Breaking News: The debate is on; McCain agrees to participate

WASHINGTON - Republican John McCain agreed to attend the first presidential debate Friday night even though Congress doesn't have a bailout deal, reversing an earlier decision to delay the forum until Washington had addressed the financial crisis.
That should be an interesting debate.
I'm gonna miss it. I'll be watching Norman North dominate Putnam City North in high school football.

WaMu becomes biggest bank to fail in US history

NEW YORK - As the debate over a $700 billion bank bailout rages on in Washington, one of the nation's largest banks — Washington Mutual Inc. — has collapsed under the weight of its enormous bad bets on the mortgage market.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. seized WaMu on Thursday, and then sold the thrift's banking assets to JPMorgan Chase & Co. for $1.9 billion.
Pwned. Hopefully the jackasses that caused this will not be rewarded with golden parachute exits.

Hot for Teacher, Tennessee Style

A Sumner County high school teacher was arrested Thursday on charges she had sexual relations with a 17-year-old male student.
Sandra Binkley, 36, teaches math at Portland High School.
Teaches...taught would be the better word. She is now a former teacher and if convicted a sexual offender.

Epic Fail: Iowa college apologizes for offensive typo

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- The president of an Iowa college says he's sorry about an unfortunate and offensive typo in a school handbook.
A calendar entry for Feb. 16, 2009, was supposed to read "Black History Lunch and Learn." Instead, it says "Black History Linch and Learn."
Believe it or not there is an entire category of workers that are dedicated to protecting you're organization from this kind of screw up.
If only people would hire them.
Editors...it's a lost art in America. If only people would submit their work to editors BEFORE publication.
Heavy sigh.

New home sales plummet in August, prices tumble

WASHINGTON - New home sales tumbled in August to the slowest pace in 17 years, while the average sales price fell by the largest amount on record, demonstrating the depth of the problem that Washington is trying to solve.
I wonder if the housing market has dropped because people can't get cheap easy to qualify for sub-prime loans?
Rhetorical question, Woodcock!
Of course it does. Everyone that can afford to buy a house, and some that can't, already have a house.

Straight outta Carson: Ed McMahon to rap in viral video

The 85-year-old former Tonight Show sidekick will star in two viral rap videos for FreeCreditReport.com, a financial website owned by credit bureau Experian. The videos feature McMahon wearing a tracksuit, being chauffeured around Los Angeles in a Cadillac Escalade golf cart and waxing lyrical about his very public financial troubles.
Ed's come a long way from his days of preserving our freedom in the air above the South Pacific during World War 2 where he served as a Marine fighter pilot.
I'll post up the video if I can find it.

Palin once blessed to be free from 'witchcraft'

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A grainy YouTube video surfaced Wednesday showing Sarah Palin being blessed in her hometown church three years ago by a Kenyan pastor who prayed for protection from "witchcraft" as she prepared to seek higher office.
If you've never been to an Assembly of God church, you have no idea why this is important to the members of this flavor of Christianity. My adoptive mother's family were AoG's. As the last paragraph in the story points out. It is a very passionate faith.

What am I missing?

In this image released by ABC, reality TV personality Kim Kardashian, left, and her partner Mark Ballas perform on the ABC celebrity dance competition, 'Dancing With The Stars,' Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2008 in Los Angeles.
What am I missing?
I don't watch "Dancing With The Stars".
I am a big fan of Kim's though.
No matter what images they (the evil bastards) try to entice me with I can't pull the trigger on watching "reality dancing TV". Honestly, I can't watch reality TV in any form. My wife watches several, including The Biggest Looser, Hannity and Colmes, The Bachelor/Bachelorette, and another I can't remember the name of.

I occasionally sit down and watch Biggest Loser with her. The struggle of the participants is fun to watch. Reminds me of watching the "fat bodies", as they were affectionately named by the Drill Instructors, when I was in Marine Corps boot camp. They worked so hard to stay in boot camp, to become Marines. You have to respect them for that. They wanted it more.

