As a Chicago native, I am often faced with references to dead people voting and rigged elections. Unfortunately, having grown up under the original Daley machine, they are largely true. My parents helped found the Independent Voter movement and documented some unbelievable cases of fraud. I recall on precinct where the captain actually produced more votes than registered voters. In one percent where I was an observer, a voter discovered that her dead husband had voted before her. For that reason, the controversy with voting machines this week could not have come at a worse time or place — particularly with polls showing the Democrats approaching what could be a disaster. When Republican state representative candidate Jim Moynihan went to cast his vote Monday at the Schaumburg Public Library, he experienced a Homer Simpson moment when every time he tried to pick his name, the machine registered the vote for his Democratic opponent.
Category: Bizarre
I have noticed recently that airlines have been ramping up the safety video that most people ignore on flights with some long needed humor. However, I am afraid that Air New Zealand has the competition won.
Continue reading “Air New Zealand: “The Most Epic Safety Video Ever Made””
Just in case you were wondering of the fatal attraction of some Internet relationships, you might want to ponder Genoveva Nunez-Figueroa. Nunez-Figueroa was pulled out of the chimney of a man in Thousand Oaks, California. She was trying to get into the home of a man who said met on online and went on a few dates before he broke it off. She was not ready to end the relationship apparently. She was previously spotted on the roof of the man but ran off. This time she was found stuck in the chimney in the ultimate “why don’t you love me?” scene.
The 34th Beijing International Marathon was held on Sunday — an event long-planned by the government to highlight its economic development and tourism. It did not work out quite that way. Instead of a marathon, the race looked like a competition to see who could hold their breath for over 26 miles after pollution levels surpassed the hazardous level. It looked more like a medical emergency with hundreds of runners using oxygen masks to breath and using sponges to clean off pollution on their skin. The government of course reported only “moderate” pollution. When the Chinese government says that pollution is moderate, it may be time to be a couch potato at home like this lovely couple.
By Mark Esposito, Weekend Blogger
Good afternoon folks, and welcome to the sports holy day known as NFL Sunday. We mostly all love it. The collisions, the sparkling cheerleaders, the feats of athleticism that would have made an ancient Greek Olympian proud. It’s all there – drama, excitement, pageantry, bright colors and morality. Yep there’s bad boys (think Oakland Raiders, Baltimore Ravens) and good guys (anybody named Manning or Russell Wilson) and there’s music – marching bands, pep bands, loud speakers blaring just about any rap, punk, pop, or country song you like depending on locale. Football is king! Long Live The King!
But the king has had better seasons.
From the professional gladiators to the high school gladiators-in-training, football’s morality play has come off the skids. The carefully cultivated image of athlete as hero that echoes through the centuries from the plains at Marathon to an Olympic stadium in 1936 Berlin overseen by a bad man with a bad mustache, yes, and all the way to modern day techno-proficient, thunder booming, firework blasting sports theatres, Football America is suffering.
Maybe it was avarice or a sense of invulnerability or most likely hubris. All of football was riding high early this year. The NFL was enjoying record profits even having the audacity to ask its halftime acts to pay it for the privilege of sweating it out before millions of Americans at home and in person. It was pushing the Old Man of US sports, Major League Baseball, from the headlines by moving its pre-season draft of players to prime time in … gasp … May, smack in the middle of baseball season. The colleges had just finished a game of musical chairs and chicken all at the same time and got the venerable, doting NCAA to approve a bowl championship, an acknowledgment of the 5 Big Boy Conferences, and the shunning of anything approaching governing the Big 5.
Yes football was riding high — but there were signs of looming disasters to come.
Continue reading “King Football: The Season Of Our Discontent”
Having just been in Chicago, one of the most prevalent subject of conversation (despite the football season of course) is the ever-rising number of tickets being given to drivers. The Daley administration first made Chicago the most expensive parking city in the country with a corrupt deal that bordered on the criminal. The city was also accused of corrupt dealings with the company handling red-light ticking. However, none of this has curtailed the city contractors and officials clipping motorists for revenue in the form of endless ticketing. The latest outrage was the city reducing the time of yellow lights — a small tweak of a second that resulted in nearly $8 million in new tickets. Drivers are being treated as sources for revenue and hit with the equivalent of speed traps and short lights to generate more and more tickets.
We have previously discussed the criminalization of every element of American society. A new case in Lenoir City, Tennessee is the latest such example. Like many Americans, Karen Holloway has failed to keep her yard work up. Few Americans however have ended up in jail like Holloway after her failure to maintain her yard was turned into a criminal matter. It appears the above garden would be more in line with those wishing to avoid time in the slammer for their overgrown yards.
