Miscellaneous

Have a great day off everyone. I am trying to finish up some work before a cook out. That looks to be a wash out though with storms predicted all day.

Eagle
Originally uploaded by intoxination

This weekend was Ice Fest here in Hamilton Ohio. It is held every two years and it's amazing to see how people take a block of ice and carve it into something so neat. You can view some of the photos I took tonight on my flickr Ice Fest page.

The Hartford Courant has done an investigation into Best Buy regarding sales prices on their website. Here is what they found:

Many employees I talked with said they had no idea there is an internal site. But two employees at two different stores confirmed to me that there is an intranet site available only to employees.

One long-time employee showed me the intranet site Hammer and I had been led to believe was the bestbuy.com site.

The salesman told me it was a site that only employees could access because it contained confidential information as well

This is the most popular story on Digg right now and got me thinking about something that happened last year.

(sorry I have been very busy with work the past couple of days so there has been limited posting)

This video is hilarious. Olbermann showed part of it tonight, and the entire thing is on YouTube.

And I always hated the drivers here in Ohio when it snows. This makes me feel lucky.

Lake Superior State University has released their annual list of banished words and phrases. You know - those words that are over used. The list is available here for your viewing pleasure.

One phrase that didn't make the list, but should have is "Clinton did it". That has been the most over-used phrase for the past 6 years. It climaxed during the "Path to 9/11" fantasy film that aired on ABC. The voters showed they didn't buy that phrase last November, so it is now time for the right-wing pundits to retire that old phrase.

This is horrible.

You can read more here and here. They tased him a second time because he wouldn't stand up. Excuse me - after being shocked like that, you can't stand up. All of these officers should be charged with assault.

OK This is just hilarious.

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Bush's little grab of Angela Markel at the G-8 summit is getting some big attention. If you aren't aware of it yet, check out Crooks and Liars and AmericBlog for all the details.

As with all things like this, there does come some humor. I was checking out the actual German page that reported this story, and not speaking German, I had to resort to the use of Google Translate. One of the photo pages I decided to translate resulted in this:

Packing her from the rear. Now that sounds pretty damn dirty. Clinton now looks like a saint.

Well the funeral of Ken Lay visitors that could comprise the whose who of neo-cons:

More than 1,000 mourners gathered at First United Methodist Church, where Lay had been a member. They included friends, former Enron employees and erstwhile dignitaries, including former President George H.W. Bush, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and ex-Houston Mayor Bob Lanier, who collapsed just before the service began and was taken by ambulance to St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital.

I wonder why junior wasn't there? Guess he figured it would look bad if he showed up there, but refuse to show up at the funerals for any of our fallen soldiers.

The most irony came from Rev. William Lawson, pastor emeritus of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, when he said the following:

Lawson likened Lay to James Byrd, a black man who was dragged to death in a racially motivated murder near Jasper eight years ago.

"Ken Lay was neither black nor poor, as James Byrd was, but I'm angry because Ken was the victim of a lynching," said Lawson, who predicted that history will vindicate Lay.

His comments, met by hearty applause, referred to Lay's recent federal trial on fraud and conspiracy charges stemming from Enron's unraveling in 2001 and four charges of bank fraud. Lay had planned to appeal his conviction and was awaiting sentencing when he died.

Wow - so Lay was like a victim of racism? Amazing. I am sure all victims of racism also con thousands of people out of millions of dollars. This is how the radical Christian white makes themselves feel good, by comparing their notorious criminals and scum to victims of racism.

The important question remains though - was there actually a body in the coffin?

Now this really adds a new level of curiosity to the details surrounding Ken Lay's sudden death:

A British banker who was questioned by U.S. authorities in connection with the Enron scandal has been found dead, British media said Wednesday. The man's body was found Tuesday in a park in east London, but police declined to identify him.

The Royal Bank of Scotland, however, sent condolences to the family of Neil Coulbeck, one of the bank's senior employees who had been questioned by the FBI in the case of three British bankers facing Enron-related fraud charges. The British Broadcasting Corp. and other media outlets also identified the man as Coulbeck, 53.

Police would not immediately say how he died, but homicide officers were investigating — standard procedure on all suspicious deaths.

The FBI said it would not comment on any aspect of the case. A formal identification was expected Thursday, police said.

The do need to make sure that Lay is actually in that coffin and that he actually died of a massive heart attack, and that this is not some "made for Hollywood" style plot.

From CNN:

Enron founder Kenneth Lay died early Wednesday in Aspen, a family spokeswoman said. He was 64.

In a statement, spokeswoman Kelly Kimberly said, "The Lays have a very large family with whom they need to communicate, and out of respect for the family we will release further details at a later time."

In May, Lay was found guilty of nine counts of fraud and conspiracy related to the collapse of Enron, the company he founded that grew into the seventh largest company before it imploded after an accounting scandal.