But I didn't get wrapped up in their individual personal stories. Until they completed their transformation into lean-mean-fighting-machines, I considered them dead weight, a casualty in boots, standing upright. Why befriend them? They would likely be dropped if they failed. And only they could control their success.

And it's precisely that component that I can't stand on that show. The "voting off", the gamesmanship, whatever you want to call it. I say make it a straight across performance based competition. To drag it out even farther they could give them a three strikes twist. Whatever.

So no matter how much I'd enjoy watching Kim prance around I'm going to stick to my favorite shows, which are all fantasy-based shows or comedy.
I'm going to continue to be a Hero(es) while I'm Pushing Daisies around the The Office.

PS. Yeah, I was a Marine. I know it's hard to believe. That's me on the left in the Wayfarers with the porn stash.

Ben Stein: Everything You Wanted to Know About the Credit Crisis But Were Afraid to Ask

The headlines scream doom. There are endless references to the economic situation being "the worst since The Great Depression." Immense names in finance have collapsed and sunk beneath the waves of the financial crisis. Please allow me to try to explain a bit of what's going on.
First of all, all you have to do is look around you to see that in terms of daily life, we are not anywhere near The Great Depression. Unemployment is barely about six percent. It was 25 percent at the nadir of The Great Depression. Real per capita incomes adjusted for inflation are at least five times what they were during The Great Depression. Airplanes are full. High-end restaurants are full. Prices are painfully high for food. These are not signs of a Great Depression.
Ben Stein is probably the smartest guy in the entire universe.

Democrats to let offshore drilling ban expire

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democrats have decided to allow a quarter-century ban on drilling for oil off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to expire next week, conceding defeat in a months-long battle with the White House and Republicans set off by $4 a gallon gasoline prices this summer.
It's nice to see them come to their senses.
I think nearly everyone is seeing that we need to end/reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

G-Men Investigating Potential Fraud by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman, AIG

WASHINGTON — The FBI is investigating four major U.S. financial institutions whose collapse helped trigger a $700 billion bailout plan by the Bush administration, The Associated Press has learned.

Two law enforcement officials said Tuesday the FBI is looking at potential fraud by mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and insurer American International Group Inc. Additionally, a senior law enforcement official said Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. also is under investigation.
That's some fine police work there Lou.
I guess someone looked at their 401K or 457A and noticed a "little bump" in value.
Note to the wise: don't stand between an FBI agent and his retirement.

I hope they send a few dozen people to federal PMITA prison.

I want to believe: 101 Signs That You've Encountered A Ghost

How do you know if you’ve encountered a ghost? Are there certain things that happen? Things that other people have already experienced? You bet there are. I’ve composed a list of 101 ways to tell that you’ve been in contact with a ghost. These aren’t in any particular order.
Some of these are pretty funny.

14. A picture flying (not falling) off the wall and into the room.
54. You answer your phone and the voice of someone you know that has died speaks to you.
66. There’s blood running down the walls.
70. An entity tries to harm you by holding a pillow over your face.
Pretty much any of those and I'm gonna move.

I have personally experienced these.
15. You hear the sound of footsteps when no one is there.
Fort Washita, Oklahoma in the barracks on the upper floor.
16. You see someone who looks as real as you do but as you watch they disappear.
A Mexican War era soldier looked in one of the windows at my friend and I at Fort Washita, Oklahoma. We both saw him and talked about him before he walked away from the window.
My father standing in my living room at the Quanah Parker House just a few weeks after he died.
17. You’re physically touched by someone that isn’t there – your shirt or hair is tugged, someone brushes by or lays a hand on your shoulder.
I was awakened by an English soldier who said, "it's your watch mate" at Lake George, New York, scared the crap out of me.
28. You hear doors or cabinets opening and closing by themselves.
In our Quanah Parker House two nights in a row the kitchen cabinets slammed shut several times.
89. You see apparitions while touring a battleground or graveyard.
Soldier standing and whistling at the Confederate graveyard, Fort Washita, Oklahoma.

