• From the “Anyone Can Sue Anyone” Department – A woman in Texas is suing three airlines for a flight that had bad turbulence.  She claims that she feared for her life and is traumatized.  Does this mean I can sue every helicopter and C-130 pilot who tried his ‘nap of the earth’ flying while I was on board?  Nothing says ‘rough ride’ like a UH-1 being smacked on the undercarriage by the tops of trees.
• From the “15 Months to Go”  Department – First Lady Obama says that she sneaks away from the White House as often as she can, which she asserts gives her a bit of normalcy.  Yeah, normal like every woman has when she’s driven in armored SUV’s, surrounded by security, and photographed by paid journalists.  I hope Mrs. Obama enjoys her excursions, because she will probably be getting a lot of chances after January 2013.
•  From the “Cameron’s Dad’s Car” Department – A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit against the government.  It appears that an FBI agent was taking a Ferrari that was being held as evidence out for a spin and totalled it.  The judge says that the government can’t be held responsible for damage to things being held by law enforcement.  The image I have is two guys giving the Ferrari a workout on the streets of Lexington while “Born to be Wild” plays through the sound system.  
• From the “Here We Go” Department – Police in Germany have found three incendiary devices on rail tracks, one of which exploded and did damage.  A leftist group has claimed responsibility and is demanding that accused WikiLeaks spy Bradley Manning be released.  Hopefully these guys are caught before anyone gets hurt.  Personally, I’m hoping that the law of averages and their own stupidity turns them into a headline when a bomb explodes as they’re assembling it.
• From the “Cell, Inmate, Some Assembly Required” Department – The Nigerian man who tried to blow up an airliner with explosives hidden in his underwear has pled guilty to 8 counts related to the incident.  He’s facing life in prison, and I hope it’s spent in a place built before the theory of rehabilitation being superior to punishment was put into practice.  His little escapade is the rationale for wide use of pervo-tron scanners and ‘enhanced’ pat-downs.

A Navy SEAL stationed in California has been convicted of trafficking smuggled weapons, military gear, and explosives:

Prosecutors accused Bickle of controlling the sale of military hardware ranging from ammunition to night-vision goggles and high-tech rifle targeting scopes. They made closing arguments to the jury amid an array of AK-47 and M92 machine guns, a sniper rifle, a wheeled footlocker with a false bottom and handguns including Ruger 9mm weapons of the type used by the U.S. military.

Not sure if the “Ruger 9mm weapons” is a mistake or if some unit of the military are indeed carrying Rugers instead of Berettas.   From the sounds of it, someone was either buying stuff on the open market and smuggling it into the country or was re-directing military aid intended for the Iraqi armed forces.  Either way, he’s going to be spending a long time trying to figure out where he went wrong.

Next, the son of the Louisville police department chief has been arrested for allegedly assaulting his wife:

According to a police report, White, III and his wife got into an argument about divorce in the 13,000 block of Aiken Road and he slapped his wife in the face with the back of his hand. His wife tried to get out of the car, but White, III grabbed a hold of her arm and wouldn’t let her out of the car. He then punched his wife in the face with a closed fist. He then threatened to kill his wife and her family. His wife managed to escape by jumping out of a the moving car.

 I have lot of respect for Chief White.  I’ve seen a lot of deadwood finding its way out of the LMPD since he came along, and he seems to run a pretty clean shop.  It will be interesting to see how things go now that his son is on the wrong side of a cell door.

An Iranian American is in jail and a member of the Iranian Qods Force is on the run after being caught conspiring to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States and bomb other locations in Washington.  The Obama administration seems to be taking the radical steps of clearing its throat repeatedly, giving a dirty look across the hall at the United Nations, and possibly even huffing a bit.    I mean, it’s not like the Iranians were planning on using a mass casualty weapon in a public place to murder a foreign diplomat under our protection or anything.

The trial of the Nigerian man who tried to blow up an airliner using explosives hidden under his wedding tackle has begun.  He has apparently decided to represent himself in court, because setting his genitals on fire wasn’t enough evidence of him being a fool, I guess.   I hope he gets a fair trial, good deliberation by his jury, and then spends the rest of his life looking at the mess he made of his junk.  Dude, Semtex and Underoos just don’t mix!

