Sunday - October 16, 2005

Two Wrongs Don’t Make A Right

Take twenty four members of the so-called National Socialist Party in America (Nazis), put them in a protest march in Toledo, Ohio protesting black gangs who allegedly have been harassing neighborhoods ....

Emergency Declared After Anti-Nazi Riots
TOLEDO, Ohio (AP)

At least two dozen members of the National Socialist Movement, which calls itself “America’s Nazi Party,” had gathered at a city park to march under police protection. Organizers said they were demonstrating against black gangs they said were harassing white residents.

.... and then see what happens in the streets when the aforementioned black gangs decide to crash the party ....

A crowd protesting a white supremacists’ march Saturday turned violent, throwing baseball-sized rocks at police, vandalizing vehicles and stores, and setting fire to a neighborhood bar, authorities said.

The violence broke out about one-quarter of a mile away along the planned march route shortly before it was to begin. One group of men pounded on a convenience store, and others overturned vehicles. There was a report of a shooting but police hadn’t found a victim, Police Chief Mike Navarre said.

When the rioting began, [Mayor Jack] Ford tried to negotiate with those involved, but “they weren’t interested in that.” He said people in the crowd swore at him and wanted to know why he was protecting the Nazis.

They were mostly “gang members who had real or imagined grievances and took it as an opportunity to speak in their own way,” Ford said.

Is anyone really surprised? I don’t have any sympathy at all for either the Nazis or the black gangs. They both were doing exactly what they normally do ... the Nazis were stirring up trouble by pointing the finger of blame at the black gangs and the black gangs just obliged them by doing what they normally do - namely rioting, burning and looting. This is why I’m not a policeman. I would have been tempted to just gun down both groups and go home and call it a day ...

Go read the rest here ... and try to keep in mind that both sides were wrong and that doesn’t make it right ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/16/2005 at 07:57 AM   
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   Saturday - October 15, 2005

Behind Enemy Lines

It’s Saturday morning and I decided to do a little spy work behind enemy lines. No, I’m not talking about Democratic Underwear. I decided to go spy out the most evil bunch of critters in existence ... the World Socialist Web Site! Below is a small sample of the propaganda being spewed from the far, far Left. It is pretty much a self-parody and hilarious to read. Right, comrade?

Iraqis To Vote On Neo-colonial Constitution

The referendum today in Iraq on the draft constitution is a cynical and, for the Iraqi people, humiliating event. Far from an exercise in self-determination, it is the next stage in a US-crafted, but increasingly crisis-ridden process aimed at turning Iraq into an American client state in the Middle East.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others among the clique responsible for the illegal 2003 invasion will use today’s vote to justify their crimes with the claim that “democracy” is being realised in Iraq. In reality, even the date of the referendum was determined according to a schedule determined in Washington. For its own political purposes, the Bush administration insisted that a constitution be adopted this month so elections can be held in December and a government formed that advances US objectives.

The new regime in Baghdad will be bound to privatise Iraq’s oil industry and sign off on a status-of-forces agreement sanctioning long-term US military bases in the country. What is now Article 109 of the document declares that the oil and gas wealth of Iraq must be developed on the basis of “market principles” and in a manner that “encourages investment”. Article 24 dictates “the reform of the Iraqi economy in accordance with modern economic principles”, which encourage the “development of the private sector”.

The remainder of the constitution is riddled with absurdities and inconsistencies. Various clauses assert the rights of women and non-Muslim minorities, but Islam has the status of “official religion of the state” and no law can contradict the “established provisions of Islam”. Freedom of speech, of the press and of assembly, is given constitutional protection, but only in a “way that does not violate public order and morality”. The document prohibits arbitrary arrest, coerced confessions and imprisonment by foreign entities, yet the US-led occupation forces have thousands of Iraqis imprisoned without charges and will continue to do so, constitutional guarantees or not.