Fort Washita is a very haunted place. Ask any historian at the Oklahoma Historical Society.
The Bohanan Cabin at Fort Washita is probably the creepiest place I've ever slept. In the many times I've slept there, only once did I sleep all the way through the night without something happening.

My wife teases me pretty heavily about "ghosts". But I have no explaination for the events listed above. And when you have a friend right next to you that sees what you see, it's pretty hard to deny it happened.

Hump Day Scientific Study: BLONDES HAVE MORE FUN

WOMEN who dye their hair blonde get more sex.
They are also more confident than those who keep their natural colour, experts revealed yesterday.
Experts? Where do I get in line for those studies?
Isn't science fun?

Can Dogs Do Calculus?

Playing fetch with your pooch might just be fun and games to you, but to your dog it's serious business.
Dr. Pennings from hope college says his dog, Elvis, seems to find the answers to calculus problems without doing calculus.
Dogs is smart. Smarter than some humans.
I know this because I commute to OKC everyday on I-35. When I pass through Moore I often wonder how people who live there manage to successfully evade natural selection everyday with such towering intellects.

With video goodness. Hopefully the embedded link works. If not there is a link inside the story.

Follow-up: Penis Pump Judge Disbarred

Judge disbarred after indecent exposure conviction
OKLAHOMA CITY - A judge who was convicted on indecent exposure charges for using a sex toy during trials was disbarred Tuesday by the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
Finally they did something to punish this guy. Sadly he gets to keep his retirement.

Hunt for Palin hacker shaping up to be simple case

WASHINGTON - The hunt for the hacker who broke into Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account is shaping up to be a remarkably simple investigation, by the standards of major cybersecurity whodunits.
U.S. investigators figure the hacker claimed responsibility in a detailed accounting that included his own personal e-mail address and that he tried to cover his trail using a U.S. Internet anonymity service that has been surprisingly cooperative with the FBI in efforts to peel away that anonymity.
If you want to read a real whodunit on Cyber Hacking DDDN recommends The Cuckoo's Egg

The author's supervisor asked him to resolve a USD$0.75 accounting error in the computer usage accounts. He traced the error to an unauthorized user, and eventually realized that the unauthorized user was a hacker who had acquired root access to the LBL system by exploiting a vulnerability in the movemail function of the original GNU Emacs.

That sounds like maybe a lot of computer nerd mumbo-jumbo, but the author goes to a lot of effort to keep it simple.
Its also a fun read today, considering these guys were hacking each other with 1200 baud modems.
What the hell does that mean? A very slow home cable modem is capable of a minimum of 128kbps.
Roughly...
1,200 bit/s = back then
128,000,000 bit/s = today

I remember when I got my first 2400 baud modem in 1991. Man, I thought I was really cruising. My how times have changed.

Fark.com Tagline: In space, all drivers are female

We already know that living in space is no picnic: astronauts frequently suffer sickness and disorientation.
Now it seems that zero-gravity can also adversely affect their ability to judge size and distance.
Hehehe...get it. Females are bad drivers....everyone in space is a bad driver....hehehehehe.

Family's shock as porn star twins reveal secret life

The family of identical twins who left Sunderland to become porn stars have spoken of their shock after learning of their secret lifestyle.
The Thorney Close sisters, also known as Kit and Kat, took centre stage on the Jeremy Kyle Show with their grandma Pat, who says she is disgusted at her granddaughters' choice of career.
I don't have a tag for "What's wrong with England" mainly because I don't live there. But if this was in America I'd post up the "What's wrong with America" tag.
Don't kids go to college and get regular jobs anymore?

Man decorates basement with $10 worth of Sharpie

When Charlie Kratzer started on the basement art project in his south Lexington home, he was surrounded by walls painted a classic cream. Ten dollars of Magic Marker and Sharpie later, the place was black and cream and drawn all over.
Ummm. Wow.

Socialized Medicine Anyone?

WINNIPEG - A head official at this city's Health Sciences Centre said Monday workers were shocked by the revelation a man sat in the hospital's waiting room for 34 hours without medical help before dying there.
I think I like the fact that I can go down to the ER and wait 2.5 hours to see a doctor. At least I get to see one. And 9 times out of 10 I haven't died. Wait...10 times out of 10. Either way that's a pretty good average.

