[Quote:]
If Europeans really want to help Barack Obama next week they should repress their enthusiasm for him – and stay home. Ensure those crowds are thin and lethargic; maybe even offer the odd heckle, perhaps while brandishing a hostile placard. Let the travelling US press report that Obama is not so popular with foreigners after all: nothing will endear him more to the American public.
[Quote:]
A Nigerian couple who immigrated to Austin a decade ago thought they had finally made it in America. On May 7, they closed on their first home in the States, buying a $283,000 Cedar Park house that had been headed for foreclosure.
It seemed like a good deal to Bobo and Joy Dickson. They did everything right, they thought. They got a mortgage lender, signed the papers, had the title put in their name .
But on May 14, they came home from work at their janitorial services company to find that all their furniture, family heirlooms, personal photos, clothes, even their daughter’s piggybank, had disappeared.
After filing a theft report with the Cedar Park Police Department, the Dicksons were given the news. In a mix-up over whether the home was still facing foreclosure, Field Asset Services was hired to drill open the doors and seize the belongings.
[..]
Cedar Park police officials said Field Asset Services told them that it carried out orders from a mortgage firm and that the Dicksons’ belongings had been donated to area thrift shops. But a search of such shops turned up nothing.
On Friday, after hiring a lawyer and getting no apology or acknowledgment of responsibility for weeks, the Dicksons finally had a breakthrough.
EMC Mortgage Corp., the Lewisville bank that the Dicksons’ lawyer said held the first and second mortgages on the house, issued a statement saying: “There was a mix up, and we apologize to the family because they were, indeed, caught in the middle. We will make it right with the family by reimbursing them for their losses.” The statement came from Debbie Krznarich, senior vice president of communications for EMC.
The family has since filed a law-suit. More troubling is that law enforcement refuses to do something, claiming there was no “criminal intent”. Texas Penal Code Section 31.03 (theft) does not require “criminal intent” but simply “intent to deprive the owner of property.” Further, TPC Section 28.04 (reckless damage or destruction) doesn’t even include an element of intent. Management of EMC Mortgage and Field Asset Services Inc should be in jail right now.
But hey, it’s a big company, and that’s it, then.
[Quote:]
A traffic warden was caught ticketing innocent motorists - because he couldn’t tell the time.
He used a calculator to work out the expiry time of Dave Alsop’s ticket, without realising the device worked in decimals and not minutes and hours.
Mr Alsop, 29, parked near Torquay harbour, Devon, at 2.49pm and paid £1.20 for 75 minutes, covering him until 4.04pm.
But when he returned at 3.41pm, he discovered a £50 fine on his car. He found the warden and showed him the parking ticket, which clearly had time left on it.
The warden disagreed and tried to prove his point with a calculator.
He tapped in 14.49 and added 0.75 to produce a total of 15.24, claiming this meant Mr Alsop’s ticket had expired at 3.24pm, some 17 minutes before he returned to his car.
Mr Alsop, of Torquay, said: ‘I tried to explain but he didn’t have a clue. He just carried on doing other cars parked there.’
Happily for Mr Alsop, Torbay council waived the fee and apologised. It said: ‘The civil enforcement officer is new.
‘We have provided additional training to prevent this happening again.’
[Quote:]
On November 16, 2005, Willie “Bo” Mitchell and three co-defendants—Shelton “Little Rock” Harris, Shelly “Wayne” Martin, and Shawn Earl Gardner— appeared for a hearing in the modern federal courthouse in downtown Baltimore, Maryland. The four African American men were facing federal charges of racketeering, weapons possession, drug dealing, and five counts of first-degree murder. For nearly two years the prosecutors had been methodically building their case, with the aim of putting the defendants to death. In Baltimore, which has a murder rate eight times higher than that of New York City, such cases are depressingly commonplace.
