In an election year, sometimes you just don’t get to choose who you have to follow…..
Tag: USA
View from a Rhino House: fashionistas vs fashion victims
In returning to a measure of sanity the city of Ocala (in Florida) has joined most of the developed world in deciding that “saggy pants” are a (dubious) fashion choice rather than a matter for the police, rescinding a two-month-old ban that threatened a criminal record for citizens “intentionally exposing their underwear or buttocks”.
“Putting someone in jail for 60 days and fining them $500 for wearing their pants two inches below their natural waistline, wherever that is, that’s not smart justice,” said Kent Guinn, mayor of Ocala; a sentiment that some might argue was valid back in July when the ordinance was passed. It’s worth noting, in passing, that the number of arrests, police cautions & complaints from members of the public during the 2 months that the city’s very survival was threatened by hordes of saggy-panted radicals came to exactly 0, in every category.
The Ocala ordinance banned saggy pants on city property, including streets, sidewalks, parks, public pools & municipal buildings. But critics accused city officials of racial discrimination & potentially violating constitutional free speech (nobody seemed to care how much money the good citizens had pissed-away making the Ocala streets safe from persons of doubtful taste in the trouser department).
“I don’t think government should be in the business of legislating how people are dressed,” city spokeswoman Jeannine Robbins said. “We’ve got here in Ocala a lot of things the police department should be dealing with other than that.”
Mary Rich, a city councillor who had campaigned for the law for six years, calling it a matter of public decency, voted against its repeal. “You wouldn’t want your mother coming to an affair downtown at the square & having people with their pants down to their knees,” Rich said in a statement to the world’s media when the law was passed; although she has yet to issue a statement concerning its abrogation.
She’s probably hiding in a bunker & praying the rapture takes her before the saggy-trouser brigade break down the door & drag her off to sartorial damnation.
View from a Rhino House: democracy made simple
In the tireless campaign to bring the benefits of democracy to the world, a small city in the USA has introduced a “fun” element into refining the expression of the “people’s will”.
The special election for one of five alderman seats in Poplarville (population around 2,800) ended in a 177-177 tie after a previously turned-away voter returned with the mandatory photo-ID at the close of Tuesday’s ballot. Glenn Bolin & his opponent, Stephanie Bounds were not told which candidate the key voter supported.
The tie-breaker (either a tossed coin or a straw drawing) overseen by the local election commission, was set to take place last night, Poplarville Mayor Brad Necaise said, but as yet we here at the Rhino House do not know who prevailed (it’s a time difference thing).
The special election in Poplarville was held to replace outgoing Alderman Randy Brown, whose job as an investigator with the Biloxi Police Department was determined by the state auditor to be in conflict with his elected role.
Bolin said he was more disheartened by the low turnout than by the race coming down to luck.
“We have 1,600 registered voters in the city of Poplarville,” he said. “Only 354 felt the need to get out and vote.” Bounds could not be reached for comment although rumours that she has defected to North Korea are believed to be without foundation.
It’s a shame these people weren’t sorting out that whole Bush/Gore thing back in the days when.
** STOP PRESS**
The news just hit the eagerly waiting world. Bolin won, & they made the choice by drawing straws held by the Mayor.
View from a Rhino House: college capers
On Tuesday in Idaho an assistant professor with a concealed-carry gun permit shot himself (& his career) in the foot with a semiautomatic handgun while he was teaching a chemistry class, police said yesterday.
The instructor, who was treated & then released from a local hospital, possessed an “enhanced concealed-carry permit” that made it legal for him him to carry a hidden gun on campus under a state law that went into effect last month.
Idaho’s legislature passed the law allowing guns on university grounds earlier this year over the objection of all of the state’s leading universities, including Idaho State, where the incident occurred. In response to the new law, that university for the first time dispatched public safety officers armed with semiautomatic pistols to patrol the university’s campus this summer to “safeguard students & staff”.
Those officers & the local police police were on the scene of Tuesday’s events but weren’t able to shoot anybody, putting them seriously at a disadvantage in the staff vs authorities idiots’ league.
