if there's one thing that's indispensable in our arsenal, it's aircraft carriers. One would hope that even our dysfunctional government could figure that out, and take action to ensure we have what we need to protect our national interests. Even Bill Clinton gets it.

"When word of a crisis breaks out in Washington, it's no accident that the first question that comes to everyone's lips is: 'Where's the nearest carrier?'"

President Bill Clinton
March 12, 1993
aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt  

And yet:

The Navy’s in a carrier crunch. US commanders around the world keep asking for carriers to cover trouble spots from Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan to the Western Pacific and the South China Sea, but the Navy doesn’t have enough to go around. And they may well lose another.

In recent years, amazingly, the Navy has managed to increase the number of aircraft carriers deployed overseas at any given time even as the total number of carriers in service decreased. But the price was high: extra-long deployments, stressed-out crews, and overworked ships requiring extensive and expensive unplanned maintenance...

“We currently are an 11-carrier navy in a 15-carrier world,” (Rep. Randy Forbes, chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on seapower) said, referring to repeated Navy studies that say only a fleet of 15 could meet global demand. But Forbes — a legislator — is citing the law, which requires an 11 carrier fleet: In fact, we’re down to 10.

Congress was told the drop to 10 aircraft carriers would be temporary. It was supposed to just require a waiver of the statutory requirement between the retirement of the 50-year-old USS Enterprise last December and the 2016 commissioning of the high-tech and high-cost USS Ford. But if the president’s fiscal year 2015 request actually does cut a carrier, and if Congress actually approves that cut, then we would never get back to 11.

Much more at the link. Interesting, if sobering, reading.

Friday Follies Happy Hour 2014.10.03

Something I've asked myself many times - "What was I thinking?"

Life Is So Unfair

Things like this never happened to me when I was in high school.

Teachers arrested for threesome with student

Two pretty blond English teachers allegedly gave a 16-year-old student a steamy private lesson in French — focusing on the phrase ménage à trois.

Rachel Respess, 24, took the teen back to her suburban New Orleans apartment on Sept. 12 and teamed up with fellow teacher Shelley Dufresne, 32, for an illicit three-way romp, cops charge.

Not surprisingly, the teen bragged about his exploits soon after he got back to classes at Destrehan HS, in Kenner, La. He told “other students that he was having a sexual relationship with teachers,” the St. Charles Parish sheriff’s office said.

Well duh. When I was his age I bragged extensively about my sexual exploits. Some of it was even true.

Students told local TV station WGNO that the trio had been fooling around for a while, and authorities are still investigating to find out just how long the alleged sexcapades lasted.

“No matter what sex the victim is, everyone should be outraged,” Kenner Police Chief Michael Glaser told the Times-Picayune. “You have an educator. Their responsibility is the safety and the education of children . . . They should have known better.”

Forget the moral implications and any harm or trauma that the young man might experience (like thinking threesomes with a couple of attractive blondes will be an ongoing part of his sexual future). The two teachers should be punished for being so stupid as to expect a teenage kid to keep his mouth shut.

Shelley Dufresne (left), 32, and 24-year-old Rachel Respess were arrested after allegedly having a threesome with a student. Photo: Kenner Police Department

Connect The Dots

News headlines:

Dallas Ebola shambles: Family try to break out of isolation at virus victim’s apartment as visitors come and go, up to 100 may be exposed and even cop cars are in quarantine

The response to the first Ebola case in the U.S. was in chaos today after it emerged that the exposed relatives of the contagious patient tried to break out of their apartment where the sweat-soaked, contaminated bedsheets and towels lay for days.

The patient's quarantined girlfriend Louise told CNN on Thursday that she had not been told what to do with the soiled linens used by Mr Duncan when he was ill and had not been given food.

The woman has been legally ordered to stay inside her Dallas apartment with her 13-year-old child and two nephews, who are both in their twenties, as they came in direct contact with Mr Duncan.

Among the 12 people being closely monitored were five children - who attend four area schools. Panic-stricken parents in the area pulled their kids out of classes after they received Ebola fact sheets and notes which said 'everything is fine'. Schools were also scrubbed down and extra nurses brought in to monitor any students with fevers or flu-like symptoms.

Up to 100 people in Texas are believed to have had contact with Ebola sufferer Thomas Eric Duncan since he developed symptoms of the deadly virus last Thursday at 10pm.