The mass of the Iraqi people has had no say in the document’s formulation. It was drawn up in sordid negotiations between the US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, the Kurdish nationalist parties that preside over an autonomous region in the north, and the Shiite fundamentalist parties that dominate the oil-rich southern provinces of Iraq. Large portions of the document were most likely written in the US embassy.

In return for their collaboration with its plans, the US has paid off the Kurdish and Shiite parties with a constitution that sanctions the establishment of federal “regions” in the areas they control. These regions will have considerable powers over oil revenues and the right to maintain their own “internal security forces”. The constitution establishes the mechanisms for the Kurdish region to be expanded to include the main oil-producing area in the north around the city of Kirkuk.

Go read the rest here. Try not to laugh too hard ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/15/2005 at 07:51 AM   
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   Friday - October 14, 2005

The Male Ego

Never underestimate the male ego. Especially if it belongs to a rich Russian oligarch who recently came into a lot of money with shady deals and crooked connections, in which case half-a-millions bucks will buy him a personalized statue with a huge penis and six testicles. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Every guy needs one of these statues in his living room as a conversation-starter, right ... ?

Russians Well Endowed In Art
(ANANOVA)

A sculptor is coining it in by making statues of wealthy Russian businessmen showing them with huge penises and six testicles. German artist Jonathan Meese makes sells his 500-kilo bronze statues of Russian oligarchs for about £350,000 each.

The artist said he decided to equip his creations with outrageously large phalluses and six testicles to emphasise virility. Russian newspaper Express Gazeta said already three of the country’s wealthiest citizens had spent hundreds of thousands on snapping up the artist’s works for private collections.

Mr Meese said: “One wealthy Russian told me he would like to purchase a statue to decorate the interior of his country house. “When I said that I wanted 500,000 euros for this work, the price did not trouble him at all. Russians have learnt to appreciate the arts.”

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/14/2005 at 02:08 PM   
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Advice For Kings

Here’s our advice to King Abdullah: I don’t know about that “driving” thing, Chief. I mean hey, look at all the really bad women drivers we have to put up with over here. I haven’t met a broad yet who could parallel park to save her life ... and don’t even ask one of those hare-brained dames to read a road map properly or know how to use a turn signal. Don’t even get me started on the lame-brained females applying makeup while they drive. Damn!

Next thing you know, they’ll start speaking before they are spoken to and insisting on the right to vote. Before you know it the ditzy broads will be lining up for bikini wax jobs, protesting for equal wages and just generally stinking up the whole joint. You’re much better off to lock the dames in the kitchen - keep ‘em barefoot and pregnant and you can’t go wrong.

_{-- the preceding message was brought to you by Male Chauvinist Pigs Anonymous (MCPA) .. the Skipper had nothing to do with it!}

Saudis: We May Eventually Let Women Drive
CAIRO, Egypt (AP)

The king of Saudi Arabia says women may eventually be allowed to drive in the kingdom. Saudi Arabia will fight the “madness” of Islamic terrorism for 30 years if necessary, but it will expand the rights of women and eventually allow them to drive, Saudi King Abdullah has told an American TV channel. In an interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters, the king denied assertions that his government finances schools that teach a fundamentalist philosophy of Islam which can lead to militancy.

Saudi Arabia “will fight the terrorists, and those who support them or condone their actions, for 10, 20 or 30 years if we have to, until we eliminate this scourge,” the king said, according to an ABC report of the interview which is due to be broadcast on Friday night. When asked why groups such as al-Qaida, the terror network led by the Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, had taken root in the kingdom, the king replied: “Madness and evil, it is the work of the devil.” Foreign observers and liberal Saudis have long contended that the way Islam is taught in Saudi schools encourages attitudes that may lead students to become terrorists later.

“For those who level these charges against us, I say provide us with the evidence that this is happening and we will deal with it,” the king said. “It is not logical or rational for us to be supporting it. “We have also regulated our charities and we have closed offices around the world, and we have withdrawn support for institutions that we found to be extremist,” he added. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, the kingdom took steps to prevent money collected by Islamic charities from being diverted to terrorist groups.

