Greenwald’s Partner

Amidst all the outrageously outraged Outrage I must admit I’m a little confused. The Guardian has admitted that they paid for his ticket and travel expenses and he admits to carrying documents and other such stuff for Greenwald and others. The guy was clearly a mule for someone exposing classified information. Why wouldn’t he be stopped and searched?

“Person Of Interest”

Is filming near my office today.

I’m told it’s a tv show.

An Urgent Warning From The Department Of Really Urgent Stuff

Be Warned: Bad people are planning to do bad things.

You can and should be eternally grateful to Your Friendly Government for this information gathered at Great Cost for Your Benefit.

Gefiska Furska

…fishie chowder!

German fisherman catches world-record 515-pound Atlantic halibut

Marco Liebenow thought he hooked a submarine while fishing Norwegian waters; fish was so big it wouldn’t fit into the 19-foot boat

Bork, Bork, BORK!

Spam Of The Day

Kate Spade Outlet Online She coloured highly,and darted a glance of a most penetrating character first at Jeanie,and then at the Duke. Both sustained it unmoved; Jeanie from total unconsciousness of the offence she had given,and the Duke from his habitual composure. But in his heart he thought,My unlucky protegee has with this luckless answer shot dead,by a kind of chance-medley,her only hope of success.
If your Leddyship pleases,answered Jeanie,there are mony places besides Scotland where mothers are unkind to their ain flesh

InterWeb Spam: Where Kate Spade meets Sir Walter Scott.

You’re All Just Jealous

And you peons don’t understand “Smart Power”

As Egypt descends into chaos, President Obama is facing increasing criticism that an “incoherent” policy toward the country — much like U.S. policy toward Syria — is putting U.S. money and influence on the line without a clear end-game.

The Obama administration claims to be staying neutral in the violent confrontation between the military-backed government and Muslim Brotherhood supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi. More than 600 people have been killed so far across the country.

“America cannot determine the future of Egypt,” Obama said Thursday, in brief remarks from Martha’s Vineyard, where he’s vacationing, as he appealed for calm and condemned the violence.

Yet the administration is sending mixed signals. While the president directly spoke out against the military-backed government on Thursday — and canceled upcoming joint military exercises — the U.S. has refused to label Morsi’s ouster a coup. That means, under U.S. law, the administration can continue to send $1.5 billion in annual aid to the Egyptian government.

The One is just so smart that we can’t possibly understand the subtle nuances of his Divine Plan.

So shut up.

He Was Part of Probably THE SINGLE COOLEST Olympic Opening of All Time

…and he was a G-kinda guy.

But what a way to go. YEESH.

Daredevil who parachuted into 2012 Olympics dressed as James Bond was travelling at 124mph when he hit mountain ridge and died

Smart Power!

So how’s that Arab Spring working out these days?

For THOSE of You Confused By Vicious LIES of Job Hours Being Cut Due to ObamaCare, YOUR White House and President Peace Prize Have a Reassuring Message For the American Public

That is all, Believers.

Get the Signal, Kenneth?

“We’re boned”, I think it keeps repeating.

President Peace Prize wants to tap your cell phone bill for funds for his little give-aways (as if it weren’t already hefty enough).

We Can’t Wait … To Nominate Another Lobbyist

“John McCain can’t see or won’t acknowledge what’s obvious to all of us here today — that lobbyists aren’t just part of the system in Washington, they’re part of the problem.”
— Then-Sen. Barack Obama campaigning in Montana, May 19, 2008.

President Obama wants to place a new tax on your monthly cell phone bill to pay for his plan to put WiFi in more classrooms. And all he needs to do it is one more lobbyist in his administration.

Getting American consumers to cough up the billions needed for Obama’s “ConnectEd” initiative doesn’t depend on Congress or anything so tedious as winning bipartisan support. The president’s initiative instead rests squarely on his ability to push through the nomination of Tom Wheeler, a telecommunications lobbyist and Obama campaign bundler, to head the Federal Communications Commission.

The tax would seem a certainty, then, because Senate Democrats succeeded last month in cowing their Republican colleagues into abandoning the use of the filibuster on presidential nominations. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid succeeded in his “nuclear option” gambit and now even a lobbyist riding point on a new tax would seem to be a shoo-in for confirmation.

Tonight it BEGINS!