'The CDC is lying to us!': Doctor checks in at Atlanta airport in full protective gear to protest against disease center's handling of Ebola outbreak

A doctor checked in at Atlanta airport in protective goggles, gloves, boots and overalls in a bitter protest at the CDC for 'sugar-coating' the true scale of Ebola in the US.

It comes two days after a man in Texas became the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in an American hospital.

And today it emerged a patient in Honolulu, Hawaii, has been placed in isolation with suspected Ebola.

Can't blame this one on Bush. Here's the story behind the story:

Obama nixed Bush-era quarantine proposal

In 2010, the Obama administration withdrew updated quarantine regulations drafted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and proposed by the Bush administration. The new rules would have required air passengers to submit more information to airlines and strengthened the government’s authority to detain travelers suspected of carrying disease.

In proposing updated regulations, the CDC called them “critical to protecting Americans from dangerous diseases spread by travelers.”

Four years later, the quarantine rules have not been updated. Maybe now they will be.

Even more damning:

Did Barack Obama Allow Ebola Into the U.S.?

Britain and France stopped flights from African countries afflicted by the disease some time ago, but the Obama administration declined to do the same. Now the first confirmed ebola case is in Dallas, having recently arrived from Liberia...

If they can do it why on God's Green Earth can't we? Maybe the TSA should worry more about who is coming into this country instead of groping domestic travelers.

Friggin' perverts...

President Obama said it was “unlikely” that ebola would break out in the United States, but he was wrong. So, where do we go from here? The Hill reports that the Obama administration does not intend to impose travel restrictions, even after ebola arrived via airplane from West Africa:

The White House said Wednesday it will not impose travel restrictions or introduce new airport screenings to prevent additional cases of Ebola from entering the United States.

Spokesman Josh Earnest said that current anti-Ebola measures, which include screenings in West African airports and observation of passengers in the United States, will be sufficient to prevent the “wide spread” of the virus.

But they weren’t sufficient to prevent the first case from arriving in Dallas...

I used to think that the best insurance against a coup or assassination attempt on obama was Joe Biden. Now I'm not so sure. Even that buffoon would be an improvement over the SCOAMF currently befouling the Oval Office. (Note to the Secret Service, although I don't know why I'm worried about you incompetent hacks - this is sarcasm, not a statement of intent.)

No Parking

I realize there's a host of major issues going on right now - ISIS, Ebola, the impending midterm elections, and so on. But there's a few little issues bubbling up under the radar as well. To wit:

Since last autumn’s government shutdown, when “Barrycades” blocked visitors from entering National Park Service sites such as Yellowstone, but also open-space plazas such as the World War II Memorial in Washington, the NPS has gone from America’s most-loved federal agency to a place among the rest of the Everglades-type muck that is the national government.

Not content with that public relations fiasco, the NPS is embarking on a stealth campaign to raise fees at many of our public repeat public parks.

The National Park Service is proposing to boost entrance fees at 131 of the 401 public properties it manages.

“The proposed increases in park entrance fees will allow us to invest in the improvements necessary to provide the best possible park experience to our visitors,” said Park Service director Jon Jarvis in an Aug. 14 memo to regional directors urging them to foster public support for the first fee increase since 2008.

Notice the date of the memo (Aug. 14) which is just now coming to light. So much for 'the most transparent administration in history.'

I might have some sympathy for a fee increase, especially since the NPS has held fees level for the past six years, if not for a couple of things.

First, according to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), the NPS "spends $650 million a year administering a $2.6 billion budget." That's 25% of the total budget for administrative overhead, a ratio Coburn terms "outlandish."

I'm with you on that one, Tom.

Second, the NPS has a curious, to say the least, collection of parks. For example, there's the Eugene O’Neill National Historic Site near San Francisco. It averages less than 10 visitors per day. As Coburn notes, “With nine employees, the National Park Service often has more staff working the grounds, than daily visitors.”

On a larger scale:

Of the top 25 most visited National Parks in 2012, only 8 have been approved since 1970 – of the 25 least visited parks, 20 have been established since 1970.

That's a record of ineptness that spans multiple administrations.

Not to be outdone by the NPS, the U.S. Forest Service has come up with an innovative revenue-raising scheme.

According to a proposed update to U.S. Forest Service regulations, still photography or video taken in any of its 439 Federal Wilderness Areas is subject to permitting (costing up to $1,500) or you can face a $1,000 fine per photo.

A little-noticed USFS “interim rule” has been in place for four years, and is now being updated to include new restrictions on vaguely defined “commercial filming” in wilderness areas. The new regulation was set to go into effect at the end of October, but due to a recent social media and political uproar, the USFS has graciously allowed the public to comment on the regulation an extra month until December 3. You can post your opinions their website, but keep in mind, the USFS says it will merely “consider such input” but it “may not be implemented, and we wish for the public to understand that.”