The kingdom was initially faulted for being slow to clamp down on militants and their financing, but it drastically stepped up its measures after al-Qaida-linked groups launched a series of terror attacks on Saudi soil in May 2003. Abdullah, who became king on the death of his half-brother Fahd in August, told ABC that he was committed to increasing the rights of Saudi women, who are currently not permitted to drive cars and who need a male relative’s permission to travel abroad or attend university. “I believe the day will come when women drive,” he said. “In fact, if you look at the areas in Saudi Arabia, the deserts and in the rural areas, you will find that women do drive.

Driving licenses for women “will require patience. In time, I believe it will be possible,” the king said in the ABC report, which was posted on the Internet. But when pressed on whether he would legalize female driving, Abdullah indicated Saudi men were too conservative for such a step any time soon. “I value and take care of my people as I would my eyes ... I respect my people,” he said.

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/14/2005 at 12:09 PM   
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   Thursday - October 13, 2005

Super-Duper FEMA Phone And More

Some people just never learn ....

Katrina Spawns Thousands of Fraud Cases
WASHINGTON (AP)

Hurricane Katrina has spawned a second big flood that is surging well beyond the Gulf Coast: thousands of cases and complaints alleging fraud. Seven weeks after the storm roared ashore, authorities around the country are amassing cases ranging from identity theft to scams by phony construction contractors to hotel price gouging. In Louisiana, dozens of victims have applied for benefits from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, only to find their personal identification information has been stolen and already used. In Texas, authorities say people falsely claiming to be refugees collected hundreds of dollars in emergency aid—sometimes going back two or three times each day.

And in Mississippi, authorities are on the lookout for a woman who was charging victims $50 to use her “super-duper FEMA phone”—which she said would let frustrated callers bypass busy signals on a direct hot line to the relief agency. “There are some real oddball cases,” said Mississippi Assistant Attorney General Grant Hedgepeth, who heads the state’s consumer protection office. Mississippi investigators have received more than 1,000 complaints—about hotel and gas price gouging, phony insurance adjuster scams, people posing as FEMA workers to collect victims’ personal information. The Red Cross is investigating more than 500 fraud cases, said spokeswoman Devorah Goldburg. And as of Thursday, the Justice Department had charged 34 people with various fraud crimes stemming from Katrina and Hurricane Rita.

An estimated 1.5 million people evacuated their homes in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama when Katrina hit the coast Aug. 29. Congress has approved $62 billion in disaster relief aid. The big payout, combined with the scattering of victims to nearly every state, created the potential for rampant fraud in Katrina’s aftermath, said Jeannette M. Adkins, executive director of the National Organization of Victim Assistance. Scam artists “can show up to disaster relief centers in almost every state and present themselves as victims, and have nothing to show for it,” Adkins said. “And people are handing out the money.” While the number of federal cases is still relatively small, officials say the prosecutions reflect a more aggressive effort by the government to curb fraud than there was after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The federal government prosecuted 13 people accused of fraudulently seeking aid from the September 11th Victims Compensation Fund and New York City, according to the Justice Department’s inspector general. Focused on preventing more terror attacks, the department left nearly all 9/11 fraud cases to local and state prosecutors. With Katrina, the federal government created an anti-fraud task force the week after the storm hit to curb con artists and contractors trying to cheat the system. The goal is to make sure that money from the relief effort “doesn’t end up in the pockets or wallets of defrauders,” said Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher, who heads the task force of investigators from 35 agencies.

Nearly all the federal cases target people posing as displaced hurricane victims. Some are charged with applying for FEMA and Red Cross aid using stolen identity information; others are accused of contriving tragic scenarios to blend in with victims who lost all documentation of their properties. Two people in Los Angeles are accused of posing as charity officials to collect money from trusting donors. A Miami-area man allegedly solicited donations though his Web site by promising to help evacuate children and critically ill patients from Louisiana. The bulk of the cases are surfacing at state and local levels. In Houston, local police arrested 54 people over a six-day period last month, accusing them of illegally collecting Red Cross benefits from a Baptist church.

