I’ve got Fox News on this morning. Whenever there’s been something big happening, I like to turn it on to hear what the Fox News viewers might be ranting about later in the day and what their talking points are going to be.

While I was in the kitchen kneading my bread dough, I heard one of their chirpy female talking heads ask “Was there a plot to poison the food at Fort Jackson?” in that breathless way they do that always feels like so much sh*t-stirring. I went and paused the TV so I could finish up the bread kneading.

When I got back to the TV, I watched the little five or so minute report on whether or not there was a plot by students in the translator’s program to poison the food at Fort Jackson. End result? There have been no arrests, no one has been detained, the Army has investigated (and has been since December, so it’s actually old news anyway), and they found no credible evidence to suggest anyone was trying to poison the food at Fort Jackson.

So the answer to the chirpy talking head’s question is … NO.

They still managed to get excited about it anyway with a fair amount of hand-waving, raised eyebrows, and rhetorical questions that have no answers. They do love the rhetorical question method of modern journalism. I can play that game too. Do Fox News journalists have brains? Tune in later to find out!

And what they haven’t mentioned this morning is a freaking plane flying into a building in Austin while being piloted by an anti-tax, anti-religion, anti-union, pro-healthcare lunatic. Sort of odd, since the rest of the world does seem to be talking about it this morning. I guess they just don’t know how to label or pigeonhole him to suit their talking points. No, they’d rather babble on and on about Tiger Woods putting his penis in the vaginae of women who were not his wife.

If I read one more blog post or online comment describing the guy who flew the plane into the Eschelon Building as oppressed, I will have to write a screed of my own. Anyone who thinks someone doing well enough to move across the country, start his own business, buy a house in a very nice neighborhood, drive a nice car, own his own airplane, and can pay a CPA to sort out his independent-contractor tax forms for him is “oppressed” needs look out the window of their ivory tower every so often … maybe even travel the world a little without staying in five-star hotels. There’s a world full of true oppression out there, and this guy isn’t a poster child for it.

It’d be funny if they weren’t being serious, but they are. Sorry, but I’m having a hard time feeling any sympathy for this poor, oppressed white guy who decided that leaving his wife and kid homeless –not to mention his wife was teaching piano out of their home, so now she’s also unemployed– likely still with an expensive tax issue to sort out, and very likely no insurance payouts for any of it seeing as he destroyed his own house, crashed his own plane, and took his own life. That’s true love!

And as if taking his own life and destroying anything of worth his surviving family might have used to live on without him, he also decides to fly his plane into a building full of people who probably never did any damn thing to him other than suggest he pay taxes on his unreported income. As far as I am concerned, he was nothing more than a selfish asshole more concerned with money than anything else and with a decent dose of crazy on the side. No, not oppressed, and certainly not the beginning of a slave revolt (as I read on one journal I will no longer be reading). If this guy was an oppressed slave, then what the hell does that make the vast majority of the rest of us?

And since owning your own plane is apparently a middle-class thing, when do I get mine? Never you say?! Come see the oppression inherent in the system!

NOTE: I have just gotten some new information on this whole mess, and once I totally verify it and have the time to sit and rant, there will, in fact, be a standard Just Orb rant about it. All you need to know right now is that this guy was a LOSER and was in trouble with the IRS for pretty much his entire adult life, not because the IRS is evil, but because this guy was an asshole who just didn’t want to pay taxes. But yeah, more later on the poor oppressed tax-evading airplane owner.

The guy who flew the plane into the building was a software engineer originally from California, who snapped over continuing tax problems. What kind of tax problems? It seems he kept trying to not pay them.

I’m sure we’ll get plenty more information as this tale unfolds, but the screed he left behind is worth a read.

Pretty much, the dude was crazy. Maybe smart, but definitely crazy.

It never fails that the day I turn off the local news right after Lin leaves and then stop paying attention to my computer, that would be when something BIG happens a couple miles from my house. Apparently, Lin and I are the last humans in the USA to hear about the crazy buy setting his house on fire, hopping into a plane, and crashing it into the IRS building over on 183.

Interestingly, I know exactly what I was doing at the moment he flew the plane into the building. I was on the bed, playing with the cats. I heard something at just about the right time for it to have been the plane flying into a building, but it didn’t sound serious enough or close enough or even dangerous enough to warrant a second thought. It sort of sounded like the trains do late at night when they are doing whatever it is trains do on the tracks over there (adding cars or something – loud thumping, crashing sounds) or the sound of the dumpsters being emptied at the nearby shopping center. It’s entirely possible, if not highly likely, that the plane flew over my house, but so many planes fly over my house on a regular basis I don’t even notice them anymore.

