January 21, 2014

Scam afoot: Tell your mom

This one comes from one of my newspapers: someone is calling senior citizens and telling them:

* the caller is from the electric company. The name of the electric company is given.
* the person being called is seriously behind on their electric bill, and their electricity will be turned off unless a payment is made today.
* the payment must be made by purchasing a Green Dot MoneyPak card and returning a call with the number on it.

Tell your mom that ANY time someone asks you to buy a Green Dot MoneyPak card, the call is complete bullshit and they are only attempting to steal your money. Then have her call the customer service number at the company the scammer claims to be. (It's in the phone book. WE don't have phone books, but senior citizens DO.)

January 20, 2014

Nigerian scammers change with the times

I normally don't get advance-fee fraud messages, but this one I have to share with you:

I think he's really serving in Lagos with the 419th Chairborne Division.

January 20, 2014

Weed Bowl XLVIII is ON!

NFC Championship: Seattle defeats San Francisco 23-17
AFC Championship: Denver defeats New England 26-16

January 20, 2014

Did you know Bill Gates is a socialist?

Check out this LTTE:

http://www.cdapress.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/article_13391ff8-7f19-11e3-a4d6-001a4bcf887a.html#user-comment-area

It's about Common Core, and it contains this quote:

I heard one of the people behind this is Bill Gates; that should scare anyone with half a brain, this guy is a socialist.

Last I checked, Gates was one of the most significant capitalists this country has ever produced. Forget wind power. Forget solar. Exhume Karl Marx, glue magnets to his legs, wrap two miles of wire around him and rebury him in Idaho, and the electricity output from all the spinning in his grave will dwarf that of the Grand Coulee Dam.

January 19, 2014

Is Wednesday "wear a helmet to work day"?

Wednesday is January 22, which is to someone who opposes abortion a little like the 4th of July, Christmas, New Year's and Income Tax Day all rolled up into one: it's the day they get to bring out their hats with plastic fetuses on them, their most gruesome signs, and stand in front of the first abortion clinic they can find protesting in support of The Unborn. (You will notice they don't stand in front of the Department of Social Services in support of anyone who's been born.)

This year I think they'll get really violent, so watch yourselves on Wednesday.

January 15, 2014

“There are other countries … when you say ‘We have the right to keep and bear arms in America’...

According to Wikipedia,

A castle doctrine (also known as a castle law or a defense of habitation law) is a legal doctrine that designates a person's abode (or, in some states, any legally-occupied place [e.g., a vehicle or workplace]) as a place in which that person has certain protections and immunities permitting him or her, in certain circumstances, to use force (up to and including deadly force) to defend themselves against an intruder, free from legal responsibility/prosecution for the consequences of the force used.

http://www.bonnercountydailybee.com/news/local/article_9df4a384-7ce3-11e3-831a-001a4bcf887a.html

Idaho currently has the third-most-lenient castle doctrine law in America. If someone breaks into your house and you can prove that your life, or the life of your family, is threatened you can blow their shit away. And the farther north you go the less you have to prove: if you live in Priest River and you see a bulge in your invader's clothing that looks like a gun, and you kill that invader, the cops won't charge you. This has happened. (This is mitigated by the simple fact that any self-respecting burglar in Idaho just waits until everyone leaves the house before he breaks in.)

Our statehouse, who has solved all Idaho's problems, has decided their most pressing concern this session is to give Idaho the most lenient castle law in America. A few days ago they had a rally in support of this new law on the steps of the capitol building. At it, Wayne Hoffman, who is Idaho's most prominent teabagger and the head of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, said this:

“There are other countries … when you say ‘We have the right to keep and bear arms in America’ they look at you like you’re crazy,” Hoffman said through a bullhorn.

And there's a reason they do this, Wayne: on average, Americans manage to shoot to death 1000 people a month...and that's not counting the 60 percent of all gun deaths that are suicides.

January 14, 2014

A website all about Chris Christie!

http://alt-sites.tripod.com/All_about_toast.html

January 13, 2014

I wonder how many people are coming to this hard right wing meeting

We're running this ad in the January 13 classified section:

(At the top of the ad is a picture of Ronald Reagan, their hero.)

Conservatives unite! Are you a conservative? If you're frustrated with liberalism taking over in America and the Republican Party drifting away from its conservative roots, let's do something about it! Come to RallyRight.org's special meeting at (name and address of restaurant) Monday, January 6th, 6pm."

January 12, 2014

Why no EPA inspections at Freedom Industries? They didn't need any!

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/16321999-west-virginia-chemical-spill-company-was-exempt-from-epa-inspections

Thanks to our friends in the GOP, the only chemical plants that need federal EPA inspections are ones that manufacture chemicals. Companies that store and blend chemicals, like this one and the fertilizer factory in Texas, don't require inspections.

So you're thinking, "what about OSHA inspections?" OSHA is so small they have become almost purely reactive. Unless you do something really bad - like killing someone in through unsafe workplace conditions - and someone drops a dime on you, you probably will never see an OSHA inspector. The chemical spill was only detected because this product has a distinctive odor, and the townspeople reported smelling it...which means the leak had been going on for quite some time because that plant's quite a ways from population and the odor it creates is not strong.

One has to wonder, though, why someone was allowed to buy an abandoned oil refinery that was built in the late 1930s and convert it to a chemical facility without having the tanks inspected.

January 12, 2014

If you were going to declare a band's fans a gang would it be ICP's?

Apparently Juggalos and Juggalettes, fans of Insane Clown Posse (it's a rap band with...well, interesting songs, but the one about Shrub isn't on YouTube for some reason) are now a hybrid gang. Not sure what a hybrid gang is; do they slam Priuses or something?

So I'm thinking...there are bands hundreds of times worse than ICP, who've been around so long their original fans could have grandkids. (Now there's a scary thought: "Grandpa and Grandma are taking me to an ICP concert!&quot If you were going to declare a band's fans a gang, which band?

I'm going with those gangbangers One Direction. They just look like they stir up shit just on general principles.