A few minutes after 10 a.m., United States District Court Judge Andre M. Davis took his seat and began his introductory remarks. Suddenly, the leader of the defendants, Willie Mitchell, a short, unremarkable looking twenty-eight-yearold with close-cropped hair, leapt from his chair, grabbed a microphone, and launched into a bizarre soliloquy.
“I am not a defendant,” Mitchell declared. “I do not have attorneys.” The court “lacks territorial jurisdiction over me,” he argued, to the amazement of his lawyers. To support these contentions, he cited decades-old acts of Congress involving the abandonment of the gold standard and the creation of the Federal Reserve. Judge Davis, a Baltimore-born African American in his late fifties, tried to interrupt. “I object,” Mitchell repeated robotically. Shelly Martin and Shelton Harris followed Mitchell to the microphone, giving the same speech verbatim. Their attorneys tried to intervene, but when Harris’s lawyer leaned over to speak to him, Harris shoved him away.
Judge Davis ordered the three defendants to be removed from the court, and turned to Gardner, who had, until then, remained quiet. But Gardner, too, intoned the same strange speech. “I am Shawn Earl Gardner, live man, flesh and blood,” he proclaimed. Every time the judge referred to him as “the defendant” or “Mr. Gardner,” Gardner automatically interrupted: “My name is Shawn Earl Gardner, sir.” Davis tried to explain to Gardner that his behavior was putting his chances of acquittal or leniency at risk. “Don’t throw your life away,” Davis pleaded. But Gardner wouldn’t stop. Judge Davis concluded the hearing, determined to find out what was going on.
[..]
Gardner tried to argue that the court had no power over him under “common law.” “At common law,” Judge Davis replied, “you were property. You were bought and sold just like those Timberlands on your feet today can be bought and sold. That’s what your ancestors were, some of them, and that is what my ancestors were, some of them.”
“You have invoked ideas formulated and advanced by people who think less of you than they think of dirt,” Davis continued. “The extremists who have concocted these ideas that you are now advancing in this courtroom are laughing their heads off. You are giving them everything they ever wished for. They should be paying you to do what you are doing. They are going to make you the poster child for their movement. When you complete this suicide, they will honor you because you are doing their work, better and more effectively than any of them ever dreamed they could do. Some of them—” “I object,” said Gardner, interrupting. “The government wants to do the same thing anyway. So what’s the difference?”
[..]
By mid-2007, the federal prosecutors were starting to run low on a vital resource: time. As years go by, memories fade, police officers retire or transfer, informants change their mind, and juries wonder, why, if the case is so straightforward, it took so long to make. On September 6, 2007, prosecutors withdrew the death penalty for all four defendants.
[Quote:]
Family man Gary Crutchley only wanted to take a picture of his children enjoying a day out.
But his innocent snaps of his sons on a slide ended with him being branded on the spot as a ‘pervert’.
The woman running the inflatable slide attempted to stop Mr Crutchley from taking pictures of his two youngest children Cory, aged seven, and Miles, five.
And when he pleaded his innocence, other families waiting in the queue also demanded he stop taking pictures.
Mr Crutchley - who had only photographed his own children - was so enraged that he fetched two policemen to confirm he had done nothing wrong.
He said today: ‘What is the world coming to when anybody seen with a camera is assumed to be doing things that they should not? ‘This parental paranoia is getting completely out of hand.
[Quote:]
Retail employees have received instructions on how to activate iPhones, and are given special instructions to let the customer bond immediately with their iPhone.
http://view.break.com/534959 - Watch more free videos
[Quote:]
A mother mistakenly branded a violent junkie must have her fingerprints checked against every unsolved crime in Britain to clear her name.
Amanda Hodgson had a routine criminal record check for a job looking after youngsters during breaktimes at her children’s school.
The 36-year-old was expecting the all-clear but was horrified to open a letter claiming she had assaulted police officers and was a recovering heroin addict.
[..]
Mrs Hodgson only applied to be a welfare assistant at the school after staff said she would be perfect for the job.
