Filthy Filner: Another Day, Another Assaulted Woman Comes Forward – Plus, Bonus Video!

Yet another (I've now lost count, but it must be approaching 20) woman comes forward, alleging Filthy made unwanted advances upon her.  This time, it's a 67 year old great-grandmother, and part-time city worker.

Good grief.  Pass the popcorn, please.

And:

Message from Mom...

My mom sends lots of humorous things my way.  Sometimes I post them on my blog.  Sometimes I wonder what she's trying to tell me.  This morning she sent me this:

Now men ... men are like a fine wine.  They begin as grapes, and it's up to women to stomp the shit out of them until they turn into something acceptable to have dinner with.

I'm wondering what she's trying to tell me by sending this to me.  Is she taking credit for stomping me as a child (implying that the results were acceptable)?  Or is she telling me that I need to find a women to stomp me (implying my wife isn't getting the job done)?

I just don't know...

The Jewish Quarterback...

Another good one from Jim M. – laugh and cry:

The coach had put together the perfect team for the Chicago Bears. The only thing that was missing was a good quarterback. He had scouted all the colleges and even the Canadian and European Leagues, but he couldn't find a ringer who could ensure a Super Bowl win.

Then one night while watching CNN he saw a war-zone scene in the West Bank. In one corner of the background, he spotted a young Israeli soldier with a truly incredible arm. He threw a hand-grenade straight into a 15th story window 100 yards away.

KABOOM!

He threw another hand-grenade 75 yards away, right into a chimney.

KA-BLOOEY!

Then he threw another at a passing car going 90 mph.

BULLS-EYE!

"I've got to get this guy!" Coach said to himself. "He has the perfect arm!"

So, he brings him to the States and teaches him the great game of football. And the Bears go on to win the Super Bowl.

The young man is hailed as the great hero of football, and when the coach asks him what he wants, all the young man wants is to call his mother.

"Mom," he says into the phone, "I just won the Super Bowl!"

"I don't want to talk to you, the old woman says. "You are not my son!"

"I don't think you understand, Mother," the young man pleads. "I've won the greatest sporting event in the world.  I'm here among thousands of my adoring fans."

"No! Let me tell you!" his mother retorts. "At this very moment, there are gunshots all around us. The neighborhood is a pile of rubble. Your two brothers were beaten within an inch of their lives last week, and I have to keep your sister in the house so she doesn't get raped!"

The old lady pauses, and then tearfully says, "I will never forgive you for making us move to Chicago!!!!

The homicide rate in Chicago is 15.2 per year, per 100,000 people.  In Israel, it's 2.4.  His mother has good reason to be afraid...

Retirement...

Passed along by reader Jim M.:

One day a man decided to retire...

He booked himself on a Caribbean cruise and proceeded to have the
time of his life, that is, until the ship sank.

He soon found himself on an island with no other people, no supplies, nothing, only bananas and coconuts.

After about four months, he is lying on the beach one day when the most gorgeous woman he has ever seen rows up to the shore.

In disbelief, he asks, "Where did you come from? How did you get here?"

She replies, "I rowed over from the other side of the island where I landed when my cruise ship sank."

"Amazing," he notes. "You were really lucky to have a row boat wash up with you."

"Oh, this thing?" explains the woman. "I made the boat out of some raw material I found on the island. The oars were whittled from gum tree branches. I wove the bottom from palm tree branches, and the sides and stern came from a Eucalyptus tree."

"But, where did you get the tools?"

"Oh, that was no problem," replied the woman. "On the south side of the island, a very unusual stratum of alluvial rock is exposed. I found that if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln, it melted into ductile iron and I used that to make tools and used the tools to make the hardware."

The guy is stunned.

"Let's row over to my place," she says "and I'll give you a tour." So, after a short time of rowing, she soon docks the boat at a small wharf. As the man
looks to shore, he nearly falls off the boat. Before him is a long stone walk leading to a Cabin and tree house.

While the woman ties up the row boat with an expertly woven hemp rope, the man can only stare ahead, dumb struck. As they walk into the house, she says casually, "It's not much, but I call it home. Please sit down."

"Would you like a drink?" "No! No thank you," the man blurts out, still dazed.  "I can't take another drop of coconut juice."

"Oh it's not coconut juice," winks the woman. "I have a still. How would you like a Tropical Spritz?"

Trying to hide his continued amazement, the man accepts, and they sit down on her couch to talk. After they exchange their individual survival stories, the woman announces, "I'm going to slip into something more comfortable. Would you like to take a shower and shave? There's a razor in the bathroom cabinet upstairs."

No longer questioning anything, the man goes upstairs into the bathroom. There, in the cabinet is a razor made from a piece of tortoise bone. Two shells honed to a hollow ground edge are fastened on to its end inside a swivel mechanism.

"This woman is amazing," he muses. "What's next?" When he returns, she greets him wearing nothing but some small flowers on tiny vines, each strategically positioned, she smelled faintly of gardenias. She then beckons for him to sit down next to her.

