Love on the rocks

Ex-lovers in charge when ship crashed
Report blames total safety system breakdown
Cindy E. Harnett, Canwest News Service, with files from Reuters
Published: Thursday, March 13, 2008
VICTORIA - As the Queen of the North ferry sped toward the rocks of Gil Island off B.C.'s northwest coast, the two crew members in charge of the vessel at the time were deep in a personal discussion with the bridge lights dimmed and music playing in the background -- oblivious to the danger.
Former lovers 4th officer Karl Lilgert and quartermaster Karen Bricker had ended their affair just weeks before. The doomed voyage was their first shift together since their breakup.
Those intimate details were part of a much-anticipated Transportation Safety Board report released yesterday, nearly two years after the BC Ferries ship sank on March 22, 2006, killing two passengers.
Rumours that a romantic relationship contributed to the accident have circulated for a long time, and the TSB refused to provide more details on the pair's conversation -- saying only that the bridge crew co-operated fully with the investigation.

Maybe she was studying English

I've been accused of hogging the bathroom in my day, but this is unbelieveable.

NESS CITY, Kan. - Authorities are considering charges in the bizarre case of a woman who sat on her boyfriend’s toilet for two years — so long that her body was stuck to the seat by the time the boyfriend finally called police.
Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple said it appeared the 35-year-old Ness City woman’s skin had grown around the seat. She initially refused emergency medical services but was finally convinced by responders and her boyfriend that she needed to be checked out at a hospital.

The Sheriff is Mr. Whipple? Any relation to this Mr. Whipple ?

John McCain=Maverick

Bugs Bunny - Oily Hare

A shitty way to learn a language

When I first came to Japan, I came to teach English at a chain of school that was to linguistics what Mickey D's is to haute cuisine. Nova talked a good game, but their real selling point was that they had the lowest prices if you bought enough lessons at once and had schools at every station, which means they are thicker on the ground in a city like Tokyo or Osaka than Tim Horton's in Toronto. They were the biggest employers of foreigners in the country with hundreds of schools and thousands of employees.

It was very much a place ruled by moronic policy manuals and systems designed to squeeze as much money out of customers as possible and there is little good to be said about it. At least I wore a necktie instead of a hairnet, but if you weren't in the glass-walled closet classroom kissing ass flirting entertaining teaching a group of one to three Johns suckers students, or trying to get toddlers to stop punching you in the nuts crying for their mommy being scared of the big pale-skinned blue-eyed giant learn English, you were expected to be in the parlour Voice room kissing ass flirting sarcastically abusing shaking your moneymaker entertaining facilitating English communication among the waiting psychopaths, suckers, random strangers and mental patients off the the street and no I'm not exaggerating students. 

Too make an already too long story shorter, NOVA corkscrewed in for a landing last fall thanks to the sleazy, grasping fuckery of its president and owner, throwing thousands of young foreign teachers out of work after not paying them for a month or more. Suffice to say if this man were to walk into the wrong bar today, he'd get his ass kicked until his nose bled, but I digress.

This week I finally found out what happened to all the lame textbooks the schools had been using since the early 1980s

For those who can't make out the label, this is Let's study English! toilet paper.

Cheaters never prosper
I know you'll be shocked, as I was, to learn that Republicans like to cheat in elections.

16,000 Republicans in Cuyahoga crossed over and voted Democratic in primary
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Amanda Garrett
Cleveland Plain Dealer Reporter
A staggering 16,000-plus Republicans in Cuyahoga County switched parties when they voted in last week's primary. That includes 931 in Rocky River, 1,027 in Westlake and 1,142 in Strongsville. More than a third of the Republicans in Solon and Bay Village switched. Pepper Pike had the most dramatic change: just under half its Republicans became Democrats. And some of those who changed - it's difficult to say how many - could be in trouble with the law.
At least one member of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections wants to investigate some Republicans who may have crossed party lines only to influence which Democrat would face presumed Republican nominee John McCain in November.

All may be fair in love and war, but all is not legal in politics.

Lying on the pledge is a felony, punishable by six to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine.
Election watchers said they don't know any cases that have been prosecuted in Ohio. And it's unlikely the Republican crossovers influenced the outcome since Clinton handily defeated Barack Obama, said Edward Foley, an election-law professor at Ohio State University.

The result isn't always what matters when a crime is committed - attempted robbery and attempted murder are still crimes, as is conspiracy to commit a felony in some cases.

It started a few weeks ago when conservative radio powerhouse Rush Limbaugh suggested that his Republican following cross over during the primary to vote for Clinton. Clinton, Limbaugh argued, would be easier for McCain to beat in November than Obama.
Soon, local morning radio show host Bob Frantz echoed Limbaugh on WTAM AM/1100, and the buzz began to grow.

The Republicans managed to steal Ohio in the last presidential election (see Greg Palast's Armed Madhouse or his explanation here of how votes don't always get counted. As Stalin said "its not the people who vote that counts, its the people who count the votes") The Democrats should be screaming about this and demanding that people be prosecuted for breaking election laws. The lengths to which these scofflaws will go to cling to power really knows no bounds.

.... ... ... door ... ... .. ... ass .. .... way out - I'm sure you can fill in the blanks
In what I'm sure was a moment of emotional conflict for Jon Stewart, it was revealed today that grating, talentless, preening hack with pretentions of intellectual adequacy Tucker Carlson will no longer have his own extended version of the two-minute hate on MSNBC.

And there was much rejoicing.

Children of the Corn

Rep. Steve King (not exactly as pictured) announces that

He Who Walks Behind The Rows has commanded him

to stand for a fourth term in Congress.

How do people this stupid manage to get out of the house in the morning without cutting their own wrists on the mirror they shatter trying to grab " that guy I keep seeing in the bathroom" and do they really think there are people even stupider than them that will fall for their "klever planz"?

Lawmaker: Terrorists to cheer Obama win
By James Beltran
Associated Press Writer
/ March 7, 2008
DES MOINES, Iowa—An Iowa Republican congressman said Friday that terrorists would be "dancing in the streets" if Democratic candidate Barack Obama were to win the presidency.
Rep. Steve King based his prediction on Obama's pledge to pull troops out of Iraq, his Kenyan heritage and his middle name, Hussein.
"The radical Islamists, the al-Qaida ... would be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on Sept. 11 because they would declare victory in this war on terror," King said in an interview with the Daily Reporter in Spencer, Iowa. King said his comments were not meant to demean Obama but to warn how an Obama presidency would look to the world.
"His middle name does matter," King said. "It matters because they read a meaning into that."

The AP gets it wrong, sort of. King was not being interviewed by the Daily Reporter, but speaking on radio at the time of his incredibly assinine remarks. Read the original piece for the pure unadulterated wingnuttery.

The Carpetbagger report gives us the story and then turns Rep. King into Swiss cheese with the machine gun of truth pumping out bullets made of all the other vile and stupid things King has said in the past

There are many good things about Iowa worthy of admiration, the Iowa Writer's Workshop not the least of them. People there should do the right thing and vote for anyone other than Steve King in November.