In the internet world the people are represented by two separate but equally important groups…the idiots who say stupid things on the internet and the folks with a clue who are responsible for ridiculing them. These are their stories.

You’ve probably…well if you’ve watched the boob tube anytime since 1990 and seen any of the various incarnations of Dick Wolf’s show…seen and heard that line…and you’ve probably read about how their stories are “ripped from the headlines”.

So…today’s post will offer up a few of those loony tune stories…and being an equal opportunity user of the clue stick…race, gender, political party or any other way you can categorize people is irrelevant…today’s stories are just about idiots. As Neil has noted on several occasions…you just can’t make this sh** up.

Storm wise…we’re pretty much back to normal. Our two downed trees are…mostly…gone…and the remains removed. The landscaping folks still need to do the stump grinding part and the putting down sod part of the fix but they’re concentrating on getting the heavy debris and dangerous trees gone first then they’ll be back around to do the rest. We also need to still get our lanai screen fixed but that’s probably going to be awhile since about 100,000 of our closest friends need the same sort of repair. And since we lost almost all of our shrubbery out front…we’re going to put in some earth tone gravel instead of mulch out there and either new, more storm resistant plants or perhaps just some lawn decorations of some sort…we haven’t fully decided yet. Of course…being in a community with an HoA…we have to get approval for all of that…so Neil submitted the online application today for the gravel and new shrubs, of which there’s an already approved list to choose from.

Ok…on to our idiots of the week…each and every one of these stories came straight from the keyboards of our ‘journalists’…and believe me, journalism is today almost an extinct profession. Back in the day…Walter Cronkite told us the news without commentary because in his words “that’s the way it is”…and the man never, ever let his personal biases impact on his reporting of the facts and news. He was actually pretty darned far left politically and was pretty socialist in outlook…but you simply couldn’t tell it by his wording on the CBS Evening News. Today…journalism is about dead…almost every one of the so called journalists we have today are really political commentators on one side or the other and the facts aren’t really relevant to them professing their desired point of view and/or outcome. Add in the tendency of media on both sides to deliberately mis-state whatever facts they actually provide or to insinuate they’re really worse than they actually are by their choice of wording…and I guess almost everybody would agree that journalism is a lost art.

This person…reports that they make $350K per year but because they have $88K in student loans, $170K in car loans, and a 4,500 per month mortgage that they’re living paycheck to paycheck and simply need help and financial advise to survive. Now I dunno about you…but I find it hard to feel sorry for a person with a $350K annual income who says they’re broke. A pair of cars costing $85K each…mebbe they shoulda got cheaper cars instead of Teslas? And how about buying a cheaper house…or perhaps establishing and sticking to a budget?

Out in Michigan…
this mother…apparently had some discussions with her local school board over their remote learning during the pandemic. Her son has special needs and his GPS went from 3.5 down to 1.5 during the shutdown…so she was advocating for returning to in-person schooling. According to the article…the author has seen the zoom recordings and emails and finds nothing threatening in them…but nonetheless the school board retaliated by contacting her employer and the Justice Department for her ‘threats’. 

I know you’ve all read about those horrible conservatives trying to suppress the vote…but it turns out that the
State Supreme Court in Delaware has tossed out…unanimously…a new state law that allows same day voter registration and extends vote by mail to every registered voter. The court said simply that the law violates the state constitution…so don’t you think that perhaps the legislature would have thought about that and researched it before passing an unconstitutional law? Naturally one party in the suit there is happy that the court followed the state constitution and the other side (that lost) is decrying the limitations on the right to vote. Seems to me that any legislature that passes and any governor that signs a clearly unconstitutional law…well, they are just morons.

Out in the PRC…a man named Phillip White has filed a class action suit against Winston-Salem NC based TW Garner Food Company who makes a product you may have heard of…Texas Pete Hot Sauce. Turns out that this stuff is actually made in NC…but because it’s got a star on the label as well as a lassoing cowboy…not to mention the name…anyways old Phillip has been woefully wronged by the fact that it’s not actually made in Texas…but he thinks if they give him a lot of money he can be made whole.

Over in
Italy…the incoming government has stated they will crack down on border security and illegal immigration…because it’s the law of the land over there. The Pope however…has declared this action to be criminal according to the article. Seems like following the law is the exact opposite of criminal…but what do I know.

Another one for out in the PRC…and this one is obviously designed for people that already have everything and have way too much disposable income…digital license plates. Yes…apparently your standard painted metal plate is no longer adequate for the Tesla crowd…so you can now have a digital license plate…for the mere price of another $215 a year in addition to your normal license fees.