“Some people were bold enough to come through three times a day,” said Houston Police Lt. Craig Williams, who estimated that up to 7,000 Katrina victims—and impostors—collected aid at the church daily. Victims were eligible for $360 individually, or $1,565 for a family of five—and “everybody was claiming they had five kids,” he said. Investigators for Louisiana’s attorney general are looking into more than 2,200 complaints about gas stations and hotels trying to take advantage of desperate families by raising prices, said spokeswoman Jennifer Cluck. In Mississippi, Hedgepeth said some hotel prices skyrocketed from nightly rates of $49 to $135 as evacuees searched for shelter. Even a Louisiana campground got into the price gouging game, Cluck said, by allowing only evacuees willing to pay $900 in monthly fees to stay.

As the immediate emergency for evacuees subsides, authorities anticipate scammers will find new ways to defraud victims. Construction contracts are being watched closely by federal, state and local prosecutors. Roofers are under particular scrutiny in Louisiana, which has seen a spate of cases where little or no work gets done after scammers receive upfront payments. “We’ll probably start seeing some new trends as people look to get back into heir homes and restart their lives,” Cluck said.

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/13/2005 at 03:20 PM   
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   Wednesday - October 12, 2005

Fifteen Minutes And Twenty Seconds

As Andy Warhol said, everyone is entitled to fifteen minutes of fame. Cindy Sheehan is twenty seconds over limit ....

Sheehan Delivers Letter to Governor’s Office About War
(KXTV SACRAMENTO)

Vacaville mother and anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan traveled to the State Capitol today to ask Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to pull California’s National Guard troops out of Iraq. Sheehan has toured the nation protesting the war since her son, Casey, died in Iraq last year. In August, she camped outside President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, hoping to meet with him to confront him about the war.

Sheehan delivered a letter to the governor’s office. The letter reads, in part: “California is suffering each day as its law enforcement, corrections and firefighters are called to a war in Iraq which does not protect the people of California, leaving the state in a weakened position. California tax dollars are also disproportionately spent on this war. California men and women are killed and maimed in this war, and their families are left in ruins, as I too well know.”

The governor’s acting Communications director, Margita Thompson said, “We are absolutely sure we would have enough National Guard troops here to be deployed to protect our own vital service needs in the event of an emergency while at the same being able to provide troops for the effort in Iraq.” The governor is attending a fundraiser in Arizona tonight. He was not at the State Capitol today. The California National Guard says 2,300 troops are stationed in Iraq. About 1,600 troops are in the state and are not deployed.

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/12/2005 at 10:46 PM   
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   Monday - October 10, 2005

Stoopid Person of The Day (so far)

Some people just never learn ....

Agence France Presse published a photo of Katrina hurricane victim Latesha Vinette holding her new Red Cross debit card, a picture instantly redistributed on public wire service web sites. The balance on the card dropped to ZERO within minutes, as hundreds of fraudsters went on shopping sprees with the card number. A few hours later, Vinette was paged over the Reliant stadium speaker system to receive a call from Mastercard, which wanted to know about cash-advance requests totaling $65,237.00, and attempts to use the card to buy a Ferrari and hundreds of other goods on eBay.

_{(--thanks to Rancino for another gem)}

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/10/2005 at 06:49 PM   
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   Saturday - October 08, 2005

Sign Of The End Times

There are times when I cruise the web and suddenly encounter something in the news that literally makes me think that humanity is on its last legs and extinction is just minutes away. Hell, the dinosaurs disappeared for being less stupid than this. Is this specimen the best that the human race can produce after millions of years? Please tell me it ain’t so! Between this kook and Michael Jackson, I have decided that today’s “entertainers” need a really solid #12 ClueBat up side of their painted, empty heads. What’s really scarey is that booger’ed up people like dumbass below wouldn’t be “famous” if large groups of similarly booger’ed up people weren’t buying his records. What’s in your music CD collection ...?

