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The country's broke; there's no money left, and so what does Barky do? He takes decisive action by issuing another executive odor order: just in time for tax season, he's giving federal employees a pay raise.
Joe Biden's salary increases by over $6,000 a year, though other increases will be considerably smaller. But then, Joe's such a hard-workin' guy....
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For the second time this month, a man was pushed to his death in front of an oncoming subway train in New York City.
It did not appear the man noticed her before he was shoved onto the tracks, police said, adding that the condition of the man's body was making it difficult to identify him. The woman was described as Hispanic, in her 20s, heavyset and about 5-foot-5, wearing a blue, white and gray ski jacket and Nike sneakers with gray on top and red on the bottom.
So...in addition to banning guns, large-capacity ammo clips, and subways - do we need to talk about banning Hispanics? Nike shoes?
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Perhaps, but a number of people think not: far-left EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson "resigned to pursue other opportunities" just ahead of an investigation into her use of private email accounts in the course of conducting official business, and it's fairly likely that another investigation will be opened on another front - her diversion of EPA documents to private academics; placing them out of the reach of pesky congressional and FOIA requests. The email scam itself is sufficiently egregious to warrant punitive action:
Federal law bars government employees from using private email accounts for official communications unless the emails are appropriately stored and can be tracked. The objective is to ensure open government.
As well, an attorney involved in a lawsuit demanding access to those secret emails is claiming that indeed, the investigation and litigation contributed to her sudden decision to get out of Dodge. Will that be enough to keep her out of trouble? It's Washington, D.C., so who knows?
It seems safe to assume, however, that her replacement will continue the Barky administration's war on American energy.
Even the Progressive Policy Institute thinks it's about time to rein in bureaucratic regulations rather than continuing to pile more on:
The Code of Federal Regulations, where all these rules are stored, is more than 169,000 pages long. Small businesses spend more than $10,000 per employee per year to comply with federal rules.
And EPA has consistently been ranked the worst of the various federal bureaucracies when it comes to issuing new, and increasingly onerous, regulations.
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Them PEtA folks done went ta court an' got theyseves a rulin' ta stop the annual New Year's Eve possum drop in Brasstown, N.C.
Ever' year, the Brasstowners'd catch theirselves a possum, put 'im in a cage and feed 'im up real good, and then at midnight on New Year's Eve, they'd lower 'im on down nice and slow, open the cage, and let the varmint run off into the woods. PEtA decided that was inhumane, and they got a judge to go along with it.
Now, what could be more humane than feeding him a nice dinner and then letting him run off back into the woods? Freedom on the first of the year, and all that. After all:
“Their destiny in life is to be run over,” he said. “So if you don’t get run over in 2012, I’ve extended his life to 2013.”
But thanks to PEtA, this year they're going to use either a stuffed animal or a roadkill.
“It’ll either be a stuffed animal or road kill,” he told Fox News. “We’re not gonna break no laws.”
Wittingly or not, though, it must be admitted that PEtA has a point: turning a possum loose into the woods isn't quite like returning it to its natural habitat; for a possum, habitat consists of an old tire slung underneath the front porch.
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More and more often, it seems, Anonymous has the workload increased:
Schwarzkopf died in Tampa, Florida, where he had lived in retirement, according to a U.S. official, who was not authorized to release the information publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
U.S. officials said the U.S. ambassador and about 40 others, including a number of Americans, were flown out of Bangui (bahn-GEE') on a U.S. Air Force C-40 headed to Kenya. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were unauthorized to discuss the evacuation publicly.
Given the millions of bureaucrats employed by the government, you'd think that a few of them might be "authorized to speak publicly". Instead, it seems to always fall to this Anonymous feller. It'd be understandable if these were national security issues, but it's got to the point where if you ask the time of day, nobody's "authorized to speak publicly on that subject".
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Metro's Oregon Zoo has opened an exciting new set of exhibits at select locations around the site. The World of Microbes is an innovative and immersive series offering guests an unprecedented zoo experience, incorporating real-world interactions with live, wild viral and bacterial representatives from this often hidden world. Best of all, there's no additional charge!