But the Criminal Records Bureau sent her the history of a woman with the same name and date of birth – then told Mrs Hodgson, of Preston, it was up to her to prove her innocence.
If you start treating volunteer workers like this, how many volunteers will you have left in a year or so?
[Quote:]
Guyanese authorities say a first-class airline passenger was so angry at seeing economy passengers leave a jetliner before him that he yanked open an emergency hatch and slid down the chute.
Police spokesman Sealall Persaud says the Guyanese man identified as Satyanand Christopher appeared to be intoxicated after the Delta Airlines flight from New York.
[Quote:]
Oishi. Another economic question?
Q You must be the most excellent expert on oil business.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes. (Laughter.) Look where our price is. (Laughter.)
Q Well, actually, I’m suffering high gas prices.
THE PRESIDENT: You are?
Q Every day.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, you are.
Q So what can you do to curb energy inflation?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, a couple of things. One is you either — just, this is pure economics; you’ll understand this better than anybody here — you either increase the supply of something or decrease the demand of something in order to affect price — down. The habits of the United States consumer is beginning to change because people are now — they don’t like $4 gasoline. I can understand why they don’t like $4 gasoline. People are now looking for smaller cars.
That takes a while, however, to change. I fully understand that. But demand is beginning to shift in our country. And in order to affect worldwide demand, it seems like all of us — Japan, the United States and others at the G8 — need to convince some of the people coming to the G8 to stop subsidizing their consumers, or at least reduce the subsidies somewhat so that there is some effect on demand. Price cannot affect demand if people’s habits are subsidized by state enterprise — or the state.
Wait, what? He thinks my government subsidizes my fuel price? Really?.
I don’t know what the fuck he’s smoking, but I want some of it…
[Quote:]
A new bill, The Orphan Works Act of 2008, is currently making its way through congress, and it threatens to take away copyright protection from unregistered works. This includes virtually all open source software.
Essentially, the bill (as I understand it — and I’m not a lawyer) will modify copyright law such that if the owner of a work can not be found by “reasonable search”, anyone can use the work for whatever they want, regardless of the author’s intentions, or the license the work was released under.
This means companies could ignore the GPL, or any other open source license, simply by claiming they couldn’t find the author. If a copyright holder decides to sue, the infringing party just has to show proof that they performed a “reasonable search”.
[Quote:]
Boffins have slammed examiners in England for setting school children seriously dumb questions.
The Royal Chemistry Society said that the science exams for 14 year olds includes questions such as, “What powers a solar-powered snail?”
[..]
And this one, inspired by Father Ted, perhaps:
Some stars are bigger than the Sun but they look smaller. Why do they look smaller than the Sun?
* They are brighter than the Sun
* They are further away than the Sun
* They are the same colour as the Sun
* They are nearer than the SunThat foxes me every time.
[Quote:]
“Middle Classes Losing Faith In Police” screams the Daily Mail today amidst the coverage about the dissatisfaction law abiding people now feel with the police. There were a record number of complaints made in 2006-7: 29,637. Well, please add me to next year’s total after I was stopped and ordered to account for my actions recently. My crime: using my mobile phone in a manner likely to take a photo. I kid you not.
[Quote:]
In addition to blocking traffic from websites they don’t like, it looks like the web-geniuses behind the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow site have a few other tricks up their sleeves, such as automatically replacing any use of the word “gay” with the word “homosexual” in any of the AP stories they run … leading to instances in which proper names are reformatted to meet their ridiculous standard, such as this article about sprinter Tyson Gay winning the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials in which he is renamed “Tyson Homosexual”:
[Quote:]
Two Hawaii 18-year-olds claim a Navy recruiting officer promised them they would be able to get a free, four-year college education before going off to sea. But Cory Miyasato and Joseph Mauga Jr. soon found out they would be going off to boot camp and then full-time active duty, scrubbing and painting ships.