According to the text of the regulation, the USFS requires a permit for any photography that “uses models, sets, or props that are not a part of the site’s natural or cultural resources.” So technically, if your mom in your hiking photo, she’s a model, and you owe USFS a thousand bucks. Want to take a picture of your backpack on top of a summit? Sorry, that’s a prop, fork over another grand.

If you want to follow the rules and get a permit, guess what, the Forest Service is able to approve what sort of message your photo or video will deliver. From the updated regulations, photo or video must have: “a primary objective of dissemination of information about the use and enjoyment of wilderness…”

Perhaps the initial reasoning behind the rule was to keep major Hollywood film crews from sneaking into a wilderness and clear-cutting a forest for the next Jurassic Park sequel without a permit. Except this scenario never actually happened, nor is anyone proposing it.

According to the Oregonian story that launched the current uproar, Forest Service Wilderness Director Liz Close “didn’t cite any real-life examples of why the policy is needed or what problems it’s addressing. She didn’t know whether any media outlets had applied for permits in the last four years.”

Politicians, including Oregon congressman Oregon Greg Walden and Montana’s Republican and Democratic party representatives, have publicly called out the Forest Service for “the implications this [rule] has for Americans’ First Amendment freedoms of speech and press.”

In response Forest Service agency chief Tom Tidwell claimed via a news release that the “Forest Service remains committed to the First Amendment,” and that the rules don’t apply to news coverage or recreational photography, and that the permits would “only” be $800. Despite Tidwell’s claims, Idaho Public Television was denied access to film on Forest Service lands for a prior project based on the regulation, and the text of the rules give no definition or distinction between recreational, commercial, or news photography or video.

When the discrepancy between Tidwell’s free speech claims and the actual wording of the regulation were brought up to him in an interview, he said: “This is an example of where we need to clarify.”

Don't these people have anything better to do than sit sround all day thinking up ridiculous schemes to interfere with people enjoying what are supposed to be our national parks and wilderness areas?

No need to answer. That was a rhetorical question...

Late Night Humor

A  Marine enters the Catholic Church confessional booth. He  tells the priest, "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. Last night, I beat the hell out of an  Obama supporter."

The  priest says, "My son, I'm here to forgive your  sins, not to discuss your community service."

But Wait - There's More!!!

Second person being monitored for Ebola

Health officials are closely monitoring a possible second Ebola patient who had close contact with the first person to be diagnosed in the U.S., the director of Dallas County's health department said Wednesday.

"Let me be real frank to the Dallas County residents: The fact that we have one confirmed case, there may be another case that is a close associate with this particular patient," he said. "So this is real. There should be a concern, but it's contained to the specific family members and close friends at this moment."

The director continued to assure residents that the public isn't at risk because health officials have the virus contained.

Yeah, right...

More to worry about - especially for those in the area with school-aged kids:

The patient, whose condition was upgraded to serious Wednesday, was in contact with several children before he was hospitalized and had been staying at a northeast Dallas apartment complex, health officials here said.

Each of those children have been kept home from school and are under precautionary monitoring, Thompson said.

The Dallas County school district officials said they are working closely with health officials.

Tip of the iceberg, folks...

Late Post - Plumbing Emergency

As if the Ebola, enterovirus, and tuberculous outbreaks around here weren't bad enough, we now have to deal with a plumbing problem.

Actually, it's not the plumbing that's the problem. Instead, one of the reverse osmosis filters that softens and conditions our water has sprung a leak. Unfortunately, this particular filter sits in a cabinet underneath the kitchen sink. The water from the leak flowed towards the back of the cabinet, away from the doors, so it took us about a week to discover it. I know it was a week, because the filters were serviced one week ago.

Needless to say, everything in the cabinet has a soggy bottom. Not a big deal, because we keep cleaning supplies down there, and most of them are in plastic bottles. The bigger issue is the warped wood base and back of the cabinet. I'm also a little concerned about mold growth down there, underneath the cabinet. The leak is not that big of a deal - probably just an o-ring that wasn't seated correctly. The bigger issue will be what the wood is like once it dries out.

There's no charge to fix the problem, but the filter company can't come back until Friday (unless we want to pay extra for an after-hours service call). There is a cutoff valve built into the system, so at least the leak is stopped for now.

Oh well, things could be worse...