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Who Really Posted The Photos?

Driving in to work this morning, I heard Melinda England’s boyfriend, Josh Pinkinton (sp?) in an interview with Hallerin Hilton Hill. According to him, the photos of the Inskip Elementary School teacher weren’t posted on her MySpace page, but on his page. He also claimes that England’s ex-husband is the person who contacted the media with the story, and the facts were subsequently botched by WVLT.

Interesting.

I can understand his wanting to defend her, especially if so many facts of the story were wrong, left out, or confused. Still, I think it may be a mistake to go to the media to try to straighten this out. It was almost dead…just let it die.

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America’s Next Top Televangelist

Why doesn’t this reality show exist?

It would be perfect for CBS Sunday nights, right after 60 Minutes. Of course, you’d have to wait until football season is over.

Let the competitors give both prepared and spontaneous sermons on a variety of subjects. Instead of competing for dollars, they could compete for souls.

Seriously, why wouldn’t this work?

I’ve got dibs on the idea. (as far as I know)

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New Feed Subscriptions in September

Here are all of the new sites I added to my reader in September. When I say “new” I mean new to me in most cases.

Total Diatribe
If you were impressed with Billymacs ability to consume adult beverages, you’ll be even more impressed with his ability to find nutty stuff and add cleverly biting commentary. A new blog, and I’m expecting great things from it.

Donklephant
Here’s one I can’t believe I just found. A common sense moderate political blog. I don’t mean to imply that common sense can’t be found there, but usually only as it exists on the line between Democrat and Republican. Very pragmatic, as opposed to the, uh, idealism(?) you find here.

KTownLowDown
Another new blog authored by Little Bigfoot SVD. So far a lot of the lowdown that exists there is on a personal level, but he’s running a poll right now asking what you want him to blog about. One man, one vote. If you don’t like it, you had your chance to change it!

Ideas From Free Minds
I found out about Michelle’s blog after seeing her on Tucker Carlson’s show and wrote a post about her. My only complaint is that she doesn’t post enough–there was a huge opportunity to make this blog big when she appeared on TV. I hope she takes advantage of it!

Taylor the Teacher
As Taylor states on her site, she’s a philosophical anarchist who loves to help children learn. Sometimes the public education system even helps her in this endeavor.

TED
Technology, entertainment, and design videos. You’ll agree with some, you’ll disagree with others, but they are all pretty interesting.

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Gimme Less

I just saw Britney’s performance on the VMAs. Normally I wouldn’t care, but you never know what this train will be leaving the tracks, so you have to pay attention if you want to see it wreck.

The name of the song is “Gimme More”. I think she wrote it about cheesecake.

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The Fox Infotainment Channel and Why Don’t We Bomb Korea?

I’m out of town for the next few days visiting the in-family, so I haven’t been online (as much), Fox News has been on all day. You’ll never believe this–I haven’t seen any news yet! Nothing on the Patriot Act ruling. The one piece of information that I would possibly consider news that they’ve shown so far is about President Bush’s meetings with the Koreans and his refusal to officially end the war with Korea until they’ve met his demands in regards to their nuclear program.

Does anyone else find it odd that we are killing people in at least one country with which we aren’t Constitutionally at war while we aren’t killing anyone in a country with which we are at war? Not that I think we should be killing people anywhere, I’m just saying…

***UPDATE***
Lesson learned. Don’t write blog entries while sitting in front of the TV watching Fox “News” Channel. Make sure you know what you were talking about, or at least listening to someone who does. War was never declared in Korea either.

The irony that I took a shot at Fox for not being news while in the same post using them as my source for mis-information is pretty funny though, no?

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Damn You Scrubs

I tried it once, just a taste, a few years ago. I got just enough of it to know that it was something I should stay away from. I could feel those inner voids that had been present in the years since Seinfeld went off the air being filled just a little, and I knew I’d be in real trouble if I allowed myself to partake. There was no way I’d let myself get tangled up in its evil web.

A couple of weeks ago, I gave in to my weakness. Gave in may not be the right phrase. It’s more like I got overconfident in my ability to fight off my demons. It had been years since I’d bothered watching a sitcom. They all suck, right? And I’ve outgrown them. I’m mature. I can handle my TV now. It wouldn’t do any harm to watch just one episode. Besides, it would be a nice thing to do for the missus. She seems to enjoy it, and she’s confined to that big comfy chair made for two feeding the baby. It’s family time.

It’s just one episode, right?