I’ve got the TV news on in the background, and I guess I’ll go see what the hell is going on in my hometown today.

One of the people on Olbermann’s Worst Person in the World list was a congressman who shot a raccoon after it had repeatedly tried to break into his house. I couldn’t figure out what particular thing in the story I was supposed to be outraged about. That he owned guns? That he uses guns? That he killed a raccoon? That when describing the event on Twitter, he’d used the word ‘coon to describe, well, a raccoon? Which angle was I expected to burn with rage about?

Problem is, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) late this morning has criticized King, with spokesman Jaime Zalac saying King should not have dispatched “a small animal seeking warmth in another blizzard,” a second Roll Call piece relates.

“I would hope he’s not on any (House) committees that make decisions regarding cruel and unusual punishment. Decent people would call animal control for help, not get on Twitter to boast about having a really, really big gun,” Zalac said.

Oh … PETA.

I am more convinced than ever that members of PETA have never lived in the country –or suburb encroaching on animal habitats– and have never met a wild raccoon personally.

Don’t even get me started on the whole “call animal control” thing. This guy doesn’t live in a city, so likely no animal control to call. I live in the urban center of a very large city, and when I call animal control, I get put on a list and their arrival is usually one or more days away. Yeah, that’s helpful.

Too many browser windows open with news stories I will never get to post and babble about, so it’s time for a link dump!

Joe the Plumber, (whose real name is Samuel J. Wurzelbacher) made some harsh statements about Senator John McCain this weekend saying the former GOP presidential candidate “really screwed my life up.”

When one allows someone else to parade them around in front of other humans and TV cameras like a show dog barking out a party line, one can’t blame the other person for screwing up their life. He didn’t have to do it, he doesn’t have to keep doing it, and from all I have heard about him it seems like his life was pretty screwed up before McCain came into his life. Joe, take some responsibility for what’s become of your life. It’s not like anyone forced your fifteen minutes of fame on you.

There’s been a lot of fuss about the full body airport scanners over in the UK. No matter what their transport department says about how carefully the randomness of the selection process for who gets scanned is, the only non-discriminatory way to use them –or any of the security stupidity at airports– is to put everyone through all of it. Sure, everyone would have to get to the airport a day early, but it’d be fair and who knows what sort of crazies we’d catch!

Speaking of security stupidity at airports:

Did you hear about the Camden cop whose disabled son wasn’t allowed to pass through airport security unless he took off his leg braces?

You’ll just have to read the article. If I start commenting on this story, I won’t stop, and I don’t have the time today to rant at length. Seriously, this is well beyond stupid and far into the outer planes of outright idiocy, if not cruelty.

Don’t be shocked if you can’t find your favorite salad dressing or mouthwash on your next trip to Wal-Mart.

Large retailers — including Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500), the world’s biggest — are wrestling with having too many types of brand-name products. At the same time, shoppers are buying less and looking for bargains.

Yes, I have noticed this happening, though not at Walmart since I don’t shop there. It’s definitely been happening at my neighborhood grocery store for a couple of months, and it’s beginning to make me angry. My favorite dish soap (a major, major brand) comes and goes on a regular basis, and many of the brands I have spent a great deal of time researching and selecting are vanishing from the shelves. I will not buy store brands, no matter how cheap they become. They are poorly labeled, and I have no idea where they come from, where the product inside was grown/created, and the quality is always crap. If this trend continues, it’s not going to push me to buying store brands or generics. It will push me to becoming even less dependent on grocery stores for products, which wouldn’t be a bad thing.

And in closing … the Austin Zoo has baby lions!!! I have GOT to go see them. It is imperative. I’ve never seen a baby lion up close (or even in person at all), and at the Austin Zoo, everything is up close and personal. Must have photos of baby lions!

Globetrotting CNN anchor Anderson Cooper is often at the scene of danger, but he allegedly overlooked a potentially deadly hazard in the Greenwich Village firehouse he’s converting into a new home.

A 29-year-old interior designer is suing Cooper and the company owned by downtown architect and residential real-estate developer Cary Tamarkin after she fell through a hole that once accommodated a fire pole.

I wonder how unobservant one has to be to fall through a readily apparent hole in a floor? It’s not like she was walking along a perfectly solid floor and a hole just opened up beneath her. The hole was there, and she apparently walked right into it. That is, I am sorry to say, completely stupid. If I had to guess, she was probably yakking or texting on her cellphone when it happened and not paying attention to the very large hole that would have been plainly visible in the floor. But I’m sure she’ll get some money out of the situation and be paid for being a ding-dong who can’t stop herself from being too stupid to not walk into an existing hole in a floor and falling through it.