CVS…yes, the drug store chain…has decided to reduce the price of menstrual products by 25% to…you guessed it…but then actually you probably didn’t actually guess it…combat the dreaded “tampon tax” that Texas has…or at least one might think that based on then article headline. On actual reading of the article…it turns out that in the state of Texas menstrual product purchase incur sales tax just like most other things you buy in the state. Now this isn’t a “tampon tax” at all but just your normal everyday sales tax. But never mind that…something called the Texas Menstrual Equity Coalition…anyways they want the state to stop charging sales tax on these products and instead classify the products as “wound care products” on which one does not pay any sales tax. Now I understand that in some cases a state may choose to not charge sales tax on certain classes of goods…and really that is a matter that individual state legislatures are have authority in…see the section in the Constitution about ‘all others not granted to the federal government are retained by the states’…but really…classifying menstrual products as ‘wound care’? Now granted Ima boar and now a sow…so I have essentially no need for these products…but I’m pretty sure that most humans of the feminine persuasion would not classify their ‘that time of the month’ as a wound. Pain in the butt…sure…but not a wound. Mebbe there should be a counter organization established in Texas…maybe the Texas Condom Equity Coalition…I dunno.

And the last one for today come from the
state of PA…and I really have trouble understanding why they have such a hard time following the actual law. Now…like it or not…state election rules are (according to the constitution) delegated to the states to establish with the exception that Congress may levy additional requirements (which they have not done in this case). And like it or not…the state legislature established long ago a requirement that mail in ballots must be properly dated and signed on the outer envelope. For state elections officials to follow this law is…completely legal in this case…and the requirement is not aimed at voter suppression…it is simply a requirement that your mail in ballot be signed and dated or else it will not be counted. Now despite this requirement…during the pandemic somebody decided that the requirement was an extraneous administrative requirement and therefore was not required to be followed. I’m not sure how whoever decided this figured that they personally had the ability to direct elections to NOT FOLLOW THE LAW…but they did. Naturally…lawsuits ensued and both the state Supreme Court and the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that the state was not required to FOLLOW THE LAW…which seems insane to me. If the law is constitutional then it must be obeyed until it is repealed…that’s the way the law works. And naturally…this decision was appealed to the US Supreme Court who ruled that the case is moot and that the state should…umm…follow the darned law as written. Not to be dismayed by this…the acting secretary of state in PA has directed local elections officials to disregard both the US Supreme Court, the law, and the US Constitution which says that election laws are to be established by the legislature. Nuts I tellya.

I’m actually just fine with mail in ballots…and frankly don’t care if a state allows everyone to use one regardless of reason…but making sure that the ballot is properly executed in accordance with state law and that rules are in place to ensure that each citizen votes once and only once…seems perfectly reasonable to me. State elections officials telling their subordinates to simply ignore the law rather than getting the legislature to repeal or change the law is just nuts…but then at least to those of us in the middle the far left isn’t interested in following the law as written but in getting their way…but then to be fair the far right seems to have the same view. Me…I think the law is the law and the constitution is the constitution and they say what they say…and if you don’t like what they say there are legally established methods of changing either the law or the constitution…and insisting that it’s “too hard to do it the right way” is just insane.

See…I toldya ya couldn’t make this up…

Ok…on to interesting things found on the net.

So…guess what this…

Yeah…I know what it looks like…but it is actually not a picture of some musical notes…it’s a drone shot taken from directly overhead of some cross country skiers either early in the morning or late in the afternoon so there shadows are really long. Once you know that…then it’s pretty easy to figure out that’s what it really is.

Well…except for the guy who actually wondered what the music the notes the skiers were making would sound like…which
you can find here.

Somebody…had a really, really bad day here.

Lockers in a Roman Catholic school.

And over in Utrecht, The Netherlands…there’s a building named the Stationsplein which has…
12,500 parking places…for bicycles.

Neil thought this one was interesting…it shows all of the river basins in the US and the areas they drain…the Mississippi and it’s tributaries are by far the largest.

This is the control room of the German submarine UB-101…it was a WWI class boat ab out 175 feet long and 500 tons in displacement. The little hatch is the opening to the periscope well where the CO went to aim his torpedoes. There aren’t that many valves in a nuclear submarine control room…and today the valves are numbered and color coded to help identify what is what.

And finally…one from our recent storm down here in FL. Our trusty weather woman…Kyla Galer from station WBBH in Fort Myers was out in the story doing her live shot thing…and decided she needed to keep her microphone dry.

An anchor back in the studio for another station WZVN…Jeff Butera…tweeted her picture and wondered just what that was on her microphone.

Kyla’s response…it’s a condom…nothing better to waterproof your microphone.

Cyas.