Singer Boy George Arrested on Drug Charge
NEW YORK (AP)

Boy George was arraigned on drug charges early Saturday, nearly 24 hours after calling 911 to report what he said was a burglary in his Manhattan apartment, authorities said. The British singer, whose real name is George O’Dowd, claimed his home had been burglarized around 3 a.m. Friday, said Detective Kevin Czartoryski, a police spokesman.

Officers arrived at O’Dowd’s Manhattan apartment and discovered a small amount of cocaine next to a computer, police said. Police were continuing to investigate. The singer was released Saturday without bail after being charged with fourth-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance, allegedly more than an eighth of an ounce of cocaine, said Barbara Thompson, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

Calls to the office of O’Dowd’s lawyer went unanswered early Saturday. It is not the first time Boy George has had problems with drugs. In 1986, the singer was convicted for heroin possession in England. Two of his friends overdosed in the incident and O’Dowd was forced into a rehabilitation program. The conviction led to the disintegration of his group, Culture Club, one year later.

Boy George, famous for his androgynous persona, and Culture Club had hits including “Karma Chameleon” and “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me.”

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/08/2005 at 01:46 AM   
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   Thursday - October 06, 2005

Gore Bores More

Here is the text of former Vice President Al Gore’s remarks at the We Media conference on Wednesday in New York:

Text of Gore Speech at Media Conference
NEW YORK (AP)

I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave danger. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse . I know that I am not the only one who feels that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America’s fabled “marketplace of ideas” now functions. How many of you, I wonder, have heard a friend or a family member in the last few years remark that it’s almost as if America has entered “an alternate universe”?

I thought maybe it was an aberration when three-quarters of Americans said they believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11, 2001. But more than four years later, between a third and a half still believe Saddam was personally responsible for planning and supporting the attack ....

---

WE INTERRUPT THIS IMPORTANT SPEECH TO BRING YOU A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSORS



WE NOW RETURN YOU TO ASSHAT GORE’S SPEECH, ALREADY IN PROGRESS

---

And yet, as we meet here this morning, more than 40 years have passed since the majority of Americans received their news and information from the printed word. Newspapers are hemorrhaging readers and, for the most part, resisting the temptation to inflate their circulation numbers. Reading itself is in sharp decline, not only in our country but in most of the world. The Republic of Letters has been invaded and occupied by television.

Radio, the internet, movies, telephones, and other media all now vie for our attention - but it is television that still completely dominates the flow of information in modern America. In fact, according to an authoritative global study, Americans now watch television an average of four hours and 28 minutes every day—90 minutes more than the world average ....

OH, FORGET IT! THE NO DOZ AIN’T WORKING! Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ....

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/06/2005 at 04:58 PM   
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Home Alone

The Angry Left has used up Cindy Sheehan’s fifteen minutes of fame so now she is quietly going home to sit by the fireside and treasure the moments of fame and notoriety she has pasted in her family album. Somewhere in there is an autographed picture from Osama bin Laden ...

‘Peace Mom’ Cindy Sheehan Returns Home
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP)

Peace mom Cindy Sheehan, after wrapping up her tour of the country, returned home Wednesday to northern California where she plans to continue her protest of the Iraq war. The mother who staged a 26-day vigil in front of President Bush’s Texas ranch this summer received a hero’s welcome from a hometown crowd attending a fundraiser for anti-war groups.

“I’ll be a grieving mom until I die because of the lies that took my son,” said Sheehan, making her first public appearance in the liberal San Francisco Bay area since the August vigil. “I plan on keeping this up until the troops are brought home.” Sheehan’s 24-year-old son, Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, died in April 2004 in Iraq.