“The full-ride scholarship really interested me,” said Miyasato, an honor student. “I am a very trusting person. I thought the U.S. government would be truthful to me.”
An honor student, and believing the U.S. government would be truthful to him.
Wow. Just, wow.
[Quote:]
An eight-year-old boy has sparked an unlikely outcry in Sweden after failing to invite two of his classmates to his birthday party.
The boy’s school says he has violated the children’s rights and has complained to the Swedish Parliament.
The school, in Lund, southern Sweden, argues that if invitations are handed out on school premises then it must ensure there is no discrimination.
[Quote:]
The United States and the European Union are nearing completion of an agreement allowing law enforcement and security agencies to obtain private information — like credit card transactions, travel histories and Internet browsing habits — about people on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
The potential agreement, as outlined in an internal report obtained by The New York Times, would represent a diplomatic breakthrough for American counterterrorism officials, who have clashed with the European Union over demands for personal data. Europe generally has more stringent laws restricting how governments and businesses can collect and transfer such information.
Negotiators, who have been meeting since February 2007, have largely agreed on draft language for 12 major issues central to a “binding international agreement,” the report said. The pact would make clear that it is lawful for European governments and companies to transfer personal information to the United States, and vice versa.
But the two sides are still at odds on several other matters, including whether European citizens should be able to sue the United States government over its handling of their personal data, the report said.
So now the US can engage in industrial espionage without having to worry about being sued for it, and my own government gives away data to be sold to the highest bidder and doesn’t get anything in return for it.
When can we start executing politicians for this immense disservice to the people who voted for them?
For example, the two sides have agreed that information that reveals race, religion, political opinion, health or “sexual life” may not be used by a government “unless domestic law provides appropriate safeguards.” But the accord does not spell out what would be considered an appropriate safeguard, suggesting that each government may decide for itself whether it is complying with the rule.
In other words, they can do whatever the fuck they want with the data. And they know it, or they wouldn’t keep it a secret like this:
The Bush administration and the European Commission have not publicized their talks, but they referred to their progress in a little-noticed paragraph deep in a joint statement after a summit meeting between President Bush and European leaders in Slovenia this month.
[Quote:]
Brussels bureaucrats have stopped a grocer from selling a batch of kiwi fruits – because EU rules say they are a millimetre too small.
Market trader Tim Down must now pay £100 to dump the 5,000 perfectly edible fruits which have failed size and weight standards brought in under European regulations.
Government inspectors also warned Mr Down, 53, from Bristol, that he faces a £5,000 fine if he tries to give them away.
[..]
UKIP’s Nigel Farage said: “This is the sort of insane regulation that does the EU immense harm.”
No shit, sherlock. How about we take a cucumber, and shove it up these eurocrats’ ass?
But we’ll have to make sure it’s a proper cucumber first, right?
[Quote:]
EU regulations just for cucumbers are bizarrely complete. They can be studied on the EU’s website which warns, “This Regulation shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States.”
Class I fruit must be nigh on perfect, but the good news about Class II is that “straight and slightly crooked cucumbers” may have minor blemishes (as listed), but the bad news is that “crooked cucumbers are allowed only if they have no more than slight defects in colouring and have no defects or deformation other than crookedness. Slightly crooked cucumbers may have a maximum height of the arc of 20 mm per 10 cm of length of the cucumber. Crooked cucumbers may have a greater arc and must be packed separately.”
So the next time you see a cucumber that is both crooked AND has an unsightly blemish, you may want to call the police, or as I suspect, you will decide for yourself whether or not to buy it.
And the politicians wonder why we’re skeptical about the so-called European Constitution….
[Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., on telecom immunity:]
“I’m not here to say that the government is always right, but when the government tells you to do something, I’m sure you would all agree that I think you all recognize that is something you need to do,” Bond said.
Jawohl, mein Fuhrer!
And to think it was a Republican president (Reagan) that said that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help.”