This is not shocking at all. I can't wait to hear the cause of death. We all knew that he would never see the inside of a jail cell.

I hope your day is better then it is here. We are getting rained on and there is talk of severe thunderstorms this afternoon with winds up to 50mph and 3/4 inch sized hail.

With the bad weather it is a good time to reflect upon our nation - where it was and where it is. I was thinking last night that 230 years ago our forefathers were in a great fight. They were fighting for a new idea and to remove an occupying force from our nation who we would no long recognize as our leaders.

Here we are less than 2 1/2 centuries later and we are now an occupying force in another nation with their citizens trying to get us out. What has happened to our once great nation?

One part of the Declaration of Independence that always comes to mind when I think about our current state of the union is this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness

All men (and women) are created equal. It does not matter if you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, white, black, gay, lesbian, straight, etc. - we are all man or human kind. Our nation seems to have lost that core value. We are facing greater challenges today for man to be equal. We have a government that wants to stop gays and lesbians from marrying and a group of Republicans in the House of Representatives that has blocked the Voting Rights Act - one of the greatest pieces of legislation in our nation's short history.

These are horrible events, but so is the current economic state of our union. Our Republican lead government is working hard to widen the gap between social and economic classes. No longer is America the "land of opportunity". Recent studies have shown that people in Canada and even Great Britain, the nation we fought to dissolve our ties with, provide a greater opportunity to their lower class citizens than America.

We are also facing a time in which the Republicans that lead us wish to deny people their desires to come into our country. That is amazing that a nation built by immigrants would now fight to keep them out.

We do have hope however. In the coming months the election cycle will really kick into full drive and this November, we all have a chance to make a difference. We do not owe it only to ourselves to do this, but to those who fought and died 230 years ago to make this great nation. We owe it to America to put citizens in control of our government once again, who will treat America as the great gift she is and not rape and use her like the Republicans have.

Everyone please have a safe and happy holiday, for after today we have a long, rough road ahead. After today we start to fight to regain our independence as Americans and not as puppets of a controlling regime called the Republican Party. We fight once again to free ourselves from the reign of a King George. We have six months to do and we will be able to if we all put forth our best efforts.

After some hard computer snooping, I have uncovered a citizenship test completed by George W. Bush. Apparently he wanted to try the waters and see how hard it was for illegal immigrants to become U.S. citizens. The answers are interesting. The results appear below the fold.

This is so appropriate considering the times we are in and the holiday we are getting ready to celebrate. Via today's Washington Post:

I have been meaning to post this for some time now. It seems as though Larry the Cable Guy is not the man everyone makes him out to be. Comedian David Cross has posted a letter online that he wrote to Mr. Git-R-Done and it is very interesting:

It's me, David Cross. Recently I was shooting something for my friends at "Wonder Showzen" (the funniest, most subversive comedy on American T.V. at the moment) and when we were taking a break one of the guys on the show asked me if I had seen some article in something somewhere wherein you were interviewed to promote your new book "Please-Git-R-Done" (published by Crown Books $23.95 U.S.) and they asked about your devoting a chapter to slamming me and the "P.C. Left". Since I stopped following your career shortly after you stopped going on stage wearing a tool belt with cable wrapped around your neck (around your appearance at "Laffs 'n' Food" in Enid, Oklahoma Aug 23-26 1999?) I said I wasn't aware of the article. They went on to tell me that you said basically (and I am not quoting but paraphrasing their recall) that I could kiss your ass, that I've never been to one of your shows (true) and that I didn't know your audience (untrue).

SO, I went and got your book, "Gitting-R-Donned", and excitedly skimmed past the joke about that one time you farted and something farty happened, on past the thing about the fat girl who farted and finally found it, . Well, needless to say I farted. I farted up a fartstorm right there in the Flyin' J Travel Center. I fartingly bought the book and took it home with an excitement I haven't experienced since I got Bertha Chudfarter's Grandma drunk and she took her teeth out and blew me as I was finger banging her while wearing a Jesus sock puppet in the back of the boiler room at The Church of the Redeemer off I-20 (I don't care who you are, that's funny.)

Anyhoo, I got home and read the good parts. It seems that you were pissed off at Rolling Stone magazine, and I can understand why. You made some good points in your argument as well. I agree that there is an eliteism and bias in the press and too often a writer will include asides to show the readers how smart he or she is and how "above it" they are. But come on! Surely you can't be surprised, or worse, hurt or offended by this. You even say in the book that you knew what you were getting into (Rolling Stone being all "lefty" and whatnot). Certainly I'm not surprised that they took a ten minute phone conversation with me and chose to print only the most inflammatory paragraph within it. That's what they do.

You can read the rest of the letter here. It is rather long but very informative and funny. Also, I have included a rare clip of old Larry before he was Larry the Cable Guy. It just goes to show you the scam he has effectively pulled on rednecks around the country.

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