She has spent much of the time since speaking out against the war. After the monthlong vigil in Texas, she traveled the U.S. and also met with politicians, including Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-North Carolina. Last week, she was arrested with more than 350 other people after a protest outside the White House.

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/06/2005 at 12:34 AM   
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   Wednesday - October 05, 2005

A “Nation” Of Scarecrows

You all saw the movie “Wizard Of Oz”, right? Do you remember that one of Dorothy’s pals was the Scarecrow? Do you remember what his problem was? Sure you do ... he wanted a brain because his head was filled with straw. I bet you didn’t know that the Scarecrow was actually a Paleswinian. Yes, it’s true. The whole “country” of Paleswine is filled with people whose heads are filled with straw. The Israelis are lucky. If the Paleswinians had brains they might be really dangerous. As it is ... they just keep bringing knives to a gunfight.

See the stoopid Paleswinian. See him run. Run Paleswinian run. See him pull out his knife. See him scream about God. See him fall down with several bullet holes in his ignorant carcass. Did the other Paleswinian scarecrows learn anything? Silly people! They have no brains. They can’t learn anything. See the next stoopid Paleswinian. See her run ....

Israelis Wound New Knife Attacker
NABLUS, West Bank (BBC)

The Israeli army shot and wounded a Palestinian teenager after he attempted to stab soldiers at a West Bank checkpoint near Nablus. The teenager ran towards the soldiers brandishing a knife and shouting “God is great”, witnesses said. Israeli soldiers fired at the youth, lightly wounding him, said witnesses.

The attack comes the day after Palestinian militants said they were responsible for a knife attack on an Israeli soldier at another checkpoint. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades said they carried out the attempted stabbing of the soldier at Hawara checkpoint on Tuesday, the scene of many previous attacks. The female attacker was shot dead by Israeli troops after she injured a soldier in the face.

37-year-old Hayfa Hidiya had been on her way to carry out a suicide attack, the militant group said. The Israeli army said no explosives were found on the assailant. “We will continue martyrdom operations throughout Palestine until the occupation leaves. The barriers of shame and disgrace set up by the Zionists shall face more blows,” said al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in a statement on their website.

The group said it was not committed to the truce agreed in February between the major Palestinian militant organisations and PA President Mahmoud Abbas. The Israeli army said the woman was knocked to the ground after lunging at a soldier with a knife, and was shot dead when she tried to get up again and attack a second time.

  “If I Only Had A Brain”

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/05/2005 at 11:11 AM   
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   Monday - October 03, 2005

Well …. DUH?!

Too little, too late. All this means is that the casinos will be only 70% destroyed instead of 100% destroyed during the next big hurricane. You can thank the Bible Belt preachers in the Deep South for the resistance to letting them move all the way onshore to safe locations. Of course, the backwoods Baptists aren’t concerned about the millions of dollars and thousands of jobs the casinos bring to Mississippi every year. All that concerns them is .... SA-TAN! (help me out here, I’m channeling Dana Carvey)

And before anyone jumps on me for giving the Bible thumpers a hard time, bear in mind that I was born and raised in the South and I know whereof I speak. Personally, I don’t gamble. I do go to church though. Never had the urge to visit a casino or even buy a lottery ticket - gambling is for dumbasses but jobs in Mississippi are hard to come by and every little bit helps, even if the jobs are at the expense of stoopid goobers from Alabama (where gambling is totally illegal except in Indian casinos) driving all the way to Mississippi to throw their money away. Can I hear you say “PRAISE JESUS” one more time? Louder now ....

Miss. Lawmakers OK Casino Move to Dry Land
JACKSON, MS (AP)

Mississippi lawmakers sent Gov. Haley Barbour a bill Monday to let coastal casinos move a short distance onto dry land. The vote came a month after Hurricane Katrina smashed many of Mississippi’s floating casinos. Barbour pushed for the legislation in a special session dealing with hurricane recovery, saying the storm showed that the casinos would be safer on shore. The state Senate passed the bill 29-21 on Monday. The House approved the measure last week.