A man in Great Britain who was facing possible murder charges for defending himself and his home has been cleared of all charges.  He was attacked in his home, fought for his life, and eventually stabbed one of the intruders six times.

Good for him.  Rather than passively allow his home, his property, and his life to be violated, he fought off two invaders and came away alive, as did his family which came home during the incident.  For doing what any person has a right to do, he risked spending the rest of his life in jail.  Now he can go about the rest of his life without worrying that some overly zealous prosecutor will come looking for him.

Maybe there’s hope for Great Britain yet.

• Jails do not have freely available telephones so that you can call your mama on her birthday while incarcerated.  Someone is always listening.
• Hanging out with people who swim in excrement will tend to get you splashed at the most inopportune moments.
• The time for crying at the defendant’s table and showing remorse is not after you’ve been convicted.
• Book list for jury duty – Hard Magic, Dead Six, The Hobbit, and half of King Leopold’s Ghost
• Reading about the Belgian Congo while waiting for jury selection does not do much for your faith in humanity.
• Bourbon chicken goes very well with bourbon and coke.
• Siamese cats crave bourbon chicken.  Bourbon and coke, well, not so much.
• Kentucky sure is a nice place to live in October.
• Highway Patrol Math – Two cars in a wreck times one car of a witness equals six cruisers, one ambulance, three wreckers, and two blocked lanes of traffic.
• When water coloring a picture with a 3 year old, the goal seems to be to make the water as chromatic as the painting.
• Didn’t get chosen for the fish and wildlife department quota hunts this year.  Better luck next year.  Still waiting on word about the Fort Knox hunt.  
• Boo has discovered Lincoln Logs. Time for me to relive a part of my childhood.

• From the “Shot in the Arm” Department – President Obama is asserting that the economy needs a “jolt”.  Apparently his idea of a macro-economic AED is to tax productive people, give money to failing businesses run by big Democrat donors, and whine about the Republican meanies who tried to bring his proposal for a vote in the Senate.  Mr President, all I can is this:  Live by the political sword, die by the political sword.  You all spent the first two years of your presidency playing unnecessary political games while you had a majority in both houses of Congress.  Now that your position is much weaker, don’t be looking for sympathy when you don’t get what you want just by asking.  Negotiation from a position of strength is not “scoring political points”.  People tell me you’re a hardcore politician from the Chicago machine.  Put on your big boy pants, grow up, and start acting like a leader or shut up and let the grown-ups lead the country.
• From the “Dumbass at 35,000 Feet” Department – A Saudi man caused a bit of a disturbance on a flight yesterday when he tried to force his way into the cockpit. Apparently he was escorted back to his seat and then off of the plane.  I’m not surprised that this happened.  It could be a mistake, or someone who was confused, or it could be a dry run. What I am surprised at is that it didn’t take a back board and a gurney to get the guy off the plane.  No offense, but someone trying to break into the cockpit on an airliner during a flight should be the international trigger event for a beatdown.
• From the “Huh?” Department – A teenage girl in Minnesota was arrested recently after a neighbor’s camera took pictures of her using the pet door in his house to come in and rob him.  The young lady says that she did this so that she could get money to buy pornography.  Man, there’s a lot going on there.  My question is this:  Do people still pay for porn?  I had no idea.
• From the “Compromised Asset” Department – A government commission in Pakistan has recommended that a doctor who reportedly assisted the CIA in tracking down Osama bin Laden be tried for treason.  I’m assuming that like most third world crapholes, the penalty for treason in Pakistan, that bastion of liberal democracy, is death.  Apparently the old rule about not discussing how you gather intelligence or do bad things to bad people still holds true:  Press conferences and reporters who should know better but still give details about these things cause the deaths of real people.  The administration’s rush to cover itself in glory and spill all the juicy details of the work to find, fix, and finish bin Laden pretty much condemned this guy to either a noose or a bullet in the back of the head.  Good job guys!  Now you’ll have one more thing to put in the fund raising letter and have something to discuss at the next mixer.  Schmucks