I LOVE the Robertsons! They totally quack me up.

Thou Shalt Not Mock Thy Puffed Up God

This is just incredibly appalling

The fallout from a Missouri rodeo clown’s mockery of President Obama continued as the Missouri State Fair said it will force all clowns to undergo sensitivity training and the head of the state rodeo-clown organization resigned.

The state fair commission voted Monday to ratify its decision to ban for life the clown in question who wore an Obama mask. The rodeo announcer and a second clown wearing a microphone asked whether the crowd wanted to see him get run down by a bull.

Liberty and Freedom of Speech are dying away.

He’s a GODDAMNED CLOWN.

And so was the guy wearing the mask.

Update: and there’s this

“They mentioned the president’s name, I don’t know, 100 times. It was sickening,” Beam told the AP. “It was feeling like some kind of Klan rally you’d see on TV.”

Yes, “like you’d see on TV”

Because in all likelihood you’d never see it in, you know, real life.

Where America Spanks

Where will I get those stocking-stuffers now?

Think of Sears, and chances are Craftsman tools and sturdy children’s clothing will come to mind. “Fifty Shades of Grey,” probably not so much.

But the venerable retail chain had been offering bondage accessories on its website via a third-party vendor, ranging from a “leather adjustable harness” ($34.39) to a “leather collar with O ring” ($19.99).

And now they’ve yanked them from the site.

The Computer Knows Better

So it changes the numbers

Xerox (XRX) is now saying that some of its scanners can alter numbers in documents, even at the highest resolution setting. It blames a software bug for which it does not yet have a fix. “We continue to work tirelessly and diligently to develop a software patch to address the problem,” the company said in an Aug. 11 statement.

…The problem came to light when German computer scientist David Kriesel scanned a construction plan on a Xerox machine and noticed that it changed numbers on some of the room measurements.

You’re not going to argue with HAL, are you?

Spam Of The Day

How interesting! I hope to have chickens someday, to try this automated mobile chicken coop of yours. I wonder if we have a chicken coop tour in our area?

Says It All About the Clown in Office

@iowahawkblog Not funny at all. pic.twitter.com/pUJXxqVrfu

— robert michaels (@rmsgeek) August 12, 2013

Apparently New York’s Mayor Has a Little Something to Crow About

Bueno newso! Los niños de Nuevo Yorko Cityo que sucko slightly lesso on los standardized testos then todos los othero niños en el statero!

— Miguel Bloombito (@ElBloombito) August 12, 2013

24 Years-O-Bliss

Happy Anniversary my Beloved Bride!

Daughter has offered to take us out to dinner tonight (provided I give her my credit card of course), which I think is exceptionally sweet on her part.

Who’s got it better than me?

The Parking Spot Review

As you know I was out of town for most of the week. I really didn’t feel like paying the $30+ per day to park at Newark, and I didn’t want my Bride to come and pick me up late Thursday night when I got home (especially if there were delays) so I decided to give The Parking Spot right across from EWR a try. They’re right there, cost only $9/day, and

As the leading near-airport parking company in the nation, The Parking Spot provides full service parking to 21 major airports in the U.S., with a total of 33 parking lots. When you reserve a space with The Parking Spot, you can expect more than cheap airport parking. You’re getting a superior airport parking experience. Our lots are spacious, fully-fenced, well lit, and open 24 hours a day 7 days a week. We offer: friendly shuttles every 5-7 minutes, earn free parking with The Spot Club, luggage assistance, complimentary newspaper & chilled bottled water.

What’s not to love? I’ve seen their vans zipping about the airport all the time, so I figured what the hey.

Well, you can get the measure of a company (and of people) not by how they do things right when things are running smoothly (heck that’s the easy stuff; as Jane Austen wrote “Everything nourishes that which is strong already.”) but rather by how they perform and act when things go really, really, reeeeeeally wrong.

I parked my car there on Monday afternoon. I had reserved a spot, pulled into the secure gated drop-off area, left the keys with the attendant and was soon on the shuttle bus; ten minutes later at most I was in the terminal and preparing to expose my inner-most secrets to TSA. So far so good.

Fast-forward to Thursday, sitting in the Las Vegas airport creatively whiling away the time while my flight was delayed 3 hours, making my eta back to Newark now 1am instead of 10pm, so I was glad I hadn’t drafted my poor Bride to come pick me up. She’d get to sleep!