Word of advice to all humans: watch where you’re walking, especially on the second floor of an old fire station undergoing renovation.

What an atrocious example of federal intrusion.

This is yet one more step towards the Feds knocking on your door without a warrant.

This is no longer the United States of America. This is two steps away from a police state.

Those are comments on a news story I read this weekend. What horrible new and invasive policy could they be talking about? What is the government up to now? Eeeek! Well, put on your tin-foil hats.

Apparently, in the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster, or other big emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will monitor certain web sites –like Twitter– for situational awareness and to assist in first responders and law enforcement in making decisions about what needs to be done where. The way people in the comments were carrying on about it, one would think they’d just announced they would be opening everyone’s mail before delivering it or putting cameras in everyone’s living rooms, right?

Here’s a little news flash: if you Tweet it, it’s public. If you comment on a news story, it’s public. In a great many cases, if you post on a blog or forum, it’s going to be public. All of it is the equivalent of standing on a street corner shouting or carrying a placard. I have no expectation whatsoever that anything I post on my blog, on Twitter, or on public forums is private. It’s all out there for anyone to read, even the government. If I or anyone else has a problem with that, then I or anyone else shouldn’t be posting things publicly on the internet. It’s ridiculous to be complaining about someone reading –or as in this case most likely scraping for keywords– information people willingly put out into the public sphere.

What makes a great many of the most outrageous comments on that news story even more hilarious is them screaming about the government monitoring Facebook, which the story explicitly says they aren’t going to do, because they aren’t monitoring any web sites that would require them to log in to view content. Everyone’s Facebook updates and filtered Livejournal posts aren’t on the list. Why, it’s as if some people don’t even bother reading a story before their head explodes and the only thing their two remaining brain cells can get their mouths to sputter is FASCISM, SOCIALISM, NAZI, NAZI, NAZI!

I don’t have a problem with this for two reasons. Twitter and other sources of instant information provided by normal citizens on the scene has proven to be an effective way to know what’s happening on the ground and in the area during a crisis, and most importantly, any information anyone chooses to make public themselves is, well, public. Don’t want the government knowing you just ate a peanut butter sandwich? Don’t Tweet about it. Don’t want the government to know you are a raving loon who posts stupid crap on public web sites, shut the hell up. Though if people stopped commenting on news stories, I would be lacking many great hours of amusement.

And read stories before commenting on them! Not doing so only makes one look more stupid than one is liable to look anyway when insisting that reading Tweets is an invasion of anyone’s privacy.

So many people totally fail at the internet.

We recorded the opening ceremony last night so we could time-shift it a little. We weren’t exactly ready to sit down at 6:30 pm and start watching hours and hours of Olympics stuff, but we did want to watch it, mostly to see what the Canadians came up with to be as good a China from this summer. Not that I remotely believe we will see anything like the Chinese opening ceremonies again in my lifetime.

Well, as soon as the NBC talking heads appeared, the first thing they wanted to talk about was the luge guy that died during practice. That’s cool, because what a sad thing to have happen to someone so young and on the cusp of doing something awesome like competing in the Olympics, but I expected perhaps some photos of him smiling and happy and maybe a bit of information about his life … not the last two seconds of his life –and his death– played in slow motion over and over and over. That was tacky. Really tacky. So tacky on my scale of tacky I will be writing NBC to complain about it. If people want to watch the guy die and look at the video and photographs, trust me, I am certain they could be found on the internet mere moments after it happened.

There was no need at all to broadcast it on the television repeatedly during what most people consider a program suitable for people (and children) who don’t want to see the last two seconds of a young man’s life followed by his horrible death. Tacky. Wrong. We looked away and ate our dinner until it seemed safe to look again, and then we fast forwarded through all the talking heads babbling about it. Some of us are not quite yet like the Romans and don’t find death on our TVs to be entertainment (or even especially educational or newsworthy enough to show). Talk about it, yes. Repeatedly force people to watch it? No. I imagine they lost some viewers by starting their show with that video, at least I would hope so.

Then we got into the videos about Canada which were nice. It’s a beautiful place, if a little too cold for my liking. Finally the actual ceremony began, and while we didn’t want to be poking too much fun at Canada about not matching up to the show China put on, we did snicker a bit and give Canada some grief, especially when the Olympians started coming in after what seemed like a very short program with not much to it. But after it was explained that the director thought since the ceremony was in honor of those Olympians, which it always is really, they should get to watch it, that made total sense. What a wonderful idea! How true that the very people of honor never get to see the opening ceremony as they are usually standing around in the wings waiting to come in. I hope in the future more countries take this to heart and do the same thing.