• From the “Blasphemy!” Department – A man in New Orleans has put a sign depicting President Obama in diapers in his yard.  Protesters, including former mayor Ray Nagin, have gathered to try to get him to take it down.  A bright spot here is that the police have refused to force him to take it down.  Score one for the 1st Amendment.  Apparently political lampooning is off limits now.  It’s not like anyone ever put up signs making President Bush look like a chimp or anything.
• From the “No Kidding?” Department – A study asserts that 1 in 25 people in management are psychopaths.  The authors suggest that if a person works for a boss that is charming, manipulative, and feels no guilt for using people as speed bumps for public transportation, they should find other employment.  If only 4% of bosses are psycho’s, why is it that my percentage is so much higher?  There’s a chestnut about how the common thread in all your bad relationships is you, so it must be my fault that at least half the people I’ve worked for were of the pulling-wings-off-flies demographic.
• From the “Snacking Ursine” Department – A bear in British Columbia strolled into a pizza restaurant, ate a pizza at the counter, and then left.  I guess the problem is that he didn’t leave a tip.  Officials say to be on the lookout for a bear with garlic breath and looking for a cold beer.
• From the “Don’t Mess With Nona” Department – An 88 year old woman in Italy ran off a thief the other day by yelling at him that he should be ashamed of himself and that he should go out and get a job.  My image of this is an old, bent woman wearing all black beating a young man about the head and shoulders with her cane while yelling in rapid Italian.  Too bad she didn’t have a gun, because this would have been a great addition to the DGC.

Hey Fox News, welcome to Facebook, two months ago!

America’s ever-growing debt crisis is in the trillions — more than $14 trillion, give or take a few billion.

That’s a lot of zeros, numbers so large they’re sure to make Americans numb when trying to get their arms around what it means to them.

But what would the federal debt crisis look like if you set it up as a household budget?

Is it just me, or does Fox seem to be doing a lot of news stories that are rehashed blog posts lately? I’ve seen this in my feed on Facebook too many times to count since the last budget ‘crisis’.

At least it’s getting to something like the mainstream media that a family that spent money like the federal government does would be homeless in less than a month.

• From the “Yellow Submarine, Orange Crocodile” Department – A crocodile in Australia names “Snappy” has turned orange after eating the water filter in his enclosure.  Reptile scientists believe that the filter itself wasn’t what caused the technicolor treatment, but rather it was tannins or other substances in the water.  So we have an organically orange dyed crocodile.  Next, I’d like to see a tie-dyed komodo dragon for when you really need to wonder if something got put in your Coke.
• From the “Big Iron” Department – Oracle Corporation, picking a little flesh from the carcass of SUN Microsystems, announced a new high-end server and cluster configuration based on a new SPARC chipset.  For you non-geeks out there, this would be like GM announcing the 2012 Hummer after everyone else in the world has abandoned humongous SUV’s.  Oracle appears to want to appeal to the enterprise with too much money to burn.  Commodity x86 based servers are eating away at the market for database and application servers at the expense of large servers from HP and IBM. With clustering software that allows high-performance work to be spread across multiple cheap systems instead of one expensive box, I don’t see this going too far.  SUN and DEC went out of business because the same result could be had for less, and HP is pretty much abandoning the HPUX on Itanium market, so unless Larry Ellison knows something I don’t, I don’t see much coming out of this product line.  This is a case of the expensive ‘superb’ competing with the cheap ‘good enough’.
• From the “On Belay!” Department – Engineers from the National Park Service will be rappelling down the side of the Washington Monument to look for damage caused by the earthquake that shook the East Coast earlier this year.  I wish them luck and a safe time of it.  I will personally buy a beer to the first man or woman who does down the side of the Washington Monument Australian-style.  I’ll buy two if they wear a helmet cam.  I’ll buy them a case if BRM posts about it alongside his wing-suit series.
• From the “Common Sense Not So Common” Department – A colonial-era re-enactor was arrested and held for 24 hours in a Washington D.C. jail because he had his 18th century flintlock rifles in his truck when he was pulled over by the police.  After being kept in jail for 24 hours, he was released without charges, and his property was returned to him.  There’s also the possibility that he was pulled over and searched because he and his vehicle fit a “profile”.  Must have been that  “Balding white guy in an SUV with a wife and kids” terrorist demographic we’ve all grown to fear.  I’m sure that a middle-aged man with a single-shot, muzzle-loading, black powder rifle is a threat to the security of the president.   So much for FOPA.  This is one of the reasons I’m considering a Ford for my next vehicle.  They have a keypad on the door in some models, so you don’t have to have the key to unlock the door.  Get out of the car, lock the door, toss the key in, close the door, and tell Officer Fife to get a warrant.