So after a reasonably uneventful 5 hour flight we land around 1-ish, I walk off the plane and call them to send the minibus around. It shows up very quickly (yay!) and me and a couple of other folks hop aboard for the short drive to the lot. The nice fellow driving helps them with their luggage when we get there and the cars are all lined up and off they go.

Except me.

My car’s not there.

The manager comes up to me and very apologetically says to me “Oh Mr. Bingley, I’ve been waiting for you. I’m sorry your flight was so delayed, but um, well we seem to have lost your keys.”

Exsqueeze me?

You know, I’m a little tired and not focused terribly clearly here at this late/early hour, why by gum I almost thought I heard you just say you’ve LOST. MY. KEYS. ?!?!?!?!

My car keys, which also had my house keys and several other keys, as well as the all-important key id tags for various beer and wine clubs I belong to. Oh and the gym tag (what, you think this body was sculpted for free?).

Now I guess some folks would react to this sort of thing rather violently or emotionally but that’s really not my style; the deed was done, the milk was spilled and the coop had collapsed on the chickens. The big question, the only question that mattered was what do we do now.

The manager explained their system for tracking the keys (which is, after all, the core of their business) and, well, they knew which employee screwed up. In a nutshell, the keys are scanned in and out every time they are touched to move a car and this fellow simply grabbed a couple sets of keys to “save time” and dropped mine somewhere (in another car, on the ground) after he moved mine. As they say in The Hobbit “short cuts lead to long delays.” In this case my delay. The manager again was very polite and apologetic and offered to rent a car for me to get home or to have someone drive me home and I could come up the next day…strike that, later the same day because it was now 1:30am on Friday and get the car. I said no, drive me home, I will get my spare keys and come back with your employee and get my car now, I didn’t want to wait and who knows, if the gods were smiling perhaps the keys were dropped in my car and not someone else’s and are now god-knows-where.

So my poor Bride (so much for sleep!) gets a phone call from me at 1:30 (which is an hour when everyone just loves to have the phone ring) and I ask her to put the spare car key outside and leave the door open as I have no house keys now. We drive 45 minutes from the airport to Chez Bingley, I run in, drop off my bag, pick up the keys and run back out. Then 45 minutes back to the airport. The fellow who gave me a ride was a very nice fellow, btw.

Get there, open up the car, the manager and everyone is crossing their fingers that my original keys are in the car. Nope. Damn.

Now life has just gotten a lot more complicated and expensive. I talk to the manager and tell him that I am going to have to spend the next day getting new car keys and all the locks on the house changed and that I expect them to pay for it. He says “of course” and gives me the contact information for his supervisors and apologizes again. I get in and drive home, getting there at 3:30. Yay me.

After a few hours of sleep I get up and head out, going first to the locksmith to arrange for new locks (they came Saturday and installed them) and then to the dealership to get a new key and fob for the car (I sat there for an hour or so as they made/programmed them). During the day I got phone calls and emails from various managers at the Parking Spot assuring me that they would cover the charges and apologizing again for what happened. I will repeat again: every Parking Spot employee I had contact with was courteous and polite and promised to make it right (as much as they could).

So we shall see: tomorrow I’m emailing them the receipts for the roughly $700 I had to spend (I didn’t charge them for my time, but I’m giving that way) and their words will be put to the test. Key control is the core of their business and they messed it up. It happens occasionally and unfortunately this number came up for me last week and not Powerball. Based on all my interactions with them over the past few days I fully expect them to honor their commitments to me and I will keep y’all informed on how it goes.

Quite honestly, assuming they send me the check reasonably quickly I wouldn’t hesitate to use them again. Oh sure I’ll joke about it and annoy their employees by saying “now don’t lose my keys this time!” when I drop the car off but losing my keys aside they do a great job. Now I know that sounds kind of like saying “well aside from that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?” but seriously: they’re polite, inexpensive (in theory…) and close to the airport.

So the ball is in their court.

Stay tuned.

I Fully Endorse This Idea

In fact I suggested just this very thing to Fausta a few days ago

Spam Of The Day

sponsored by Oprah and the Swiss Tourism Office:

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the urine evaporates from a particular pregnancy test, in many
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Friday Night…

…is pulled pork lasagna night!

nommity nomnom.