Guns are banned in areas of the physical science complex at the university where there is a nuclear research laboratory but are allowed under the new law in the chemistry lab where the firearm went off, so some good news for the local population there!
“Idaho State University is in compliance with the Idaho gun law. Yesterday’s incident was an unfortunate accident,” university President Arthur Vailas said in a blindingly anodyne statement last night.
Just a guess, but, I suspect our Dirty-Harry-wannabe assistant professor will not be getting tenure any time soon.
Planned parenthood
In Ohio an appeals court has upheld a judge’s order that a man behind with his child support payments can’t have more kids until he pays the overdue amount in full.
The decision earlier this week didn’t provide an opinion about whether the judge’s order was appropriate. Instead the appeals court said it didn’t have enough information to decide the merits of the case without a copy of the pre-sentence report detailing Asim Taylor’s background.
In January 2013, a Lorain County Probate Judge said Taylor couldn’t have more children while he is on probation for five years. The judge said the order would be lifted if Taylor pays nearly $100,000 in overdue support for his four children.
I’d love to know how they’re going to enforce that one…..
View from a Rhino House: sex & the state
Penis pumps cost the U.S. government’s Medicare program over $170 million in the years 2006 – 2011, about double the consumer would have paid retail, according to a government watchdog’s report released this week.
The inspector general for the Department of Health & Human Services report said Medicare, the government health insurance system for senior citizens, paid-out on about 474,000 claims for vacuum erection systems, or VES, amounting to $172.4 million during the years 2006 to 2011. During this period annual claims for the devices escalated from $20.6 million in 2006 to $38.6 million in 2011.
“Medicare payment amounts for VES remain grossly excessive compared with the amounts that non-Medicare payers pay,” said the report. “Medicare currently pays suppliers more than twice as much for VES as the Department of Veterans Affairs, or consumers over the Internet, pay for these types of devices.”
If Medicare had negotiated its payments to approximately the price non-Medicare users pay, the U.S. government would have saved an average of almost $15 million for each of the 6 years investigated, the report said.
So I guess sex doesn’t only pay, at some point it really begins to cost as well (& don’t even get me started about inflation)……
View from a Rhino House: lonesome trails
In Boulder, Colorado a man riding a horse to his brother’s wedding over 900 kilometres away in Utah was arrested for drunken driving, animal cruelty & assorted other charges local police said, yesterday.
Patrick Schumacher was taken into custody late on Monday afternoon after reports that he had hit the horse in traffic, causing it to rear-up, & officers found him clearly the worse for wear, police spokesman Ryan Huff said.
Huff said Schumacher failed a field sobriety test & a search of his saddle bag turned up a small pistol & beer, while a small dog named Bufford was found in his backpack.
Schumacher was arrested on charges of animal cruelty, prohibited use of weapons & reckless endangerment, as well as drunken horseback riding (& yes, in Boulder, they do have a law that covers that).
When asked by officers why he hit the horse (called Dillon), Schumacher said that he was swatting a fly on its head, Huff said.
Dillon & Bufford were provided with accommodation overnight by the Humane Society of Boulder Valley while Schumacher’s overnight arrangements were a little less luxurious. The police kept the pistol as evidence.
After being released Schumacher rode off on the horse, with Bufford again in his backpack, telling officers that he was still heading for his brother’s wedding in Bryce, Utah, Huff said.
Schumacher told police that he’d lost his driver’s license, so he decided to make the trip to his brother’s wedding on horseback.
Just a guess, but if he & his brother are alike, he should arrive just in time for the divorce.
View from a Rhino House: have safe, be fun
It was reported on Sunday that a man in Ohio found over 120 kilos of marijuana hidden inside a Mexican-made gun-safe that he bought over the internet.
The man had ordered the large, steel gun-safe from the Champion Safe Co. It was made in Nogales, Mexico, & trucked from Mexico to Champion’s warehouse local County Sheriff John Lenhart said.
The safe was delivered in June to the customer by an independent driver contracted by Champion, Lenhart added.
The marijuana, tightly wrapped in 10 packages, has a street value of $420,000, according to the sheriff. He said the truck’s shipment contained 30 safes, but that all the others were without the extras.