Mississippi legalized casinos in 1990 but said they must be on barges floating on either the Gulf of Mexico or the Mississippi River. The bill sent to Barbour does not allow the river casinos to move onto dry land. After the vote, coast business people and civic leaders exchanged hugs and high-fives in a Capitol hallway. While some gambling companies have said they plan to rebuild over water, others want to go on shore so their buildings will be sturdier and easier to insure. “This means a new beginning for the Gulf Coast,” said Laura Hasty of Biloxi, owner of an advertising agency with several casinos as clients. “This is the hope that we’ve needed since Aug. 29.”

Before Katrina, the coastal gambling houses employed about 14,000 people and generated about $500,000 a day in state and local taxes. Thousands more people had jobs supplying goods or services to casinos. The bill says casinos can move 800 feet on shore or—in Biloxi’s Harrison County only—to the southern boundary of U.S. 90, a major east-west route that follows the beach in much of the county. This is the first serious effort to allow blackjack tables and slot machines to move even a short distance onto land. The vote Monday came after two hours of debate in which coast senators pleaded for a way to help their communities recover.

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/03/2005 at 06:01 PM   
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Hometown Cops Piss on Each Other

I was born in New Jersey, moved to Florida as a teenager and have called Virginia my home for the last decade.  The town I work in, Waynesboro, is at the western base of the Blue Ridge mountains and is a sleepy little place of about 30,000 residents.  You can’t go to the store without seeing a friend or neighbor.  I don’t align myself with N.J. often because....well because N.J. is essentially a socialist state.  Then this story crosses my desk and it doesn’t change my mind.

N.J. police object to stop of 95-mph convoy

WAYNESBORO—A speeding New Jersey police convoy should not have been warned to slow down here, its superiors say, despite numerous 911 calls from motorists claiming they were forced off Interstate 81.

An incensed New Jersey sheriff called an Augusta County deputy a “disgrace” for pulling over officers returning home from a Hurricane Katrina relief mission Sept. 18.

Augusta Sheriff Randy Fisher and the Virginia State Police defend the stop because the New Jersey officers were traveling 95 mph with their lights flashing.

Virginia law requires an emergency before officers can speed and activate their lightbars. Instead of a warning, the speeding officers could have gotten citations.

“It was causing a dangerous situation, and basically we had to do something,” Fisher said. “People were pulling off to the left and people were pulling off to the right getting out of the way of these guys.”

Virginia State Police said they logged “numerous” 911 calls early Sept. 18 from motorists complaining about marked cars from the Passaic County Sheriff’s Office and Wayne Police Department driving dangerously near Weyers Cave.

With Virginia State Police troopers busy working other cases, only Augusta County Deputy Mike Roane was available to answer the call. Roane averted a potential disaster, Fisher said, after clocking the convoy’s lead car at 95 mph.

“Five or six of them did not stop, they just continued northbound,” the Augusta sheriff added. “I think they were in a hurry to get home.”

Roane ordered the officers whom Fisher described as belligerent—in the remaining six cars to cut off their lightbars and slow down. A Virginia trooper telephoned their New Jersey departments requesting that the homeward-bound officers slow down.

“There was no emergency situation they were responding to in Virginia that we know of,” Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said.

That same day, Virginia troopers patrolling the state’s southwestern interstate roads pulled over a roughly 80-car convoy of New York police homebound from Katrina relief, Geller said. That group stuck to the speed limit, though troopers asked them to stay out of the left lane.

The news of the Augusta County stop incensed Passaic County Sheriff Jerry Speziale, who, in a taped telephone conversation with Roane, lambasted the deputy for stopping his officers.

“If you think that that’s not a disgrace, you should take that badge off your shirt and throw it in the garbage,” Speziale said. “This is unacceptable, and I’ll tell you what, I hope I get the opportunity to show you the same courtesy up here in New Jersey.”