She Never SAW It Coming

Your “Stupid Pet Trick and Bad Pun” for Friday.

Woman injured in sex toy mishap

The accident was reported to local fire and rescue personnel about 1:30 a.m. on March 7, from an address on Rogers Drive. The man who made the 911 call said he had placed a sex toy over a saber saw blade, and then used the power tool on his partner, but the blade cut through the plastic and injured the woman.

Some people should stick to regular tools.

The Fifth One So Far

Been at this airport bar for a few hours.

And my flight just got delayed 3 hours…

Yay.

Just doing my part to revive the economy.

So It’s the Middle of the Night: They Climb Through Your Window, Haul You Both Out of Bed and Shoot BOTH Your Dogs (Killing One),

…because someone IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD HAD A GUN and you had an overturned bucket beneath a window with what looked like a footprint on it.

No warrant, by the way ~ just a friendly drop-in visit.

Escambia County deputies climbed through the window of a Warrington couple’s home in search of a suspect, despite having no search warrant, and shot two dogs, one of which died.

Cristina Moses, 32, and her fiance, Travis Nicholas, 22, on Tuesday recounted what they said was a horrific scene that included one of about a half-dozen deputies shooting the dogs in the couple’s bedroom after awakening the couple at about 10:30 p.m. Saturday and dragging them to the hallway.

…A sheriff’s news release stated that deputies believed that a suspect in an armed disturbance earlier in the evening on the couple’s street, Flynn Drive near Corry Station, frequented the home where Moses and Nicholas lived.

Several witnesses reported a man toting a gun and threatening people during the evening, according to an incident report. One witness reported the man’s name as Travis.

Nicholas denied that he either had a gun or made any threats.

While checking the perimeter of the home, deputies found an upside-down bucket with a footprint on it beneath an open window, indicating a possible unlawful entry into the home, the release says.

“Repeated attempts were made to get someone to open the door, with no success,” the release states.

“Deputies entered the house through the open window in an effort to locate the suspect and to assure the safety of the occupants.”

…But the couple, who said they were sleeping in their bedroom with a closed door at the time, did not hear anything until their dogs began barking at the sound of the deputies.

“I opened the door and there were six police officers pointing guns at me and flashlights, saying ‘Show me your hands. Get on the ground,’ ” Moses said Tuesday.

In that neighborhood, I doubt ANYONE answers pounding on the door after dark, DUH ~ unless they’re armed.

On its face, THIS is pretty unforgivable and it’s just a MIRACLE one of those kids didn’t have a pistol, and try to use it protecting themselves from this home invasion. As for them killing your dogs, I am ABOUT UP TO MY EYEBALLS with that. Terrified our security people will have to call police or fire for a glitch and I lose Beau because of some p-word, shoot-the-puppy, adrenaline pumped, “in-fear-of-my-life” excuse.

According to the update in today’s paper, for the first time EVER, our Sheriff is still MUM.

Perhaps because his penchant for getting out in front of officer-involved ANYTHING might have bitten him in the the tookus JUST LAST WEEK, speaking of “in-fear-of-my-life“:

Unarmed Fla. man shot by deputies in driveway

PENSACOLA, Fla. — A pair of Florida Panhandle deputies shot and wounded an unarmed man in his driveway over the weekend.

Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said during a news conference Monday that two deputies responded to a 911 call about a possible burglary early Saturday morning and found Roy Middleton, 60, searching through the car. The deputies reported that they told Middleton to show his hands multiple times, but he eventually lunged out of the car and spun toward them. Fearing for their safety, the deputies opened fire, hitting Middleton in the leg.

…Middleton has said he was searching his mother’s Lincoln Town Car for a loose cigarette when the deputies approached. When he backed out of the vehicle, he had his car keys in his hand with a metal flashlight attached.

Middleton’s mother, 77-year-old Ceola Walker, had been sleeping but awoke to disturbance outside the home.

“I heard the shots,” Walker said. “(The deputies) told me to close the door and not come out. They called an ambulance for him.”

Middleton suffered broken bones in his left thigh that will require a metal rod. Walker expects her son to be out of the hospital later this week.

Family members told the Pensacola News-Journal (http://goo.gl/L2lfbV) that they’ve found 17 shell casings around the driveway, along with bullet holes in the car.

(There’s LOTS on THIS ugly, UGLY mess here.)