Who Are You?

So, apparently, “the world’s most high-profile climate change sceptic”, Bjørn Lomborg (WHO?!), has gone native and now feels that we need to spend $100 billion a year to reverse the changes of climate change or something along those lines.

How does he plan to find this dough? Taxes, of course!

So, we basically take some random dude, make him out to be some big shot and then claim that he’s now the biggest fan of the climate change industry. Doesn’t convince me one bit.

One of my favorite news stories from today is that of a bar in Marietta, Georgia, putting up the following sign:

Condoms Over Diapers, courtesy Fox Atlanta

The vast majority of single parent households in the U.S. and especially in Georgia (63%) are headed by black women. Most welfare single-parent households are also black. Black women, apparently, just don’t want to marry but want the kids anyway, presumably for the welfare hand-outs and the child support.

It is a tragedy that somebody has to put up a sign to this effect, but it is even more tragic that the message is true, even if it may be insensitive or even racist.

Courtesy, the brilliant writers at the Yuma Sun (maybe Arizonans are not that bad after all):

Mmmm, Tacos

There’s something I can’t stay silent on any longer.

But something totally inappropriate has been built on the site of something holy and sacred, and we are turning our backs on history to accommodate a minority.

When the Del Taco on Fourth Ave. went out of business, it struck everybody hard. Everybody was in shock. I remember as a community coming together and being closer than we ever were.

But that solidarity was short lived when a loan company — the very same type of industry that was responsible for Del Taco going out of business — opened in the abandoned Mexican food franchise.

I find it personally offensive that our economy was attacked by these places, and that we allow permits to be issued to allow these attackers to take over the remnants of places they have destroyed.

I know what the opponents are going to say — that the economic collapse wasn’t the fault of payday loan companies. That most financial institutions are good, and it’s just a small number of them that have corrupted the entire industry. That they are still Americans and should have the same rights all Americans enjoy.

But do they have to exercise those rights in the same building where the economic disaster hit home? Shouldn’t they be two blocks away or something out of a sign of respect?

Let us not forget how delicious tacos are and those responsible for taking it from us.

Being that it is Friday the 13th, an auspice ex diris that makes an appearance only once in a while, it can only be expected to issue lists of tGO’s favorite and worst 13 horror movies of all time. Mind you, not all of these movies are pure horror, as in the case of Zombieland or the Dr. Phibes series.

To begin with the favorite films:

1. The Exorcist (1973)
2. The Omen (1976)
3. Zombieland (2009)
4. Funny Games (1997)
5. The Birds (1963)
6. Alien (1979)
7. Fido (2006)
8. Psycho (1960)
9. Stygian (2000)
10. The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)
11. Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972)
12. Saw (2004)
13. Halloween (1978)

And the worst:

1. Leeches (2003)
2. The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1994)
3. The Lawnmower Man (1992)
4. Arachnia (2003)
5. Centipede! (2004)
6. Corpses (2004)
7. Dark Asylum (2001)
8. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
9. Queen of the Damned (2002)
10. Bride of Chucky (1998)
11. Midnight Movie (2008)
12. Open Water (2003)
13. Critters 3 (1991)

Enjoy the rest of your Friday the 13th!

Well, you may have to pay parking fees now. Those damn Brits!

Steven Slater, just another one of those rude, all-knowing, superiority-complex-laced flight attendants, quit his job with JetBlue with a dramatic exit from an airplane:

[he] allegedly cursed out an entire aircraft, grabbed a beer and then exited the plane by deploying the emergency slide

The Turd

In his own words:

I lost patience after a female passenger had an argument with another passenger and then opened the bin door hitting me on the head without apologizing, I got on the microphone and said, ‘To those of you [who] have shown dignity and respect these last twenty years, thanks for a great ride.’ I accessed the porthole pulled the door handle inflating the slide, took my baggage and slid down the slide and left.

His ex-wife doesn’t think he was rude. If cursing out the entire plane via PA system and then exiting the plane in an unsafe way, all the while there were at least a 100 passengers on the plane, doesn’t qualify as rude behavior, I cannot even begin to imagine what does. Smacking passengers in the face? Not that that hasn’t happened before.

His attorney is portraying the man as the victim. But, according to other passengers, HE WAS at fault and started the altercation in the first place:

Ms. Briskin [the alleged perpetrator] said the seemingly normal conversation turned unexpectedly nasty when Mr. Slater blurted out an expletive to the passenger.