Wrong. I hadn’t counted on the fact that she was mixing up a dangerous concoction of Scrubs with Tivo. Cooked up with 2.5 hours of syndication every weekday, they form the speedball of television sitcoms. It didn’t take long for my tolerance to build up. Within a few days I was there with her watching 2 episodes a night. We should have known things were getting out of hand when we accidently missed The Soup that first Friday night.

I know. It’s pathetic. We weren’t trying to be neglectful, Joel McHale. Honest. It just sort of happened. We’ll never let it happen again. One more promise we can’t keep.

Now, a few weeks later, here we are at rock bottom. I’ve even caught myself calling my male coworkers “Bambi” and thinking up places to hide saltines even though I have no competitors. At home, we’re making excuses to watch more and more, and our justifications are just lame:

“We can’t watch just one episode…they air in pairs.”
“It’s Tivo’d, so it actually takes us three episodes to watch an hour of TV.”
“We have to watch some of these or we’ll run out of recording space.”
“We should watch all of these now. We’re going to be gone for a couple of days and will be way behind.”

It’s easy to rationalize it, but deep down I know it’s wrong. The worst part is that she can’t help me. Her problem is just as bad as mine, and I’m not sure if she sees it herself. Maybe if I get it out of my system I can help her get straight too.

Maybe I can get in touch with the producers of Intervention on A&E. We used to watch that show too before all of this started. Maybe they could help us.

But it wouldn’t hurt to hear just one more snide comment from Dr. Cox would it? They come in really handy at work.

Want to watch some with me? Come one…just some clips, not a whole episode or anyhing like that. A little bit won’t hurt you.

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More To Love About Living In The United States

I love the anti-John Edwards post by Glen Dean.

Perhaps Edwards should promise to provide all “poor” households with Tivo or DVR. Maybe he could promise every poor family a $50 gift card to Applebees. It really must be difficult to be a poverty pimping populist these days.

I have to agree. This is the only country in the world where it is completely reasonable to expect that the day of a poor person can include all of the following activities:

1. Jumping into his car to go grab a pack of cigarettes and some cold beer
2. Stopping on the way home for a super value meal, complete with 32 ounces of sugar water (with free refills), a quarter pound (pre-cooked weight) of beef topped with fresh vegetables and a serving of potatoes that contains more calories than is needed for an entire day.
3. Placing the cold beer into his refrigerator so it will stay cold
4. Cracking open one of said cold beers and channel surfing three different football games on cable TV
5. Complaining between puffs on cigarettes that health care is too expensive and that the gov’ment should do something about it.

Let’s not forget this either:

Having said all of that, it is important to note that there are some people in this country who really are poor. Those are the ones we should all help out with our own private contributions and time spent volunteering.

Absolutely correct, and I think the average American would be much more likely to do so if they didn’t feel like they’d abdicated this responsibility (because that’s what it is) to the gov’ment by paying their taxes. Do I have too much faith in people?

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Hurricane Dean — Operation Mexico cleanup (phase 2)

Amazingly, Hurricane Dean has stayed true to the forecast.  NHC reports winds of 100mph and central pressure of 979mb.  Dean is growing but does not have much time before land fall this afternoon.  Dean has always been a fast moving storm…..this lead to it’s eventual demise.   There are not many resorts in this area of Mexico so don’t expect the TV to be full of ‘weather cowboys’ this afternoon.   What little damage occurs this afternoon will be masked by what happened yesterday.

Invest 92L is not going to make it.  Unfavorable winds aloft hamper development before any potential land fall with Florida.   We will just have to wait for the next glimmer of hope.

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George Will on the Declaration of Dependence

George Will’s column today is really worth a read on FDR and how the New Deal did little more than continue the depression longer than it’s natural course and have placed us in our current situation of dependence on the State.

Much to the horror of my grandfather, I have long believed that FDR was the worst president in the history of this country. That’s saying something, especially considering Jimmy Carter could was up for the award. The affects of FDR’s insane policies and programs are still being felt today.

Look no further than the land swap deals that occur here in the Tennessee Valley where lake front property is traded for other plots of land to private developers. TVA took this land by eminent domain to flood the valley, then decided decades later to trade it away. Are the original owners or their posterity being fairly compensated for lakeside plots that were once the tops of hills?

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Local Currencies — A Brilliant Idea

CNN has the story of a local community printing its own currency that tracks to the dollar at a rate of 1 BerkShare (the local currency) to $.90. Yes, this is legal.

Since large national chains aren’t entering into agreements to accept local bills, only the small, locally owned shops are accepting them. And based on the rate at which they track to dollars, customers receive a 10% discount for using the local currency.

For all of you people who complain about the big box stores and that the gov’ment should do something about them, apparently some LOCAL governments have, and it works well.

The market will always find a way.