- From the “Rules” Department – A woman in Texas was shot recently when the handgun her husband was reloading went off. The woman was hit in the abdomen, but the wound was not lethal. In related news, a student at a firearms class in Ohio was struck in the arm when the .38 caliber handgun his instructor was demonstrating with went off. In the second instance, it appears that the bullet bounced off of furniture before hit the student, but the instructor seems to be claiming he didn’t know the gun was loaded. Guys, the Four Rules are there for a reason. We all have lapses in concentration or make mistakes, and you usually have to break more than one rule before someone gets hurt. But that doesn’t mean that “I didn’t know it was loaded” or “I didn’t mean to point it at her” mean a darned thing. When we pick up our guns, we assume an awesome responsibility, and complacency ends up with people hurt. We need to police ourselves so that we don’t give someone else an excuse to police us.
- From the “Get a Rope” Department – A hospital technician who spread hepatitis across multiple states is facing between 30 and 40 years in jail. You see, Dr. Kildare was aware that he was infected with hepatitis C, but continued to self-inject the painkillers he was issued and then refill the syringes with water. I hope that his work in prison includes having to powerwash feed lots or something just as foul. Because of his inability to control himself, hundreds of people are at risk of coming down with a debilitating disease and at least one of them has died.
- From the “Misinformation” Department – Apparently keeping track of the finances of Detroit isn’t the only thing that city’s government has trouble doing. Billboards around the city have in incorrect date for upcoming elections. City officials are playing this down as a mistake on the part of the company that put up the signs, but the evil part of me wants to think that the best way to make sure only the ‘right’ people vote is to tell the ‘wrong’ people an incorrect date to go to the polls.
- From the “Constitutional Crisis” Department – The Obama administration has taken it upon itself to decide which parts of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, it will enforce and which ones it won’t. This time, it has announced that only some parts of the caps on out-of-pocket expenses will be enforced, with the parts that aren’t enforced being delayed until after the 2014 mid-term elections. You know, I seem to remember that the Legislature says what is and isn’t law, the Judiciary says whether laws are constitutional, and the Executive, well, executes the law. Nowhere in the Constitution do I remember a section that says the Executive executes the law if it’s convenient or easy. Now, I’m no constitutional scholar, but it would seem to me that the President and his cho-gi boys are dictating what is and isn’t the law through their actions, and my gut tells me it’s more for political purposes than it is for reasons of feasibility. If they’re not going to enforce laws they like, how much can we trust them to enforce laws that they don’t? Put another way, if they won’t enforce this law, what is going to happen when another administration puts off part of the Clean Water Act or the labor laws because they’re too hard?
- From the “Skeletons in the Closet” Department – A politician in Germany is dropping out of her race after a paper she wrote years ago defending pedophilia surfaced. From the excerpt in the linked article, it’s not hard to believe that this wasn’t an assigned topic, either. If you’re going to discuss how only a child can satisfy you, then you can’t defend yourself very well when called on it. Remember kids, everything you put on the Internet is there forever, and a lot of the things you do off the Internet are being put on there for you. Either don’t do stupid crap in the first place, or learn to deal with every bad decision or harsh word in your life haunting you. Who wants to bet that within the next 20 years a presidential candidate loses because some Facebook posts from college resurface?
- From the “Overreach” Department – A judge in Tennessee is under fire because she changed the first name of a baby from “Messiah” to “Martin”. The parents of the child had not been able to compromise on whose last name to use, and had come to the courts to get a decision. The judge went beyond that request, and changed the first name and middle names as well. The judge’s ruling pretty much confirms that she did so due to her Christian beliefs that there can be only one “Messiah”. Now, I’m a Christian, and I also believe that there is only one spiritual Messiah. However, this jurist took her personal beliefs and imprinted them deeply and harshly upon a situation where they shouldn’t have come into such blatant play. Kids, this is why it’s infinitely better to figure things out on your own. If you go to Solomon to figure out whose baby it is, you will probably not like the outcome.
- From the “What Can Go Wrong?” Department – Security researchers have found an exploitable vulnerability in new lightbulbs. The LED lightbulbs in question are controllable via a wireless network, and apparently it’s possible to disrupt their use remotely. What this means to the average person is that some misanthrope in his mother’s basement could decide to not let you turn on the lights in and around your home or business. How much would it hurt a factory if the lights were to be inoperable, or even worse, unreliably on? I have seen the effects of some of these new bulbs, and they are impressive. I just don’t think I’ll be using light bulbs with an IP address and a web server anytime soon, just as I don’t think I’ll be installing Internet enabled locks for my house.
- From the “Ingratitude” Department – Wounded servicemembers, many in wheelchairs or in new prosthetics, have had to fight to use a convenient dining facility at Walter Reed hospital. Rather than allow these wounded warriors to go down the hall to get a meal, officials tried to force them to travel half a mile on crutches, prosthetics, or wheel chairs to use their meal vouchers at a “food trailer”. When I hear “food trailer”, my mind’s eye sees the “roach coach” that used to bring bad coffee and unhealthy food out to work sites. My guess is that this decision is related to the need to cut spending, and yet again it’s the parts of the military that aren’t going to either make flag-rank officers look good or satisfy some Congresscritter’s pet project that are being cut. It’s easier to make life miserable for those who don’t squeak too loudly than it is to cut a procurement program or cut some of the perks for generals and admirals. I’m glad that the decision appears to have been reversed, but it’s embarrassing that it was even suggested, much less implemented.
News Roundup
Posted by daddybear71 on August 15, 2013
https://daddybearsden.com/2013/08/15/news-roundup-201/
Previous Post
Thought for the Day
Thought for the Day
Next Post
Today’s Earworm
Today’s Earworm
Comments are closed.
DaddyBear
DaddyBear’s Den 