More light, frothy content
Cross-posted at The Kitchen Drawer.
Over at Althouse they’re discussing Thursday’s Presidential visit to the University of Wisconsin’s Madison campus. They’re shutting down the campus for at least part of the day so the President can have a nice photo-op post-debate. The Thursday timing is brilliant. Most students will have classes on Friday so they’ll stick around. If the event were on a Friday many students (and probably some professors and staff) would just take off after class on Thursday and make a nice, unexpected three day weekend of it.
They’re discussing many aspects of this visit, including whether or not the students should be upset by this intrusion. After all, this is a denial of one day’s paid education. Personally I think they should be upset, but who are we kidding – most of them won’t be because they won’t be thinking of the payments they’re making (or will make) for their education.
One commenter speculated that the lost tuition was worth it for the chance to see the President in person on one’s own campus. Maybe, but I’ll hold to the idea (expressed by others) that we shouldn’t worship our pols.
Nevertheless, this led me to reminisce about the times I’ve been in the presence of a sitting US President.
I’ve seen three Presidents in person. I saw Ronald Reagan at EPCOT for his 1984 Inaugural Parade. (The one in DC was cancelled due to weather, so a few months later they did it down here in Florida.) I got to see him from less than 30 feet away as he drove by in a Presidential limo.
I saw George H. W. Bush twice. Once in the White House from about 10 feet away (pure luck, the family was taking a tour and he unexpectedly showed up with some ambassador from some African nation) and once at Daytona International Speedway during the race in July. I may have even been within 1000 feet at that time!
(Funny/strange story from that one. Our tickets were for the stands right behind the pit road in the infield. Awesome seats! So as we approached the tunnel for the infield in a Ford Explorer we were questioned by the Secret Service. “Do you have any firearms in your vehicle?” “No, sir.” “No bazookas or anything like that?” “No, sir!” “Carry on.” That was it! Like we would have answered “Yes” if we were bringing in a bazooka! And who the Hell was talking about bazookas in 1992?! Very strange incident, but I guess the guy sized us up with a 14 and 10 year-old in the car as well as people up in their 60s and assessed us as “NOT terrorists”.)
And I once saw George W. Bush at a campaign rally. I still can’t believe I went to one of those things.
All in all it was kind of neat, but not awe inspiring. They are, after all, just men.
Now my sister, when she was little, once got to sit in JFK’s chair behind his desk in the Oval Office. That happened through a series of happy accidents, and if anything like that were to happen today it would be a major security breech complete with drone strikes on the houses of everyone in the family.
Mom and Dad lived in DC back in the early 1950s. Dad was out taking a morning walk one morning and bumped into someone on the street. Dad said something along the lines of “Hey, watch it buddy!”, took a few steps and stopped. He turned around and there stood President Truman (who was found of walks), hands on hips, just glaring at Dad! Dad muttered apologies and scrammed!
I’ve also wondered about the time Nixon wandered out of the White House one night to visit some protesters over at the Lincoln Memorial. How strange that must have been for the protesters!
With friends like these ….
Naked man kidnapped, robbed by friends, deputies say
Six Osceola County residents are behind bars after deputies say they kidnapped and robbed a friend then left him naked in Kissimmee early Saturday morning.
Osceola County Sheriff’s deputies say the victim agreed to give friends, 18-year-old Lindsey Saucedo and 33-year-old Rosa DeJesus and their two friends 20-year-old Stephen Batista and 24-year-old Frederick Rodriguez, a ride around 2:45 a.m. Saturday.
Deputies did not say where they five were headed, but along the way, investigators say Batista and Rodriguez pulled out weapons and demanded the driver give them money.
Shortly after the demands, the victim ran out of gas, and the five abandoned the car and walked to meet up with two others — 35-year-old Crystal Gonzalez and 18-year-old Abraham Buil.
After all seven met, they drove to two local banks and forced the victim to withdraw money, deputies said. They also took his personal items, including his clothing.
They ditched the naked victim on McLaren Circle in Kissimmee, where he walked to a Wawa store on Orange Blossom Trail to report the crime.
Deputies caught up to the six suspects.
All six were booked into Osceola County Jail and face charges of armed robbery, conspiracy and kidnapping charges.
You can get a look at the perps here.
On the Sentinel website larryboy77 comments: “you can plan and plan and plan the perfect crime and something can still go wrong”
NOTE: I do have a couple of better posts I’m working on, but the last three days have not been conducive to writing. Nothing like not having a properly functioning toilet in the house to induce writer’s block!
Wax off….
