(1) I'm still loving seeing all the good people helping out with the hurricane. I saw a miles-long line of guys with boats going down the highway toward Texas. There is a Pizza Hut store using kayaks to deliver free pizzas. JJ Watts made his $3 million goal so he increased it to $10 million. Everywhere you look, people are helping and trying to prevent this from becoming a massive tragedy.
(2) The firing of this cop in Texas (along with the attack on Trump for "there are good people on both sides") shows that we've entered a period where facetious comments and platitudes are now being taken literally to get people. Take the cop's comment. He pulls over a woman who had bought into all this BS about cops shooting people and she tells him she is afraid to be shot. The cop facetiously responds to this idiocy by telling her not to worry because cops only shoot black people. OUTRAGE!! He's a racist who wants to kill blacks and he admitted it!!! Said his commander upon firing him:
"I have known Lt. Abbott for years and perceived him as honorable, but he's made a mistake. I don't know what is in his heart, but I know what came out of his mouth."Wow. So you've known this guy for years and yet you aren't sure if he was being facetious in facing a ridiculous charge or if he really might mean that he shoots black motorists. Wow. You're a cop and yet you don't know enough about a long-term employee to know that? You need to resign right now, Sherlock. Are there a rash of unexplained black motorist shootings in his jacket? Pathetic. It's even more pathetic to fire him for saying this. This wasn't racist. It wasn't a threat. It was a mocking of a politicized view aimed at his entire profession. That's worth firing him, huh?
(3) According to some researcher a 7% spike in road deaths last year is the result of Global Warming. How? Well, aliens come down and give people the old finger wave, which is distracting and they careen into on-coming traffic... uh, oops. That's the "aliens cause it" theory. The "global warming causes it" theory is a tad more confused. Apparently, warmer weather makes people want to be out on the roads during rain storms, adding an extra sixty miles to their yearly travel.
"The correlation of mileage and temperature suggests a classic vicious circle whereby higher temperatures equal more miles driven, leading to more CO2 emissions, which in turn lead to higher temperatures."And that is why Global Warming Research is such a joke. They see two numbers that go in the same direction no matter how briefly and they stupidly assume causation without even a hint of a legitimate attempt to factor out other causes... like lower gas prices causing the driving increase. This study was also done of one year's statistics (2015), which is a ridiculously short time to do a study of traffic patterns -- global warming supposedly has been happening since (fill in the blank), why was this the first year to show this relationship? How could a rational person think the one year standing alone proves anything? Heck, they even include assumptions about the rich being better able to handle this because poor people were more likely to die... because their cars suck. Never mind that poor people are more likely to drive more when gas prices drop.
Talk about shoty "research" all around! This is why Global Warming Research is crap.
(4) Finally, I was trying to think of a good salad bar in this town the other day and I literally could come up with nothing. Has the age of the salad bar ended? Give me some help here, people. Where do you go for a good salad bar?
BTW, for those who missed it... Trump is giving a million of his own money to the hurricane relief. Feel free to come up with fake criticisms of this.
ReplyDelete1. That's nothing compared to what he could have given.
2. He's crowding out other better money.
3. He doesn't really care.
4. His wife wore designer clothes when he wrote the check.
5. His money will benefit whites more than blacks.
6. None of his money has women on it!
7. It violates some government rule for Republicans to donate to charities!
8. ...
I'm waiting for Barack to match President Trump's million dollar donation.
ReplyDeleteThe inexpensive but tasty restaurant salad is gone. It was killed by the bland, dried out bagged salad. What's really annoying is the pour it right out of the bag onto your plate. If the just soaked it in ice water for a few minutes and then ran it through a salad spinner, everyone would think it was fresh. Guess that's too hard.
ReplyDelete1) The cop pulled over a terrified woman he didn't know who he suspected of being drunk and decided to go with 'We only kill black people'. Neither strangers nor drunks are great at picking up on sarcasm.
ReplyDeleteGenerally speaking when dealing with even unreasonable customers employees are expected to be a lot more diplomatic. Vent to friends and family or if you like to live dangerously (clearly many do) the internet later but don't mouth off to object of your irritation.
When you say the wrong thing to a customer and it becomes a thing on the internet, the fact those who know you know you didn't mean it won't save you.