Working class hero? Sure, a hero for people aiming to be rude with their customers.

I Be Queen

So, the Shirley Sherrod saga just goes on and on and on.

First, she made obviously racist comments by stating that she didn’t help Whitey with the full force of her position – I have listened to the entire speech and there’s no more context to it. That’s what she meant and that’s what she said. The White man can fend for himself as far as she’s concerned, or he can go blow a goat. The Portland Herald has some take on it, which I haven’t cared to read because what can liberals really add to the discussion?

Then, she was fired for making these comments, and rightfully so, which created a mighty shit-storm from all sides. There was so much going on that a whole new category of storm trackers could have surfaced.

And now she may be hired as the Head Black Woman of All America. Don’t think she doesn’t think she deserves it too.

In her latest statements to Good Morning America, she says:

I can’t say that the president is fully behind me, I would hope that he is… I would love to talk to him ..

He is not someone who has experienced what I have experienced through life, being a person of color. He might need to hear some of what I could say to him …

I don’t know if that would guide him in a way that he deals with others like me, but I at least would like to have the opportunity to talk to him about it.

Translation into English:

How dare that black man fire this beautiful black woman? I hope he be sorry. If I talk to him, I will whoop his black ass.

He does not know I be his mama. He be a high yellow, wannabe Whitey. He need to listen to this real black mama.

I will teach his black ass how to behave with real blacks. Wannabe whitey. Uncle Tom.

BP is Mocking Christians

BP has not yet been able to shut down the horrible oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico and what is that doing? It is shutting down churches!

Ergo, BP is anti-Christian and Tony Hayward is the anti-Christ.

Leave it to the comedian and he’ll come up with the strangest twist on any every day item. Legos, apparently:

… Legos fit together all kinds of ways: sideways, diagonally, one on top, three on the bottom or the other way around. There’s no limit to the ways they stick into each other. What message does that send to children?

The message is to mix up sex positions.

Those enviro-fascist pink-commies can go to hell. Conquest Vehicles of Toronto has created quite possibly the coolest SUV limo ever… presenting the Knight XV:

The Knight XV

It sells for a mere £ 323K or $ 489K and is quite a bit bigger than the Hummer H2.

Growl

You know you are a bad singer when random dogs start biting you…

Kobach: I Is Teaching

In a much welcomed and partly expected news (for me), the ACLU, alongwith the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the National Immigration Law Center, is set to challenge Arizona’s racist, anti-immigration law.

Kris Kobach, the alleged law professor who helped write the bill, claims:

…he took care to include an explicit ban on using “race, color or national origin” as the sole basis for stopping someone to ask for papers.

I suppose he expects the police officer/government official asking for the immigration papers will be endowed with special extra-sensory powers to determine the immigration status of his victim.

We have another idea for a new character on NBC’s Heroes: The Instantaneous Illegal Immigrant Detector Man!

Is This Acceptable?

The commonest rebuttal that liberals can present to any conservative ground-swelling consists of the race card or at best the class card. But, at times, their arguments do hold a semblance of the truth as in the recent Imagine if the Tea Party Were Black article by “anti-racist” Tim Wise.

Despite being cliched and repetitive, and writing with some obvious grammatical errors, Wise does highlight the one undeniable truth about the Tea Party Nation – it is overwhelmingly White, with only a few Blacks and Hispanics in its ranks.

While the issues that bring the teabaggers together transcend race and religion,  they have made it into a race-based movement with their actions and words.

Repeatedly creaming the N-word at a black congressmen during an official Tea Party protest can hardly be interpreted in any other way. Taunting gay congressmen is just as bad. Read on »

Mars - Nothing To See Here!

Yes, the purpose would be dump all these tools wanting us to go to Mars in the first place.

Unless we can find technology to colonize other planets and establish cost-effective means of inter-planetary travel and transportation, it’s a sheer waste of money going to Mars to plant a flag. Even that can be done by a drone.

Time to invent the warp drive – perhaps, President Obama can just will it to happen, as he has done with reducing our unemployment rate.

Consumer Reports has rated the latest 2010 Lexus GX 460 a  Don’t Buy: Safety Risk. The SUV has been selling for almost 3 months and Toyota has sold 5,000+ already.

The defect in the vehicle is rather basic and I find it hard to believe that Toyota could not have detected this issue during its own internal testing, and over the past 3 months of sales. It costs almost a billion dollars to develop and release a new model – is Toyota cutting corners and endangering us all?