The US driver who delivered the safe to the customer has been cleared of any involvement, but the driver who delivered the shipment from Mexico to Ohio has gone missing, according to Lenhart. (If they haven’t paid him a visit yet, I bet his “friends” are making strenuous efforts to find him, too.)
He said the DEA normally would not be interested in what is considered to be a relatively small amount of marijuana. But the DEA is interested in learning more about the delivery method & size of such an operation.
“It’s a pretty decent way of smuggling,” Lenhart said. “My guess is that it’s not the first time it’s happened.”
A conflation of the war-against-drugs & guns, who could have seen that one coming?
View from a Rhino House: “to err is human, to forgive, divine….”
In a week filled with examples of human error (or vile perfidy if you’re more into conspiracy theories) an animal described as an African lion at a Chinese zoo, was exposed as a fraud, when the creature started barking in front of visitors.
Outraged visitors to the zoo in Louhe city said they had been cheated.
According to a newspaper report, the substitution came to light when a mother visited the zoo to show her son the sounds different animals made.
But when they got to the cage marked “African lion”, which had a sign describing the animal, they were shocked to hear the creature bark.
It was then that zoo keepers revealed the so-called lion was actually a Tibetan mastiff, a large type of dog with a shaggy, brown coat.
Other species were also apparently also replaced by “stand-ins”; there was a white fox in the leopard’s den & a small terrier being passed off as a wolf.
Across the oceans, in a further example of human fallibility, Detroit, which has filed for the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, chooses a new mayor in an election, on 5th November. But billboards that the City of Detroit commissioned, say that the election will take place on the 2nd.
The billboards were re-used from a previous year’s election. Detroit City Clerk Janet Winfrey said that the local billboard company updated the signs to highlight this year’s “bun fight”, but forgot to change the date.
Winfrey said her department approved the original billboards but did not see samples of those updated for this year. The sign company, based in Detroit, was given the correct date from the elections office, Winfrey added.
The city clerk said that all of the billboards would have the correct information showing within 24 hours of the mistake being pointed-out.
She remains happy with the billboard company, which charged the city for 11 of the signs, & threw in a further 3 free ones as an incentive. Winfrey said that after the mistake, “they threw in two more freebies,” which she said would increase the number of billboards, with the correct information, to 16 in the city.
“Confusion has made his masterpiece.” It warms my heart to see people everywhere, just doing what they do best.
View from a Rhino House: nearer my God, to thee
In Tennessee a judge has ordered a baby’s first name to be registered as “Martin” even though his parents had agreed to call him “Messiah”, claiming that the only true messiah is Jesus Christ, a ruling the boy’s mother will appeal against , a local TV station reported.
The parents of Messiah DeShawn Martin went before Tennessee Child Support Magistrate Lu Ann Ballew (Lu Ann, & she’s ruling on other peoples’ names?) because they could not agree on the 7-month-old’s last name.
Ballew instead of simply issuing a ruling, last week ordered the baby’s name changed to Martin DeShawn McCullough, the TV station WBIR reported.
“The word ‘Messiah’ is a title, & it’s a title that has only been earned by one person, and that one person is Jesus Christ,” Ballew told WBIR, indicating a substantive lack of language skills, as well as sharing some pretty definite religious views of her own.
Ballew, said the child would have problems with his parents’ choice of first name because he lives in Cocke County, a predominantly Christian area in eastern Tennessee. (Nothing compared to the problems he’s going to have at college when he has to say where he comes from.)
“It could put him at odds with a lot of people &, at this age, he has had no choice in what his name is,” Ballew said.
Jaleesa Martin, the baby’s mother, said, “I didn’t think a judge could change my baby’s name because of her religious beliefs,”.
Christianity refers to Jesus as the Messiah, while Judaism & the dictionary, use the term to mean “an anticipated savior of the Jews.” Other dictionary definitions say the word can mean “one who is seen as, expected or professes to be a savior or liberator.”
Messiah was the 387th most popular name for boys born in the USA last year. In all, there were 762 applications for boys named Messiah in 2012, up from 368 applications in 2011.
Should have just called him “Brian” & had done with it.
ThursdayAgain 
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