2) I'm not a big salad guy (I didn't even know salad spinners were a thing). So long as everything is the right color and consistency, give me Italian dressing and I'm happy.
3) Visited my father and wound up watching that Game of Thrones season finale everyone is talking about (I respect the tv show but I am bad about watching ongoing shows). He is a big reader but not a big fantasy guy so I was surprised when he asked me about the books and in the middle of our conversation bought all of the existing books digitally. I similarly got into a long discussion with my boss about the differences between the tv show and the books.
It's awesome how mainstream GoT (aka Song of Ice and Fire) is. The geek has inhereited the Earth.
Anthony, people cops deal with aren't customers.The police don't sell things to people. The police enforce the law.And she wasn't terrified she was an obnoxious drunk.She gave him a stupid drunken excuse not to do what he had told her to as part of a legitimate traffic stop and dui investigation. He made a flippant remark that I actually thought was clever under the circumstances. Being a police officer is a career, which is a life investment. It's not a job at McDonalds. The police have an entire range of discipline at their disposal, from a write up to a formal reprimand to suspension of police powers to full suspension to transfer to a less desireable assignment to transfer to the district furthest from the guy's house to demotion to firing. The guy had worked there for-count 'em- TWENTY EIGHT YEARS and achieved the rank of lieutenant. He must have done something right. In addition, for a lieutenant, which is an administrative rank, to be out stopping duis shows me a hell of a work ethic. He was fired because his chief is a gutless weasel who spends his life crawling around and fellating public opinion. Fired after 28 years for one flippant remark by the side of the road. And this ladies and gentlemen, is why cops need unions.
ReplyDeleteGypsyTyger
...we've entered a period where facetious comments and platitudes are now being taken literally to get people.
ReplyDeleteThe Left lost it's lock on humor and decided on the worst way to get it back, policing humor. That only makes one seriously unfunny. People would rather have humor than not.
***
Trump is giving a million of his own money to the hurricane relief. Feel free to come up with fake criticisms of this.
"It's not really his money because (insert random accounting terms here)."
"He wouldn't do it if Harvey had hit a blue state."
"He's forcing charities to compromise their principles."
"We don't want your racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic money!"
And here's a contribution from Newsweek: "Trump donating $1 MIllion to Harvey victims, an amount billionaire once described as a 'small loan'"
***
What is a "good salad bar"? Sounds like a yuppie 80s thing. We're all supposed to be eating sofritas at Chipotle now, anyway.
On the subject of salad, Dorothy Lynch dressing is the only way to go.
Gypsytiger,
ReplyDeleteCops are public servants last I heard. The length of his tenure and the height to which he rose is impressive but while being in a job a long time tends to make people comfortable it doesn't make them invulnerable.
As for whether a lesser punishment might have been appropriate, perhaps. Much depends on the answers that he gave to investigators.
LL, Barack doesn't need to donate money. He donates inspiration. That's more than enough.
ReplyDeleteKoshcat, I don't get it. I seem to remember salad bars everywhere and now they've vanished. I didn't even seem to notice either. Even the grocery stores seem to have gotten rid of them... except Sprouts, which does a kind of olive bar.
ReplyDeleteAnthony,
ReplyDeleteI like a salad every other day or so and somehow I got it in my head that I wanted one with a lot of stuff on it. But I couldn't find one. :(
I don't think it makes any sense to fire this officer for this. He was clearly being sarcastic to a woman who was laying an irrational reaction on him. People do that all the time. It's human nature, especially in a snarky era like this. I find it ridiculous to fire someone like that. I also find it ridiculous that his chief didn't stand up for the guy no matter what action he took. To even suggest that he might be serious about killing black people is a patently false thought.
Nerds are slowly taking over the world.
GypsyTyger, I'm not a fan of unions, but this is an instance where a union is clearly needed. This guy is in a high-stress, dangerous job so punishing him severely like this for an off-the-cuff comment that did no one any harm is ridiculous. If this were the standard, then half of America would get fired every day.
ReplyDeletetryanmax, I think it's another form of control. Someone on the left says the same thing, it gets dismissed as "dicta" or "obvious hyperbole". Some on the right says it, it becomes a window into their very souls. That's a great way to get to manipulate who get punished.
ReplyDeleteNice additions! I haven't checked yet, but I'm sure his donation is evil in some manner.
I love a good salad bar now and then.