Finally, the real show began, and it was quite the show! Sure, it wasn’t China, but then Canada isn’t China either. There are nearly as many people living in Texas as live in the whole of Canada, and I think a lot of people forget that. Just because they have a lot of land mass doesn’t mean they are really that large of a country. The ceremony was a fantastic cultural dance and music event, and I was both moved and entertained. The use of lighting effects and projected video was creative and, well, just plain old awesome. Beautiful. I loved it.

My favorite bits of all –other than the incredible dancing and light shows throughout the thing– were the boy “flying” over the plains, the tap-dancing and fiddle-playing Quebecois (is that what they are called, I don’t know), and the slam poetry. Also K.D. Lang turned in an incredible performance of one of my favorite songs, though I don’t know that the song itself was necessarily the right one for an Olympic opening ceremony. Seemed out of place. Of the lighting effects employed, the whales swimming across the floor was so incredibly cool, I will be watching that part again before deleting the recording. And I can’t really give the Canadians grief about the malfunction during the torch lighting. Stuff happens. It’s unfortunate it happened during a huge one-time event, but yeah, stuff happens during large productions. Sucks, but life goes on. It was a great show anyway.

Now I have heard some people poo-pooing the opening ceremonies, because it wasn’t nearly the thing the one in China was. Get over yourselves. Yes, it wasn’t a spectacular spectacular, but it was a well-done, well-designed, well-performed multimedia dance and music event. If you aren’t into theater and ballet, it might have been lost on you, but that’s your problem. Go out and get cultured. Not everything has to be a spectacular spectacular to be awesome.

On a side note: are the people in Quebec as interestingly strange as they seem to be? I think I want to move there. I tap dance, play fiddle, have a tribal tattoo, and I love tartan plaids. I believe I would fit in well. Guess I better start learning French.

Anyway, aside from NBC’s tackiness in starting their coverage right out of the gate with footage that shouldn’t have been repeatedly broadcast, I enjoyed the opening ceremonies quite a lot, and now I have to see what the sporting schedule is so I can make note of when the things I might want to see are on. As many of you know, I’m really not that much into sports of any kind, but there are a few things in both the summer and winter Olympics I do enjoy watching or keeping up with. During the winter games, I do like the various ice skating and ice dancing events, and even before Stephen Colbert got involved with the speed skating team, I always thought it was fun to watch too. The fact Stephen Colbert is all into speed skating right now is just icing on the cake. We’ll probably catch a little hockey as well. Who doesn’t like hockey?

And now I probably need to go make something to eat for the man and myself, and the cats are whining as well. Must be lunchtime!

If anyone can find a shareable video of the slam poetry from the opening ceremony, that would be cool. I’ve been looking, but I haven’t found one yet. I really, really liked the poetry. Fantastic poet with a great skill with words. Here’s the transcript of it, but reading it isn’t at all like hearing it. And here is a Youtube video of it, though not from last night. Last night’s presentation was much better (less rushed).

“Please get me out of this.” As the deputy pulled her toward the holding cell, Hall yelled, “Your honor, I am not guilty. You need to let me go home. You need to let me go home.”

Um, Laura, we aren’t discussing whether or not you are guilty or innocent anymore. Your guilt in the matter has already been determined. You decided to complain about your five year sentence for helping your boyfriend chop up his murder victim’s dead body and then driving him to Mexico, so now you’ve gotten your wish and you will be re-sentenced, and you may not be so lucky to get a mere five years this time around. No matter what sentence you get, you will still and forever be guilty of helping someone chop up the body of someone he killed.

What really gets my goat are people who insist she should get off easy, because she “only” tampered with evidence. Look, it’s not like she hid the murder weapon or wiped off some fingerprints from a doorknob. She helped someone chop up a dead body. Sure, that still falls under the realm of tampering with evidence, but in my world, chopping up the dead body of your boyfriend’s murder victim and then running off to Mexico with him is just about as antisocial and psychotic as murdering someone. Anyone who thinks that’s a crime someone should get off lightly for –since she was a good student and had never been in trouble with the law before– needs to have their own head examined.

I might go check out the re-sentencing trial, if I have the time. Not that I especially seek out gruesome train wrecks to watch, but her lawyer is Joe James Sawyer, and I love seeing him in action. As embarrassing as it is to admit it, I am a lawyer groupie.

Took me a while to find the quote I wanted from Sarah Palin’s Q&A yesterday at the Tea Party Convention. Oddly, the official transcript at Fox News (a Fox person was doing the questioning) didn’t include this question (and may have omitted others as well, I didn’t watch the whole thing myself). Anyway, here’s the official quote for the Sarah Palin Plan I posted about yesterday.

