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Baseball
Barack and Michelle are at the White Sox game. Sitting in the first row with the Secret Service people directly behind them, one of the Secret Service guys leans forward and says something to the president. Barack stares at the guy, looks at Michelle, looks back at the agent, and shakes his head violently.
The agent then says “Mr President, it was a unanimous request, from the owner of the team down to the bat boy. And… the fans would love it!” So, Barack shrugs his shoulders and says “If that’s what the people want”.
He gets up, grabs Michelle by her collar and the seat of her pants, and drops her right over the wall into the field. She gets up kicking, swearing, and screaming – and the crowd goes wild, cheering, applauding, and high-fiving.
Barack is bowing and smiling, and leans over to the agent and says “You were right, I would have never believed that!” Then noticing the agent has gone totally pale, Barack asks what is wrong. The agent replies “Sir, I said, they want you to throw out the first PITCH…”
Nick Hanauer
Microsoft to charge customers $99 to remove OEM ‘crapware’
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Let’s follow the money. The OEMs are paid by a variety of software makers to install crapware onto systems. The OEMs don’t disclose how much money they receive from this, but sources tell me that it works out at a few dollars per PC. That doesn’t sound like much, but multiply that across millions of PCs and it becomes a significant number.
Then the customer pays the OEM — or a middleman — for the PC, a PC which Microsoft itself admits is “slower-than-should-be” because of all the stuff loaded onto the system unnecessarily. Consumers are expected to take their new PC to a Microsoft Store — though there are currently only 16 of them in the United States — and pay Microsoft $99 to remove the crapware that the OEMs were paid to install.
It could only be worse if the OEMs wanted payment to remove crapware. Think that wouldn’t happen? It’s already been tried. Back in 2008, Sony announced plans to charge customers $50 for what it called “Fresh Start” systems that were free of crapware. The plans were dropped following a barrage of negative feedback.
The OEMs make money from installing crapware onto PCs, and now Microsoft is making money removing it. Makes you realize why more and more people are buying Apple hardware.
Most of you probably already know that you can remove a lot of the preinstalled crapware from PCs using PC Decrapifier. It won’t give you the nice Signature edition desktop wallpaper, and won’t install pretty much every piece of Windows Live software ever made onto your PC — like Microsoft seems to do on Signature editions PCs — but it will remove most of the crapware that you find on new PCs. And the best part is it won’t cost you $99. In fact, it won’t cost you anything, because it’s free for personal use.
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Mitt Romney’s truthiness
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The 100,000 jobs is back! The presumptive GOP nominee all but stopped mentioning he created 100,000 in the private sector after we declared in January that claim was untenable and unproven. The biggest problem is that Romney is counting all the jobs added by companies long after he had left the leadership of Bain Capital — and even after Bain’s investment in the companies had ended.In the Hot Air interview, Romney even made this claim while at the same time arguing that a recent Obama campaign commercial slamming the job losses at a particular Bain investment was unfair because “the steel factory closed down two years after I left Bain Capital. I was no longer there, so that’s hardly something which is on my watch.” (Technically, Romney had not completely extricated himself from Bain but that’s another story.)
The logic there escapes us. Romney appears to be saying it is okay to count jobs created after he left Bain, but it’s not okay to count jobs lost after he left Bain.
Pirate Bay Ban Rockets Pirate Party Website Into The Big Time
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The court-ordered ISP blockade of The Pirate Bay immediately backfired earlier this month when it massively raised awareness and caused the site to receive millions of extra visitors. Now, and as a direct result of the Pirate Bay ban, the website of the UK Pirate Party is benefiting hugely too. In just over three weeks it has jumped more than 100,000 places in the UK rankings and any moment now will become the 1,500th most-visited website in the country.
NZ warned over ‘body bombers’
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United States Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has warned the New Zealand Government about the latest terrorist threat known as “body bombers”.
US media reports have suggested the Al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, and its master bomb-maker Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, have been designing body bombs with no metal parts to get past airport security.
Napolitano said the US is monitoring the possibility of terrorists implanting explosives in the human body.
“Do we have specific credible evidence of a threat today? I would not say that we do, however, the importance is that we all lean forward,” she said.