The number of people acknowledged to have been sickened via restaurant and catering operations at Metro's Oregon Zoo appears to have topped out at 135. The outbreak has been attributed to food contaminated with norovirus, which is associated with human fecal material.
And although food vendors are generally required to submit to health inspections every few months, the folks over at Willamette Week uncovered a curious set of facts: government agencies are exempt. This makes perfect sense, as it's an established truth that government employees are significantly more responsible than are run-of-the-mill citizens; moreover, government workers never make mistakes.
Therefore, food preparation and distribution at the zoo's two main restaurant locations have not been inspected once during the past six years. Auxillary sites, such as the "elephant ears" food cart, concert and other special events food carts, and locations such as "cafe" connected to the notoriously cockroach-infested primate building may in fact never have been subjected to health inspection.
Highly-compensated head Metro mouthpiece Jim Middaugh's all over it; claiming first that health inspectors have always been welcome at Metro facilities (a claim denied by the environmental health supervisor for Multnomah County) and then that zoo employees perform daily inspections and are very conscientious, blah, blah.
“The zoo maintains and enforces safe food-handling practices,” Middaugh says. “Zoo management will continue to reinforce and insist on those practices with all food-handling staff.”
As of two years ago, Middaugh received $155,371.53 in taxpayer-paid compensation for doing the incredibly difficult job of writing press releases and occasionally speaking to members of the press, and so he really needs to be on top of the issue, given the way that the zoo's own highly-compensated head mouthpiece blew the whole recent furor generated by questions of ownership of the elephant calf born there last month.
In any case, it's good to know that things are all hunky-dory at the zoo now:
Zoo officials say two restaurants, Cascade Grill and AfriCafe, and the zoo’s food preparation areas were later sanitized.
Curiously, the "zoo officials" don't mention the "Bearwalk Cafe" (the location noted previously as directly attached to the primate building), nor does it mention the location situated in the Africa Rainforest area, nor does it mention any of their portable food carts. Presumably, none of these food handlers or the units themselves are deemed capable of spreading any particular contaminant.
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Environmental Protection Agency head Lisa Jackson, amid investigations into agency lies and cover-ups, has decided that it's time to get out; leading some to speculate that she may be considering going up against Chris Christie for the New Jersey governorship. More likely, she's getting out while she can, before it all collapses around her: in addition to the investigations referred to above, her agency stands accused by some in Congress of over-reaching its authority - an accusation supported in part by a recent Supreme Court decision against her agency which has prompted additional litigation.
She's been a good little Obamabot, fighting hard to enact regulations to accomplish what Barky can't manage to achieve legislatively, but with legal issues compounding amid mounting Congressional hearings and probes, she likely needs to move on before the effluent reaches her office. It's got to be getting a little crowded under Barky's campaign bus.
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Ya gotta love Idaho skinheads; at once deadly serious and hysterically comical, they can often be counted upon to provide an especially unique brand of entertainment.
Prosecutors said that Daren Abbey had threatened to stab a black man, saying "blacks were not welcome in Bayview and he had better leave before something happened," according to police. Abbey then allegedly poked the victim in the chest.
But Abbey, a self-proclaimed skinhead who sports several neo-Nazi tatoos, got knocked out with one punch by the black man during the July 3 incident. Abbey later told officials that he felt he had been "hit by a brick." Abbey apparently was unaware of the writing on the back of the black man's T-shirt: "Spokane Boxing Club Champion."
He may not be especially well-suited to serve on the town's Welcome Wagon committee, but he's without peer as a Welcome mat.
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Times are bad. The most popular name for baby girls in America during 2012, "Katniss", is the product of a Harry Potter-esque writer's imagination (the big one for boys this year being "Finn"). There's something sad in that, as largely (and deliberately) uneducated, frightened children - who nonetheless possess high levels of self-esteem - produce children of their own and name them after fictitious heroes and heroines, those children will likely never be afforded so much as a chance to play outside on their own; let alone even marginally to develop the skillsets of their namesakes.
Like their parents, they are destined to become legends in their own minds; pliant, frightened, and unaccomplished.
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