I take my daughter to parks frequently. In my part of town a long-ish bike trail, the West Orange Trail, runs by most of the parks. It is part of the local Rails-to-Trails project, in which old unused rail-beds get converted to bike trails. So I see lots and lots of cycling enthusiasts. Not just people out cycling with the family, or enjoying the Great Outdoors, but hard-core cyclists, complete with the funny shoes and all the spandex.
What I don’t get are the guys that ride bikes and wax off their body hair and wear all spandex. Now I get why professional racers do that, to cut down drag. But they’re actual, you know, racers, doing it not just for fun but for profit, and eliminating every last bit of drag is a professional necessity.
But if you’re just some guy doing it to stay in shape (and not all of these waxed be-spandexed folks have achieved that goal), why cut down drag? Wouldn’t more drag help you get into shape faster? And it isn’t like these guys go whizzing by much faster than the Moms and Dads out cycling with their five year-olds that just took off the training wheels last week, either. A little faster, yes, but Lance Armstrong they ain’t.
WTF, Cycling Guys, WT-f’ing-F?
Ranting, elsewhere.
I don’t really want to post about politics here. But that’s okay because I have other places I can rant. Faced with the day’s absurdities I have written a post over there. If you’re looking to see what’s got me steamed you can look at it there.
Gaps in time
The other night my wife noted something remarkable. “Do you realize that men walking on the Moon is more distant in time to Cat [our daughter] than WWII is to me?”
She’s right. WWII ended in 1945, she was born in 1971. Men last walked on the Moon in 1972, Cat was born in 2010. Incredible!
(I was born in 1968, BTW.)
Neil Armstrong – RIP
CNN – Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, dies
Only eight of the 12 men who have walked on the Moon remain alive now.
ADDED: Here’s footage of Armstrong escaping death while practicing for the lunar landing in the Bell Aerosystems Lunar Landing Research Vehicle:
Reading Comprehension FAIL
This morning I saw a story that caught my eye on Yahoo! News. The headline read:
Insight: Florida man sees “cruel” face of U.S. justice
So I clicked on the story to read it later. I just finished reading the story and doing a little research on it.
The story is about some low-life named Quartavious Davis from South Florida. Mr. Davis is upset because he was sentenced to almost 162 years in prison for his first offence. However, his outrage and shock is a bit misplaced, as his first conviction actually covers seven armed robberies, during two of which he allegedly fired his weapon. This string of armed robberies was committed with several accomplices (making him a gang-banger, and a lousy one at that) shortly after he turned 18. I guess the $674 a month he was getting from Social Security Disability Insurance wasn’t enough. (Yes, this guy is a poster-child for the anti-welfare crowd.)
Mr. Davis got this massive sentence because (a) all his co-defendants took plea deals and rolled on him and (b) the federal government has a policy known as “stacking” in which the sentences get stacked on top of each other.
So obviously, this is a problem with Florida’s horrible, archaic justice system, right?
Well, no. I’m willing to bet that this crowd (do we count as a crowd?) noticed that I mentioned the federal government. Yes, Mr. Davis somehow managed to get his dumb-assed self prosecuted in a federal court, by a federal prosecutor (funny how that works), before a federal judge, and has been sentenced to rot to death in a federal prison under federal sentencing guidelines.
However, the article in question (from Reuters) makes this into a state issue about Florida. The commenters there and elsewhere barely noticed.
So this is all about the backwards state of Florida and how racist and evil conservatives are for a great many people in the echo-chamber.
Whatever. The people making the complaints about the awfulness of Florida are incapable of reading. Not to mention that the goon reporter from Reuters is intentionally misleading them. (You can read the story yourselves and figure out how.)
But here’s a nice little factoid from the Reuters article:
Since 2003, the Justice Department has had guidelines in place that discourage prosecutors from stacking in cases where it can lead to excessive sentences.
Yet prosecutors have broad discretion within their jurisdictions to follow their own lights, according to criminal-law experts.
So the Bush Justice Department actually discouraged the practice, though (in typical fashion) they didn’t actually do anything to end the practice of governmental over-reach.
So who is behind this sentence? Besides the Congress and Justice Department, the man most responsible appears to be Wifredo A. “Willy” Ferrer, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Who just happens to be an Obama appointee.
So, clearly a Hispanic-American federal prosecutor reporting to a black US AG and appointed by a black President working under federal guidelines is a sign of racist Florida being a backwater of justice.
ADDED: I should add that Quartavious Davis’s parents should probably spend time in prison for their choice of name for their son. This isn’t a new position for me.
A picture in need of a caption
Below is a picture of my bob-tailed cat, Tribbles. Clearly it needs a caption but I have no idea what it should be.
I keep thinking it ought to be something with a Harryhausen theme….
Ambiance 