"Tell me," she begins suggestively, slithering closer to him, "We've both been out here for many months. You must have been lonely. When was the last time you played around? She stares into his eyes.

He can't believe what he's hearing. "You mean..." he swallows excitedly as tears start to form in his eyes, "You've built a Golf Course?"

This does not describe my retirement priorities :)

Flash Floods...

What they actually look like:


I've only seen two flash floods in my entire life, both entirely by accident – I wasn't chasing them like these guys.  Both the flash floods I saw looked much like this, though the character of the brush was a bit different (being Southern Californian chaparral).  They aren't at all like the flash floods of Hollywood or many western novels – there's no 50 foot high wall of water that appears without warning.

On the other hand, if you do something stupid like, say, parking your RV in the wash and going to sleep – you're likely to get quite a rude surprise!  In one of the flash floods I witnessed, exactly this happened.  I saw the RV being washed along the by the torrent, flipping over and over.  About 15 minutes after the RV went by, the owners (a young couple) came huffing up, trying to catch up with it.  They managed to get out of the RV before the flood tipped it over, but getting to shore was touch-and-go.  They were both quite scared.  I gave them a ride, first down to where their RV was still tumbling along, now beaten almost beyond recognition.  It was a total loss.  Then I gave them a ride into the town of Ocotillo, where they parked themselves in an air-conditioned business and awaited help from relatives.

Quote of the Day...

This is a long one, but choice: Matt Walsh writes an apology letter to President Obama, tongue planted very firmly in cheek.  The lead:

Dear President Obama,

I’m reaching out to you as a friend. I know you must be deeply hurting after what happened at the Missouri State Fair. Sure, you probably try to avoid watching the news while you’re on vacation, but I’m sure the pilot who airlifted your dog to your rental mansion in Martha’s Vineyard probably caught you up to speed (that guy is such a chatterbox). Your jaw must have hit the floor when you heard the news: A rodeo clown in Missouri poked fun at you. Yeah, I know, almost impossible to believe. The gall! The gumption! The racism! Don’t worry, the entire country erupted in outrage, Democrats and Republicans issued statements of condemnation, and now the offending clown has been banned for life from the Missouri State Fair. There will likely be “action taken” against the Missouri Rodeo Clown Association, and I do hope justice is visited upon them swiftly. I think we’re all a little sick of the Missouri Rodeo Clown Association causing trouble. It’s something new every week with those freakin’ guys. 

You most definitely want to read the whole thing.

What a thin skin our narcissist-in-chief has!

On July 4th, 1776...

...how old were the Founding Fathers?  These ages surprised me greatly – somehow, in all my history reading, I'd never quite grasped this:

Marquis de Lafayette	18
James Monroe	18
Gilbert Stuart	20
Aaron Burr	20
Alexander Hamilton	21
Betsy Ross	24
James Madison	25
Thomas Jefferson	33
John Adams	40
Paul Revere	41
George Washington	44
Samuel Adams	53
Benjamin Franklin	70

I'd always imagined this group being roughly contemporaries – and I'd certainly never registered just how young some of the key thinkers were.  That list makes me feel...humbled...

Grasshopper Hops Sideways...

carSpaceX's test vehicle, dubbed “Grasshopper”, makes a test flight that adds a new maneuver: a lateral move away from, and then back to, the launch pad:


SpaceX seems to be carefully pushing their test vehicle along, trying one or two new things on each flight.  Their budgets are a tiny fraction of NASA's budget for rocket development, and yet they've arguably accomplished much more than NASA has managed, and in a very short time.  If they can figure out how to make money from the private sector, there's a lot of potential there – but that is a mighty big “if”. 

Right now, 100% of their revenue comes from NASA contracts.  I'm glad to see the cost reduction this affords NASA, but I'd much rather just shut down the manned space program at NASA – that would save a lot more money...

A Peek Inside North Korea...

Michael Malice is an American writer who was born in the Soviet Union, but came to the U.S. at the age of 2.  He visited North Korea as a tourist, partly on a quest to see a land that might give him a sense of what life in the Soviet Union was like for his parents.

He wrote about his week in North Korea for Reason.  He has some fascinating, sober, and insightful observations about the people there; well worth reading.  I continue to be impressed with the quality of the writing in Reason - one of only two magazines that I still subscribe to (the other is Science News).

A lot of observers who claim to be much better informed about what's going on inside of North Korea are convinced that the government there is about to collapse.  Nobody can be precise on the timing, of course – but the consensus seems to be that the intersection of a better-informed public (mainly through smuggled devices giving them access to Chinese media) and a disintegrating state apparatus (mainly because of its inability to pay, or even feed, its minions) makes a collapse inevitable.

That can't happen soon enough for the suffering people of North Korea.  But when the collapse does come, it will pose large problems for South Korea, and to a lesser extent, China.  South Korea will be in the same position as West Germany in 1991 – but with an even greater economic disparity, and with the enormous disadvantage of a relatively poorly educated and brainwashed North Korean population.  China will inevitably be taking in refugees and probably supplying humanitarian aid.  Even worse for them, however, will be losing the useful thorn in the West's side that North Korea has been for them...