Continue reading “Tennessee Woman Jailed Over Poor Yard Work”
There is a sad story out of London that is a commentary on the mutating influence of anonymity on the Internet. Brenda Leyland killed herself after being confronted about her online abuse of the parents of the missing girl Madeleine McCann. Sky News tracked her down as the troll responsible for thousands of hate filled messages to Kate and Gerry McCann, whose three-year-old daughter went missing in Portugal in 2007. Continue reading “Death of a Troll: Suicide Highlights The Perils and Prosecution of Anonymous Speech”
There is an interesting, if somewhat off-putting, story out of Richmond where the Southside Cremation Services building was set ablaze during a cremation in its attempt to cremate an 800 pound man. Fire crews had to extinguish the flames caused by the excessive heat and oil from the cremation. The story stood out from an insurance stand point. I am not sure how such risks are addressed in standard insurance and liability plans. While the fire did not spread, it would have made for a fascinating proximate causation case. Presumably, the over-sized cremated man is at no liability risk.
Continue reading “Cremation of 800-Pound Body Burns Crematoria In Richmond”
By Mark Esposito, Weekend Blogger
Can religious beliefs actually retard our intuitions for justice and fairness? Research seems to suggest it might well. The Christian religion has imbued Western thought with the fundamental belief that God presides over a just world – one where sin is punished and rightly-held beliefs and actions are rewarded. We see this attitude in every aspect of human interaction. Today, in some sparkling sports stadium an earnest athlete is bound to thank his deity of choice for the good fortunes that befell his team or his game changing performance. By extension, the loser ( a value loaded word if ever there was one) will decry his lack of luck. From the Book of Job to Pinocchio and Cinderella, this belief in what some psychologists call “immanent justice” or “The Just Word Hypothesis” seeks to explain our plight and our success. It also hardens our attitudes about the poor, victims of crimes and those folks either buoyed or sunk by pure chance.
The Book of Job gets us into the mindset. A saintly man if ever there was one as the Bible itself acknowledges, God allows Satan to test Job with all manner of suffering to determine his worthiness. Stripped of his wealth, prestige and power, Job then loses his children and ultimately his health and vigor. Still, Job endures and never ever curses his fate – or his God. He does consult his friends for some inkling as to the cause of his travails. Their answer, which comes like a thunderclap is: “Behold,” one of them declares, “God will not cast away an innocent man, neither will he uphold evildoers” (Job 8:20). Classic “Blame the Victim” mentality from this coterie of advisers.
Puzzled but resolute, Job however concludes that despite his worldly righteousness, he can never know divine justice and according to the story prostrates himself silent before his Master’s “Just World.’ For that, he is rewarded with the resumption of his wealth and status. He even replaces his children with seven new ones. The clear message to the world however is the same: God handles the world’s justice and we are powerless to exact our own except on only the most superficial level.
Jesus himself gets in on the act in the New Testament. Addressing the multitude in the Sermon on the Mount, he has two distinct things to say about justice and our expectations of it: Blessed are…..those who hunger and thirst for righteousness: for they will be filled. (Matt. 5:6) and Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. 5:10). In modern speak, “Don’t worry God will handle it in his own way and, if you let him do so, you’ll get the whole enchilada. The pearly gates, the mansions, those singing and harp-playing cherubim … you, my faithful believer, get it all.”
Continue reading “Religion, Justice and The Just World Hypothesis”
Submitted by Darren Smith, weekend contributor
According to a lawsuit, a Customer claims that he suffered an assault with a deadly weapon after asking a restaurant employee to reheat the cold onion rings he received.
The concepts of traffic lanes and right of way remain as incomprehensible in Italy as the Atkins diet. As this picture taken yesterday attests, Italians continue to treat signs as entirely discretionary matters when it comes to driving or parking. In this picture, a street was virtually shutdown due to traffic when the driver in the silver car (an impeccably dressed businessman) simply parked in the middle of street and walked away. That’s it. Close enough for Rome, arrivederci! He just walked away and never looked back.
The Washington Post is reporting it as one of the most painful 40 seconds of this election cycle. Alison Lundergan Grimes (D) was asked a simple question: did you vote for President Obama. What followed in the clip below was one of the most revealing 40 seconds of how bad this election is becoming for Democrats and how radioactive the President has become. Grimes refuses to answer. She is trying to unseat Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) and these mid-term elections tend to reflect the view of the incumbent president as some voters try to either add support or resistance to a president in Congress. Obama’s popularity stands at a dismal 30 percent in Kentucky. The clip is particularly interesting given the recent public statements of the President that this election is about his policies. It was an effort to rally Democrats but candidates who have been increasingly fleeing associations with the unpopular president cringed across the country. Given Obama’s national polling, an election based his policies and Administration would magnify the already great expected losses in November, including the possible loss of both houses. Even long-time ally and former campaign manager David Axelrod said that the President’s framing of the election as a vote on his policies was a huge mistake. The deer in the headlights look of Grimes reflects that point vividly.
Ashley R. Tull, 30 of Selbyville, Delaware was busted for drugs in an especially costly way. Her 4-year-old daughter mistakenly brought packages of heroin to school and, thinking they were candy, handed them out to friends. Now, Tull faces not just charges for Maintaining a Drug Property but three counts of Endangering the Welfare of a Child (based on her three children).
We are in our second day in Rome and having a ball. After a morning of church and crypt visits, we are about to join an arranged tour of the Vatican. However, one unnerving sign outside of the hotel stood out.
Continue reading “Roman Question Of The Day: What Does This Street Sign Warn Could Happen To You?”