All Posts Tagged With: "ridiculous"

“74-year-old resident of Attleboro, Mass., told lien would be placed on home” because of an overdue water bill with an amount due of exactly 1 penny, reports the Associated Press via MSNBC. This paragraph in the story was priceless:

Eileen Wilbur told The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro the letter sent her blood pressure soaring, and pointed out that stamps cost 42 cents.

The City Collector seems unapologetic:

“My question is, how come it wasn’t paid when the (original) bills went out?”

The story says the charge was from the previous fiscal year, which ran from July 2007 to July 2008. If the blind woman doesn’t pay it by Dec. 10th, she’ll face a $48 penalty and a lien on her home. All for ONE stickin’ penny. You would think that the computer system could establish a threshold of, say, anything less than $1.00 would simply be ignored, if for no other reason than to save the cost of the stamp, the envelope, the paper the bill is printed on and the labor cost of putting it all together.

I agree with the homeowner’s daughter, who described the situation as “ridiculous.” Ridiculous indeed.

Fill in the blank…

The ____________ uses crises, real or manufactured, to expand the power of government at the expense of the individual and private property. He has spent, in earnest, 70 years evading the Constitution’s limits on governmental power. If ________________ don’t stand up to this, who will? If they don’t offer serious alternatives that address the current circumstances AND defend the founding principles, who will?

And the correct answers (as intended by the original author) are Continued

While some would like it to be so, it doesn’t seem to rise to the level of criminal activity. But one police office thought so and charged a man with battery for farting near him. MSNBC reports…

A man has been charged with battery on a police officer for allegedly passing gas and fanning it toward a patrolman.

Jose A. Cruz, 34, of Clarksburg, W. Va., was pulled over early Tuesday for driving without headlights, police said. According to the criminal complaint, Cruz smelled of alcohol, had slurred speech and failed three field sobriety tests before he was handcuffed and taken to a police station for a breathalyzer test.

As Patrolman T.E. Parsons prepared the machine, Cruz scooted his chair toward Parsons, lifted his leg and “passed gas loudly,” the complaint said.

Seriously? I mean, are you freakin’ kidding me?

I know it’s nasty and all, and I certainly don’t want to be around it, but to charge someone with a crime because they farted near you seems more than a bit of a stretch. What’s next? Belching could qualify as a citable noise complaint?

Has our society just completely lost its mind? It’s just plain ridiculous.

I saw this headline on MSNBC: “Obama defends his overseas trip.” My simple question is, “Why?” Why should he have to defend it?

Obama’s opponents have, prior to this trip, criticized Obama for not having visited Iraq or Afghanistan recently and for being weak on foreign policy. Obama answer the challenge and his opponents are not criticizing for visiting Iraq and Afghanistan and Europe.

This election season is literally making me sick to my stomach. I’m just plain tired of it.

I’m now actively avoiding news programs and any shows that might cover the candidates. I’ve stopped reading blogs and websites that are consumed by the daily grind of the campaign. I’ve restricted myself to culling my news from online news sources, but find myself having to dig through all the oversaturation of election coverage to find out what else is happening in the world outside of politics.

This is the last post about politics that you’ll read for the foreseeable future — or at least until the VP picks are in and I weigh in on that. Seriously, I am beyond my tolerance of the political coverage, and I have a pretty high tolerance (and appetite) for this type of stuff. This election cycle has been as exhausting and absurdly extreme as I’ve ever experienced. And I’m disconnecting for a while… for my sanity.

“Are we there yet?” is the question that keeps running through my mind. Election Day couldn’t come fast enough.

It’s one thing to be opposed to a particular political candidate — even strongly and passionately opposed. It’s quite another thing to be absurd about your opposition, making outlandish claims and suppositions, and generally resorting to hysterics.

While politics will still remain a small fraction of what I write about here, for the remainder of this election season, I will regularly share a post that exposes some of the more outrageous and outlandish rhetoric and political posturing that we see during this excruciatingly interminable campaign. Today’s spotlight is on the right-wing radio darling Hugh Hewitt:

By the way, I — I’m still trying to find two tickets to the Ohio State-USC game. And none of the USC people will give up their tickets to me. I’d pay fair price. They — they know Ohio State’s gonna slaughter the Trojans. They know that they’re gonna slaughter the Trojans, and therefore they do not want me there at the bloodbath, since it’s probably the last football game we’ll ever get to see before the United States gets blown up by the Islamists under Obama.

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More Hewitt hysterics here.