So, Janet, you admit that the story is utter bullshit, but you’re still warning New Zealand about it? Why? Does somebody you know have some body scanners for sale perhaps?
And ‘Lean forward’?
Isn’t that just a different way of saying ‘bend over’?
Wells Fargo Has Blood on Its Hands: Desperate Man Commits Suicide After Shocking Foreclosure Mistreatment
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The quick version of this terrible story is that Norman and Oriane Rousseau of Newbury Park, California were scammed into a predatory mortgage. But they made their payments anyway, always paying with a cashier’s check in person at the same branch. Then one day the bank misapplied their payment and said they still owed the money. This started a long, nasty process that led to the bank evicting the Rousseaus from their home.
Here’s the shocker: right at the start the Rousseaus came up with proof that the bank had received the payment and had cashed the check. But the bank continued to claim it had missed the payment, gave the Rousseaus the runaround, started applying fees, and used it as an excuse to foreclose on the house anyway.
The Rousseaus fought back, the bank dragged it out for so long and pulled so many tricks, getting its way every step of the process, until this last Sunday Norman Rousseau finally gave up and shot himself in despair – two days before the scheduled eviction, Tuesday, May 15. (The Rousseau’s lawyer just said he was able to win a 2-week delay.)
It is a tragic story, but when you dig into the details it becomes much worse.
Canon 7D – Hardcore Durability Test
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Let’s see…10 points for a lame joke and minus 100 for political incorrectness…
So you laughed, then?
I might’ve laughed the first time I heard it back in the Reagan administration but this is a classic example of how easy it is to keep recycling political jokes. Just change the names… (and, IIRC, with Reagan, it was a Dodgers game…)
True enough. So, dear readers: give me your best recycled political joke right here!
Viktor Orbán/Ferenc Gyurcsány/Leonid Brezhnyev/Mátyás Rákosi gives a public speech for the people.
Suddenly man taps teh shoulder of another man in front of him “Excuse me, would you be so kind to take off your hat, I can’t really see [actual name here].”
The man in front obliges, taking off his hat. After a few moment, the man behind again taps his shoulder. “Sorry for bothering, but could you just stand a little to the left, I can’t see [actual name here] well enough.”. The man in front steps aside a bit grumbling, then turns back to listen to the speach. After a moment, his shoulder is tapped again “Excuse me, but, I still can’t see him well enough…” The man calls back annoyed “Should I give you a scope too?” – “No thank you, I have that on my rifle.”
Ages old joke. Wasn’t always a safe one.
Q: What does do with her asshole every morning?
A: She wakes him up.
Of course, the big problem with all political jokes is that they keep getting re-elected.
The Pope and Margaret Thatcher are appearing before a huge audience in Wembley Stadium. There are the usual polite speeches and lots of applause.
Mrs. Thatcher says to the Pope, “You know, really they are all applauding for me. I bet I can raise my hand and all the Tories in the crowd will go crazy!”
The Pope says, “Really? My daughter, show me.”
Thatcher raises her hand, waves and, sure enough, all the Conservative start clapping and cheering wildly.
The Pope says, “Ha, that was nothing! I bet that, with one gesture, I will make these people happy; so happy that they will go home joyously to their families and everyone will talk about this day for the rest of their lives!”
Margaret thinks to herself, “Who do you think you are you old buzzard?” but anyway tells the Pope,
“Really? Show me, Holy Father.”
So the Pope punched her in the mouth.
Ah, dear old Thatcher… there’s one joke about her that’s difficult to recycle:
Ronald Reagan, Michael Gorbatsjov and Margaret Thatcher appear before God. God to Reagan:
— Son, what have you done to deserve a place in Heaven?
Reagan:
— I brought the Evil Empire to its knees, freed millions of people from communism and ended the Cold War.
God:
— Very good my son, come sit by my right side.
God to Gorbatsjov:
— And you son, what have you done to deserve a place in Heaven?
Gorbatsjov:
— I introduced perestroijka and glasnost, and guided the Soviet Union away from communism while avoiding armed revolution and bloodshed.
God:
— Very good my son, come sit by my left side.
Next, God turns to Thatcher and says:
— And you sister, what have you done?
Thatcher replies (and you’d better say this in her voice to get the full effect):
— In the first place, I am not your sister, and in the second, get out of my chair!