Aloha Dump

It was quite a spectacle on Thursday as I watched a local mall ablaze . The Galleria Mall is a scant 5 miles away but the plume of black smoke was easily visible from my office window. I was surprised to hear that this fire made national news until I started reading/watching the coverage. You can easily search for many articles and news clips about the fire but here is the short version. The mall was deliberately set on fire by a mentally disturbed 23 year old black man named    Alexander Corney Piggee  . He entered Game Stop wearing the uniform of a thug (a black hoodie) and carrying a backpack. He talked to the employee and then started a fire. The fire was initially  put out by sprinkler systems but firemen could not go in and investigate the area because of a potential bomb threat made by Piggee. It was unknown at the time if the initial fire was set by the homemade incendiary device or by other means. The fi...

I watched the trials and part of the Fontana Race yesterday. It was in southern California and the trials were, well, trials. When Danica Patrick, returning to NASCAR after moonlighting on the IndyCar circuit for a while, finished in the mid 30's everyone was swinging off her jock. Patrick is not the first female NASCAR driver but it seems to me that she has been thrust into the forefront because of some semi sex appeal qualities. The local afternoon radio DJ's talk nonstop about her, but frankly, I don't see what the big deal is- unless she is using her looks to cover up her hideous racing record.  Case and point, the race yesterday where she qualified 13th, beating out 30 scrubs who should be embarrassed they were beaten by a girl. Not too bad, but then she blew it with only 9 laps to go. Her loss falls into the category of "Rubbing is racing" and her crash is what I call getting "Dale Earnhardted". She wasn't paying attention and gave a litt...

My brother-in-law is a fireman and I can't wait to run this story by him. Imagine that your house is on fire, the fire department refuses to show up and when they do arrive, they put out your neighbors house and then leave- with your house still on fire. This isn't fiction, and it happened in a small town in Obion COunty Tennessee last weekend. I read about it on ThinkProgress.com as I was reading the hatred some people in this country have towards anyone who isn't a liberal. There is more to this story however, and it wasn't very well laid out on TP. The county of Obion does not have a fire department, as voted on by its citizens many years ago. In exchange, they do not pay taxes on that service. Seems crazy, doesn't it? However, the city of South Fulton, just outside Obion County on the Kentucky border, offers fire protection services for a measly $75 a year. Gene Cranick and his wife Paulette declined the services, again, this year and as fate would have it the...

As the Obama administration continues its World Apology Tour 08-12, Secretary of State Clin-ton formally apologized to the Guatemalan people for human STD experiments that were carried out in 1946. For two years, and with the approval of the Guatemalan government, the U.S. intentionally infected people by offering some sexy time with infected prostitutes. Since it is almost impossible to get men to have consensual sex with prostitutes, these pioneers of disease control decided to send the prostitutes to sexually depraved men in prison and in mental health institutions. What better way to conduct a controlled study! Kathleen Sebelius, the Health and Human Services Secretary, joined in and issued a formal apology to the Central American nation and to Guatemalan residents of the United States. The Guatemalan government was not available for immediate comment, however a former Guatemalan inmate known only as Agador had this to say: "Even though we were intention...