Speziale told Roane that “law enforcement is all about supporting each other” and said he was reporting the Augusta County stop to the National Sheriffs’ Association.

Speziale ended the call after cutting short Roane’s attempt to detail the incident. “I don’t talk to deputies,” the New Jersey sheriff said.

Other officials from the New Jersey departments remain indignant that its officers were ordered to slow down.

“We make no excuses,” Passaic County Sheriff’s spokesman Bill Maer told The News Virginian on Tuesday. “They’d been working ‘round the clock [in a hurricane-devastated New Orleans]. They were coming back with equipment that needed to get back. In our opinion, they acted appropriately. We take offense at the way they were treated.”

A Wayne police official seemed angered when The News Virginian called about the incident last week.

“So what, we’re not going to talk about the good these people are doing, you’re just going to look for something bad?” Capt. Paul Ireland replied.

Fisher, instead of phoning Speziale, drafted him a letter detailing the stop, defending Roane’s actions, and saying that the New Jersey officers were “unprofessional.”

Passaic County, in the meantime, plans to send more volunteers to New Orleans, but not through Augusta County.

“We’re going to avoid Virginia at all cost—we’re clearly not welcome there,” Maer said. “Maybe Virginia should learn from our example.”

Yeah Sheriff, make your guys travel even farther, and faster, to get where they’re going.  By the way, you still have to enter “the south” to get to the hurricane-ravaged areas.  And we in “the south” have manners, unlike you self-absorbed, slack-jawed, piss-ants in Joyzee.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/03/2005 at 10:37 AM   
Filed Under: • Stoopid-People •  
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   Sunday - October 02, 2005

Diseased Protestors

This news story sure explains a lot. It seems the anti-war protestors in Washington last week were carrying “rabbit fever” ....

US Finds Fever Bacteria During War Protest Weekend
WASHINGTON (AP)

Small amounts of a bacteria that causes “rabbit fever” were found on Washington’s National Mall last weekend as thousands of protesters marched against the Iraq War, U.S. health authorities said on Saturday. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said several government environmental air monitors in the Mall area detected low levels of Francisella tularensis bacteria that cause Tularemia, commonly known as rabbit fever, on September 24-25.

Public health agencies had no reports of any related human or animal illnesses caused by the bacteria. The CDC said it issued an alert on Friday night as a precaution so medical personnel were aware of the situation and could report any suspected cases. Rabbit fever can not be passed from person to person and can be effectively treated with readily available medicines, the CDC said. Symptoms usually appear 3 to 5 days after exposure, but in rare cases can take up to two weeks.

Symptoms of the disease, which an infected person would have begun experiencing no earlier than on Monday, include: sudden fever, chills, headaches, conjunctivitis, diarrhea, muscle aches, joint pain, dry cough and progressive weakness.District of Columbia health officials told local radio station WTOP on Saturday the detected bacteria was not harmful and probably occurred naturally. The CDC waited a week to notify city officials of the detected bacteria because it took that long to test the samples at labs and confirm its presence, the radio station reported.

According to the CDC’s Web site, people can get rabbit fever by:

* Being bitten by a infected tick, deerfly or other insect

* Handling infected animal carcasses

* Eating or drinking contaminated food or water

* Breathing in the bacteria

The CDC also said the bacteria can be used as a weapon if made into an aerosol that could be inhaled. “The bacteria that cause Tularemia occur widely in nature and could be isolated and grown in quantity in a laboratory, although manufacturing an effective aerosol weapon would require considerable sophistication,” the CDC said.

The Washington Post said the germ that causes tularemia is considered a biohazard because it is highly infectious and was tested in the 1960s by the United States as a biological weapon. One of many security measures adopted in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks, the air monitors are part of the nationwide “Biowatch” system installed to sample the air in major metropolitan areas daily for pathogens that could be used in a biological attack on the United States.

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/02/2005 at 07:48 PM   
Filed Under: • Health-Medicine • Stoopid-People •  
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