The company has now halted sales – but, is it good enough?

This cartoon by a Dartmouth kid sums it up well:

What Did I Learn?

That’s the lesson learnt by this 72 year old woman who had a homeless man living in her shed. You just can’t trust drunk, heavily armed, perverted hobos, now can you?

God Help Us

US Airways and United Airlines, both universally regarded to be among the absolute worst airlines in the world by most measures, are in talks to merge.

Even the unions are opposed to a union. I suppose they realize you can’t have all the bad apples in one big bad basket.

United is bad:

• Travel+Leisure posits it as the second worst airlines, second only to American
• a simple Google search for “crappiest airlines” yields United as the number one result
• MSNBC/Portfolio has declared it to be the worst airlines ever

US Airways is just as bad:

• The Hotel Club rates it as the worse of the worst
• FlyerTalk is hardly any more charitable
• Consumer Reports ranked it as the absolute worst, even before its infamous disruptions in 2007

United and US are a match made in heaven.

So, this cop in Tempe thought picking up girls for free sex was part of the defined benefits program at the Tempe Police Department. Apparently not anymore.

The former President of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, spoke to a room full of ardent fans today at the Westin Bellevue. Much of his talk, just as his introduction by Kamran Salahuddin, dealt with the economic and social improvements in Pakistan during his tenure as President and with defending his record.

He started off by claiming that Pakistan brought down the Soviet Union by supporting the Taliban with American aid. The American abandonment of the region was the “great blunder” that led to the rise of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, which may be true, and also to the rise of religious radicalism in Pakistan. Musharraf decried religious extremism in his country, despite the reality that the Pakistan Muslim League, which was a conservative Muslim party, fully supported him and the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, the party of the Mullahs, provided outside support which helped keep him and the puppet PML government in power. Musharraf tried to temper his anti-extremism comments, however, by stressing that Pakistan was, is and will always remain an “Islamic Republic” in which no law shall contradict the Shariah. Read on »

So, it should come as no surprise that all the liberals posturing to be eco-friendly crusaders are, at the end of the day, selfish, lying, hypocritical bastards, especially Barbra Streisand who demands for every night:

120 freshly washed and folded bath-sized towels, ‘immediately upon arrival’ [at the hotel]

Radiohead lead singer Thom Yorke should be applauded for recognizing the reality:

It stresses me out, because I’m a hypocrite. As we all are

He is referring to the environmental impact of big rock festivals and global performance tours.

And, then there’s always Al Gore’s air conditioning bills.

The Aryan Nation has fallen on such hard times that it has resorted to recruiting blacks and hispanics. And I suppose it makes sense too in California where non-hispanic whites constitute only 42% of the population. The Aryan Nation, after all, is known for its shrewd recruitment policies.

Talking of comebacks, Tiger Woods is ready to make his own later this month. He has hired old Bushy Ari Fleischer for repairing his tattered public image.

Having mistresses is almost an American tradition with many a Presidents engaging in it, most recently LBJ (without any scandals) and WJC (with all the scandals in the world). Why not poor old Woods?

Jones with Shock

Sprinter Marion Jones, who was stripped of her Olympic gold and other medals because of doping, has been recruited by WNBA’s Tulsa Shock.

The Shock, which fled Detroit last year much like most of the city’s population, is still suffering from a lack of star power and hopes to strike gold with Jones.

Let’s hope they don’t keep a supply of “clear” nearby.

The server that hosts the Global Observatory has been under distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since around noon Monday, which explains why the site has either been down entirely or extremely slow over the past couple of days.

Last night, we undertook certain measures to mitigate the effects of the DDoS attacks, but the server is still under extreme strain. The site is presently up and running, but painfully slow at times. The last 2 articles were supposed to posted earlier yesterday but are only showing up today.

The next couple of days will show whether DDoS attacks have been circumvented by our current measures or if we have to do anything else.

Gotta Dodge This Viper

If you cared at all for the original Lake Placid, there’s a sequel going on right now in Maine. Some tool released his pet Gaboon viper on a trail in Maine. The viper is perhaps one of the most venomous snakes in the world, although not very aggressive.

Owning such a dangerous animal is already illegal in Maine. The guy who released the snake in a public place should be given first hand experience of its fangs and poison – that’ll teach him.

Fangs

Ackbar

The University of Mississippi, a tier-3 university according to U.S. News & World Report and not rising up, lost its old mascot, Colonel Reb, in 2006 when the administration discontinued it because of its perceived racist image.