• From the “Blackbird Pie” Department – A magpie in Australia has been relocated to an undisclosed location after attacking a young boy and possibly blinding him.  Relocation?  Is there a magpie relocation program in Australia?  Is the magpie now living in a small grove under an assumed name and species?  Are shotguns that tightly controlled in Oz?
• From the “Catch a Clue” Department – A man in Florida was arrested for DUI when he drove his car after being warned not to by a police officer.  Dude, when Officer Friendly is telling you that you probably shouldn’t be driving, that’s a hint and a half right there.  
• From the “No Kidding?” Department – Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has announced that he will run for president of the Russian Federation next year.  Show of hands:  Who is actually surprised by this?  If Putin is successful, and there is every reason to believe that he will be, then he could be the head man of Russia for another 12 years.  Putin first came to power as the Prime Minister in 1999, so if he does the full 12, he will have been in power for 25 years the next time this question comes up.  Last person to do that long a stretch in charge in Russia was Stalin.  
• From the “Nothing to See Here” Department – A Saudi Man has been arrested after he tried to check several undeclared weapons on a flight from New York to Riyadh.  This was his checked baggage, so I doubt he was going to try to hijack the aircraft, but then again, a bunch of tazers and a can of mace is a good way to see if airport security would notice pressurized containers, high capacity batteries, and electrical circuits.  I’m probably just being paranoid, but you know what they say about paranoids.

• From the “Twisting in the Wind” Department – The New York stock market took a nosedive today after the Fed gave a distinctly un-rosy picture of the economy and initiated Operation Twist.  That’s a scheme where the Fed changes out short to medium term debt for long term debt.  I’m telling all of my friends to invest in canned goods and shotguns myself.  I’m also buying precious metals:  steel, lead, copper, and brass.
• From the “Not Raised Right” Department – An older couple in Italy is turning to the courts in an effort to get their 41 year old son to move out.  My strategy for this is to make my childrens’ life as boring and miserable as I can when they’re 16 and 17 so they’ll hightail it out when they turn 18.  Good tools for this include playing my music when I get up at 5 AM and they’re trying to sleep, health and welfare searches of their rooms for contraband at the slightest suspicion, and insisting that they do lots and lots of chores.  I’d hire them out to a dairy farm as a barn cleaner if I could find one around here that would take them.  My goal is to have one of them join the military and discover that their drill sergeant is more reasonable than I am.
• From the “Big Brass Ones” Department – A young lady leading a trail ride with several tourists in Montana saved the life of a young boy when she and her horse squared off against a 700+ pound grizzly bear.   Apparently the bear was chasing a deer when it confused the horse the boy was riding with its prey and ran after it.  The young lady gave chase and used her oversized mount to shield the boy and to face down the bear.  Did I mention that she had neither a gun nor bear spray when she did this?  My only question:  Where do we get more like her?
• From the “Chutzpah” Department – The Florida teacher who pled guilty to having sex with a 14 year old student in exchange for three years of house arrest and seven years of probation has asked to have her sentence reduced.  Let’s see, as a 23 year old teacher, she molested a 14 year old boy, didn’t spend a day in prison, got to go on with her life, and now wants even that extremely light sentence reduced because “she’s a responsible adult”.  Hey, lady, you were supposed to be a responsible adult when you were 23 and schtupping a pubescent boy.  How about you serve out your probation while you say a few prayers of thanks that you happened to have two X chromosomes and were cute so you didn’t get sent to prison for 20 years?  Things like this make me wish we’d never gotten rid of dueling.  Put her in a cage with the kid’s parents and a couple of trench knives and we’ll see some justice.