Jim Rittenhouse's semidaily journal of news, commentary and reports
In Northern Ireland (and I’m sure my readers will correct me), the political system is way unrelated to the rest of UK politics – its own microcosm. You have a multiple divide in politics there – ethnic, religious, class, minority/majority issues, republican versus monarchist, and who smote who first and last. When you get these [...]
The local Sioux Falls paper notes that the voting percentage in the most recent school board election was 3.55% in an editorial asking for voting to be made easier by eliminating precinct voting in favor of at-large polling places scattered around the city. Personally, I think that’s more likely to confuse the heck out of [...]
A new book on the 2008 presidential season with lots of behind the scenes goodies has a lengthy excerpt bit on the New York magazine size, where John and Elizabeth Edwards get seriously toasted: entitled “Saint Elizabeth and the Ego Monster” if that gives you a heads-up. It’s pretty brutal. The line that kept coming [...]
The ninny right-wing libertarian who runs Whole Paycheck Foods is at it again, giving me more reasons not to shop there over his what-me-worry statements on global warming and evile-socialism stuff on health care.
As some of you may have sussed out, since November of 2007, I’ve been working 99% of the time out of my basement office…with a huge long line of doctor’s excuses, bases on either my non-healing foot wound, or my weak response to infections casing raging problems on and off. The office finally said that [...]
Screwups at Arlington National Cemetery have misplaced cremated ashes re-buried as ‘unknown soldier’ because they scooped out the urn when digging a hole at a gravesite. dumped the dirt in their landfill, and only later found out the dirt contained an urn with ashes….
“Sarah Palin is a great friend to the bowling industry and we’re so proud and honored to welcome her as our keynote speaker at International Bowl Expo 2010,” said Steven Johnson, executive director of the BPAA. A bowling columnist writes: Politicians don’t seem to give a hoot about championing the great sport of bowling and [...]
(taken from the teabagger protest in DC this weekend) Lesson #1: Anyone who is not a Republican is not a Marxist. Really. Lesson #2: The last Czar in Russia gave up the throne in 1917, and the Russian Communists took over Russia in 1918; I don’t think you understand that there were no Czars in [...]
I have been listening to enough rants, hate and nonsense in the last year and a half to last me a lifetime or more, and I’ve been more than fed up with it all. But I started realizing that this sort of crud is endemic; uninformed people who choke off their sources of information to [...]
There are now more contractors in Afghanistan than soldiers; just another part of the dumb practices that I’ve seen over and over again in the US government – all the way back to my mom’s job with the feds in meat and poultry procession oversight. When in doubt, contract it out, and claim that that’s [...]
Stupid thief of the day: Dayton, Ohio cops catch man outside barbeque joint, reeking of grease while the burglar alarm was going off (yes, I know the newspaper’s writers say wreaking; I can’t help the fall of journalistic standards) – he claimed he was dumpster diving for leftovers, but the cops found that he’d broken [...]
I am frequently dismayed by various Truthers out there who insist on a Grand Conspiracy theory of the universe; stories about how the moon landing was faked, the world is flat, that 9/11 was an inside job and how Obama is some kind of Manchurian candidate smuggled into the country as a very small baby [...]
I had to look up the meaning of hoon for this one (wild, stupid and reckless driver in a criminal sense) – 79 year old man doing 160 k in a 100k zone Best man claims he was raped by a stripper as part of the show at the bachelor party.
Big jump in the rates of teen cases of STDs and syphilis and teen pregnancies during the Bush administration, according to the CDC. A different sort of ‘don’t ask, and we won’t tell you’.
I don’t take my Kindle everywhere, but it has gotten a lot of use, especially when i know I’m going to have to sit and wait somewhere. (Like at the hospital.) Susan and Meredith have used it a little, as has my niece Kay and my mother-in-law, and it looks like we’re getting another Kindle [...]