Students at Ole Miss have now decided to recruit Admiral Ackbar to help them with their image issues. They have even set up a sophomoric website to support their cause.

Ackbar is a fictional character from Geoge Lucas’ renowned series and his most famous, and perhaps the only, lines in the Star Wars: Return of the Jedi were the following:

Lando Calrissian: Break off the attack! The shield is still up!
Wedge Antilles: I get no reading. Are you sure?
Lando Calrissian: Pull up! All craft, pull up!
Admiral Ackbar: Take evasive action! Green group, stick close to holding section MV-7!
Mon Calamari: Admiral! We have enemy ships in sector 47!
Admiral Ackbar: It’s a trap!

Apparently, he’s good at detecting traps. Perhaps the students want to warn prospies … Don’t enroll at Ole Mis, it’s a trap to take away your money and graduate you still uneducated!

Koua Fong Lee killed 3 and injured more in what was declared to be vehicular

Poor Fellow?

homicide in an accident in 2006 involving a Toyota Camry ‘96.

He has always proclaimed his innocence and has now seized upon the recent Toyota recall problems to further his case. Apparently, his victims also support him now.

Did you or someone you know killed someone with a Toyota? Hire a lawyer! You just might get the special Toyota edition Get Out of Jail Free card.

Not wanting to be left behind, GM is recalling its vehicles. Gotta be like the Japanese goes the thinking in Detroit. Chrysler up next?

Kern: He Looks Brutal

The jury in the case of plaintiff Michael Mineo found the police officers innocent of the sodomy charges, with a police baton no less, brought against them.

The officer accused of the crime, Richard Kern, has been accused of excessive force before. In 2007, the city settled with 2 men for $50,000.

In this case, a fellow cop, Kevin Maloney, went against his colleagues to testify that he saw Kern violate Mineo.

But the jury wasn’t allowed to take the first matter into consideration, despite the reality that Kern’s prior record of brutality has a direct connection with the case at hand. And, despite the fact that Maloney risked his career by snitching, the jury still acquitted Kern and his 2 accomplices.

No wonder, the American judicial system is considered a joke. On the one hand, convicted murderers are dying of old age on death row, and, on the other, brutal cops are getting away with anything they want.

Sometimes, Craigslist can be more than entertaining, as evidenced by this post:

Are you intimidated by winter driving? What the hell are you doing up here then? Do you know where you are? This isn’t the fucking jungle or desert.

You inevitably pull out in front of me when there’s no one behind me, and you could’ve waited another 15 seconds to not make anyone slam on their brakes on ice and snow. You then continue to drive really slow, say less than half the speed limit. No one in their right mind would pass someone on roads with a 2 ft snow drift in the median during a snow storm. So, I’m stuck behind you until you pull into whatever casino, bingo hall, party, or wherever you’re headed that’s OK be late to. Yes, I realize that driving on slippery roads and in low visibility can be scary, so I appreciate you driving within your limits. However, don’t pull out in front of a car when you know you’re not going to at least go the speed limit! Just wait another 30 seconds maybe (since you obviously aren’t in a hurry anyway), and you won’t ruin someone elses’ day. Also, when you see a line of cars 30-50 deep trapped behind you, you don’t have to speed up, no, but you SHOULD pull over to let some by. You’re obviously doing a really shitty job of setting the pace on this “not-safe-for-passing” road. Do us ALL a favor and let us get to our families, jobs, and real obligations, and pull the fuck over for fuck’s sake! It’s a common courtesy. If the shoulder has been replaced by a 14 ft wall of plowed snow (as we all know happens up here), find a decently plowed side road to pull on to for a minute. Don’t be surprised or offended when you get 25 middle fingers and 37 horns out of the 50 cars you fucked for the last hour and a half that are now passing you.

Here are some tips for you that will make both of our lives easier:

1. Your winter driving confidence will grow 10 fold if you get rid of that 1994 Buick front wheel drive and get something with all wheel drive. You don’t need a huge truck or SUV, but just something that actually gets some traction. Try a used Subaru. They’re all wheel drive, cheap, and fuel efficient.

2. Go practice in an empty parking lot, and see what exactly your limits are and those of your vehicle. You won’t get arrested for sliding around an empty parking lot Sunday evening outside of town.