How you can help to save some cherished words from oblivion

It may appear agrestic to ask, but The Times is calling on its readers to come to the rescue of words that risk fading into caliginosity.
Dictionary compilers at Collins have decided that the word list for the forthcoming edition of its largest volume is embrangled with words so obscure that they are linguistic recrement. Such words, they say, must be exuviated abstergently to make room for modern additions that will act as a roborant for the book.
Ummm, yeah I had to look them all up.
People who use those words piss me off. Sorry that was as eloquent as I could express myself.

Mr Average breaks the law at least once a day from speeding to illegal downloading

Many may not know they have done anything wrong, while others simply might not care.
But the average person breaks the law at least once a day, a survey has found.
Speeding, using a mobile phone while driving and dropping litter top the list of rules and regulations regularly flouted.
Other laws often broken are eating while driving, parking on pavements and not wearing a seatbelt.
Of course in Great Britain picking your nose left handed is against the law. Welcome to the Nanny State.
The good news is American's break the law at least 8 times per day.
Matter of fact I'm about to leave my office building and Jaywalk across Lincoln Blvd. to drive (over the speed limit while not signaling lane changes) home.

As Goldman and Morgan Shift, a Wall St. Era Ends

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the last two independent investment banks, will become bank holding companies, the Federal Reserve said Sunday night, a move that will fundamentally alter the landscape of Wall Street.
How about that? Well the G7 leaders are just tickled pink about all this bailing out too.
Once again, good work you greedy whores.

Pictured below...European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs Joaquin Almunia attends a news conference after the Slovakia Euro Changeover conference in Bratislava does the cabbage patch.

Not who you may have thought was running

There is Joan Krupa, and there is Joanna Krupa - just wait until you get an eyeful of her.
The first is the Republican candidate for the Illinois House of Representatives 92nd District.
The other is a Playboy cover girl who once was a dancer on "The Man Show" and posed nude in a controversial PETA ad entitled, "I'd Rather Go Naked than Wear Fur."
Lately, the two names have been confused locally, at least with those who are doing Internet searches to learn something about Joan Krupa, the 92nd District candidate.
Uh...So let me extrapolate this for you....29 year old super models would win lots of votes if they ran for office. How about that.
Joanna Krupa, FTW. Yeah, don't even try to Google that at work.

Dinner plans save Pakistan's rulers from hotel bomb attack

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Pakistan's president, prime minister and other Cabinet members were supposed to have been at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad when a massive truck bomb detonated outside, killing 57 and injuring 266, Pakistan's head of the Interior Ministry Rehman Malik said Monday.
Malik said their planned dinner was changed at the last minute, although did not say how far in advance it had been planned.
If it was anything like how we plan our lunches at work, the conversation went something like this...
Do you want Mexican or Chinese?
I had Chinese last night. I don't care.
And I had Mexican last night.
You guys want sandwiches? I don't care.
Sure, I don't care.
So do you guys want sandwiches or something else?
I don't care.
Okay let's have gyros...
I don't want gyros.
I thought you didn't care?
Well I don't want gyros.
So what do you want?
I don't care.
Driver head back to Quiznos, we've changed our minds again.
Okay, but don't go to that one on May Avenue.
Ass...You drive next time and you have to pick

I have some advice for Pakistan's government.
1. Don't go out to dinner in the same damn car.
2. Get serious on the bastards that did this despicable act.
3. Kill those f@#%ing terrorists. Kill them with extreme prejudice.
4. Show them no quarter. They won't show you any.

Hitler was a Galaxy Fan

DDDN Welcomes Oktoberfest

Oktoberfest waitress Babsi carries beer mugs during the first day at Munich's 175th Oktoberfest in Munich September 20, 2008. Millions of beer drinkers from around the world will come to the Bavarian capital Munich for the world's biggest and most famous beer festival, the Oktoberfest.

"Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." - Benjamin Franklin