Judson Phillips: We’ve heard of the Obama plan. What’s the Palin plan?

Sarah Palin: The Palin plan? It’s quite simple. And I kind of get a kick out of it, I think it probably drives some of the elitist crazy that I don’t get angry about it I get a kick out of it that when they say I am too simple minded and too plain spoken but my plan is quite simple and that is to support those who understand the foundation of our country. When it comes to the economy it is free market principles that reward hard work and personal responsibility and when it comes to national security as I ratchet down the message on national security, it’s easy to kinda sum it up by repeating Ronald Reagan when he talked about the cold war and we can apply this now to our war on terrorism you know bottom line we win they lose we do all that we can to win.

Yup, my paraphrasing wasn’t too far off the mark or much shorter than her own words. It’s just not much of a plan.

As far as the speech and the rest of the Q&A goes, I have read them, and I can’t even be bothered to rant about such fluffy talking-point nonsense. If you want to know what she said, Time has the highlights, and to be honest, these highlights are about as much meat as can be found on this bone.

Thanks goes to Ribbie’s Weblog for being the first place I found the bit I wanted.

I was just accidentally exposed to Sarah Palin’s Q&A session after her speech at the Tea Party Convention. Lin was in the process of finding something else to watch as quickly as her could, but then, just as he flipped the channel, they asked:

(paraphrased slightly)
We’ve heard about the Obama Plan. What is the Sarah Palin Plan?

I insisted he switch back, because I really wanted to hear Sarah Palin explaining her plan for America.

This will be paraphrased until I get a transcript, but her response was almost as brief. I was expecting a five paragraph explanatory essay, and I got a paragraph.

Free market principles that reward hard work … rah rah rah sis boom bah!

[lengthy cheering]

On national security, we must do whatever it takes to win. We win! They lose! Ronald Reagan … rah rah rah sis boom bah!

[lengthy cheering]

And then they asked the next question.

Seriously. No plan, except free market principles are awesome, and we have to do whatever we must do to win, no matter what, ’cause that’s what Ronald Reagan said during the Cold War. It couldn’t have taken more than five minutes for her to state it, and some of that time was length cheering from the audience.

I’d rant, but I don’t want to harsh the smooth mellow mood I am enjoying at the moment, and I’d suppose I will have to read the entire transcript of her speech and Q&A. I don’t want to, but I feel compelled. At the least, it will be entertaining.

You seem to believe very strongly that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is a very successful program, that while not perfect is effective, and that it works for the majority. Slavery and institutional racism was also a successful “program” that was “effective” and worked for the “majority” as well, except we did eventually realize it was WRONG.^† Hopefully someday you will realize that discriminating against someone due to their sexual preferences is also WRONG and that DADT doesn’t really work, isn’t all that effective (at what, I don’t know), and the majority is mostly over being freaked out by gay people.

Or you could just not get re-elected, which would please me just fine.

Sincerely,
Someone Who Thinks You Need To Retire

Related Links:

McCain says Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is ’successful.’
McCain: ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Has ‘Been Working And I Think It’s Been Working Well’
Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Hearing — Mullen Strong on Repeal
‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ hearings

1. † And don’t even get me started on how well treating women like chattel worked for the majority and was also effective and successful. Really, don’t. [↩]

Yesterday I heard that Cedar Park will be getting a Schlitterbahn. I’m thrilled about that, because I love Schlitterbahn, and having one almost in my back yard will be awesome!

Today I hear that Pflugerville is also getting some sort of waterpark. I’m not really complaining, because hey, I’ll have two competing waterparks within mere miles of my house, which can’t be a bad thing, but … we go forever without any sort of amusement park type thing in the Austin area, in by the end of 2011, we’ll have two waterparks within like 15 miles of each other?! When it rains, it pours. I guess we’ll see if there’s going to be enough business to support two waterparks so close together.

Now I am doubly excited! Not one but two! And both within easy driving distance of my house. Finally, something fun to do other than go to listen to live music, hang out in bars, visit museums, shop, or sit around the house moping.

I suspect we will end up buying season passes for one of them, whichever one ends up being the perfect combination of cheapest and coolest. I also imagine that with two of them competing for customers in such close quarters, there may be some good deals on said season passes. Who knows, maybe we’ll end up with season passes to both and spend all our spare time at waterparks getting prune-skin and sunburns.

I can’t wait!!! I love waterparks!

And who knows, maybe that mythical perfect part time job I would like to find might be at one of these parks too. That’d be cool.