3. You don’t want to give up your front wheel drive Buick? Get some snow tires! At least for the front two wheels, but better yet all of your wheels could use them. You will be amazed at what a good set of snow tires actually do for your driving and confidence. There’s a reason why they’re popular up here.

4. Wait until the last car passes before pulling on to the road. See above. Shit!

5. Stay the fuck home! Visibility to low? Too windy? Icy roads? Then don’t drive to the casino to lose another $200 bucks out of your $300 paycheck and jeopardize the roads for the rest of us. Stay home and watch game shows and beat your wife/husband/dog or whatever you sleep with at night.

6. Don’t like option #5? Take a cab! Believe it or not, these guys are good at winter driving. They do this for a living and they’re really quite nice people. Besides, the cab ride to the casino or bingo hall will only cost a fraction of what you’ll lose once you get there. Plus you save the embarrassment of getting flipped off by grandma in the Ford Expedition while passing you.

7. Move to the South. I bet you’d fit in there anyway. Not sure what their casino scene is like, but you’ll find some other unintelligent way to lose money. You can keep your Buick, too!

I realize the people who are actually the offenders are probably not going to read this, at least not many of them. First you have to get a computer. Then resist the urge to pawn it for casino money. If you know any of these assholes, tell them what you think about following them at 20 mph on Highway 41 or M28 for two goddamn hours. Thanks!

I’ll see you on the road!

Barack Obama seems to have abandoned another of his supporters’ pet issues – supporting nuclear power plants – by providing loan guarantees for the construction of 2 power plants in Georgia. Obama recognizes:

Make no mistake: whether it is nuclear energy, or solar or wind energy, if we fail to invest in these technologies today, we’ll be importing them tomorrow.

Interestingly though, the NYT almost immediately contradicted him by pointing out (was this an analysis piece or a news story, one wonders!):

But these reactors were designed by Westinghouse, a subsidiary of Toshiba, and many major components will be fabricated abroad. And nuclear power is of limited use in offsetting oil imports.

Although the U.S. is the world’s largest generator of nuclear power, nuclear reactors provide only 20% of electric output. If the U.S. wants to wean itself off coal, petroleum and natural gas in favor of a cleaner source of energy, nuclear power is the best bet.

At a recent speech by Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., at the University of California at Irvine “raucous protesters” disrupted the ambassador prompting the arrests of 11 students and a whole lot of ill will.

The first issue is the unacceptable behavior of the students. Disrupting anybody’s speech is just plain rude and completely unbecoming of students at a university such as UCI. At a community college, a high school or at any other venue, this kind of behavior could be expected, but not at a so-called top tier university. I have seen orderly protests, which include picketing outside the venue and asking intelligent, pointed questions that get the point across. But, screaming at the speaker during speech? Unacceptable! If this is the kind of students who attend UCI, the institution might as well be called the Community College of California at Irvine.

The second issue is the stupid lecture by the faculty member trying to shame the students into behaving properly. Hey, if they could be shamed at all, they wouldn’t be behaving like this. These protesters are hardly civilized individuals – they can’t be swayed by speeches. A better option would be to quietly walk them out while ignoring the whole matter. But, making those stupid statements over and over again only show the person’s idiocy. This guy hardly deserves tenure.

Thirdly, towards the end (at 5:23 into the video), we can observe a professor telling his students how they should either withdraw from his class or expect to fail their examinations. Excuse me? Behavior outside class, however unacceptable, cannot and should not determine how a student performs in class. The expression of political opinions, again however inappropriate, should never be a metric in examination results. This guy, as above, does not deserve tenure.

Finally, all of the protests, inside or out, were political expressions – free speech protected by the Constitution’s First Amendment. Arresting anybody for shouting slogans is illegal. The arrest of students is even worse, especially when the university administration is involved in the charges. Free speech on the UCI campus is highly restricted as it is. This incident doesn’t do anything to improve the university’s tarnished reputation.

UCI will never be a great university.

Seriously?

Viva Leroy Nash, a prisoner on death row, has died of natural causes. After spending almost $2.43 million on him at $90,000 per year, taxpayers didn’t even recover a cent of that money by meting out punishment commensurate to his crimes.

The man has been convicted of crimes numerous times, including armed robbery, shooting of a police officer and murder after he had escaped from prison the last time. If anyone deserves to be hanged, it was Nash.

Heck, what’s the point of death row if its worst inmates die of natural causes?

Either hang ‘em or release ‘em into regular prisons. $90,000 per year per death row inmate is too much of an expense on the tax-payers’ dime.