Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:07 AM | Comments (96)
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I'm at a loss how to even parody this kind of doublespeak anymore. First the puff:

Foreclosures down 2 percent from last year
Foreclosure filings sink 2 percent from April 2009, first yearly decline in 5 years

^{Millions of Americans are still likely to lose their homes in the coming years,} but the foreclosure crisis is finally showing signs of subsiding...

...Banks seized a record 92,000 homes last month. [which is pretty close to the 1M that were queued up for action this year - PA]

And there are millions more potential foreclosures ahead. Nearly 7.4 million borrowers, or 12 percent of all households with a mortgage, had missed at least one month of payments or were in foreclosure as of March

There's several empty foreclosed/evicted joints within 2 minutes walking distance from me. They've been for sale for months now. Within the same 2 minute walk there's at least a dozen more the foreclosure/eviction trigger could be pulled on whenever the lender wanted to. Two joints right across the street are at least 9 months behind and have stopped paying...and this is the best street in the development.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 05:06 AM | Comments (106)
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Good evening and happy Hump Day all.

Drunk Germans + Playground Toy + Motorcycle = Awesome FAIL
Okay I totally cracked up when I saw this. It takes a certain amount of cleverness to even come up with the idea much less attempt the execution. But then the alcohol and stupidity kicks in. The music for the replay is a nice touch.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:56 PM | Comments (986)
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To fund an advertising blitz by the state's tourism marketers to let everybody know "there ain't no oil on our beaches here, no sir, come on and spend your vacation money in sunny Florida."

His solution: A $35 million advertising blitz, paid for by the company that owns the leaking oil well. That, he says, would enable the state's tourism marketing company, Visit Florida, to launch an advertising campaign to counter the rumors about coastlines covered in oil slicks and tar balls.

"One of the things that we want to do is be able to market to states north of Florida,'' Crist said, "that our beaches are still clean, that our hotels are still open, our restaurants are doing well, and we want people to continue to come on down and help our tourist industries.''

This jackass is really starting to annoy me.

The oil isn't anywhere near Florida, might never make it anywhere near Florida. Doesn't matter. The beast is wounded, let's have at it.

He's also asked the Small Business Administration to go ahead and make sweet loans available to not-yet-affected-and-may-never-be-affected tourism and fishing businesses who may or may not ever need them. Just in case.

This on the heels of his campaign's announcement today they'll just hang on to those contributions made to his Republican Senate campaign, sorry Republican contributors. We know you meant "Charlie the Whatever Candidate for U.S. Senate".

I suppose the plus side is a couple more jack moves like this and we can quit worrying about him splitting the Republican vote.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:02 PM | Comments (168)
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Only seven reviews, but seriously, weren't you guessing 20% at best?

The scary thing is several of these reviews are kinda rave-ish. This review pans the film as stupid and unambitious and a waste of everyone's talents -- but then still says it's funny enough to see anyway.

I never really liked the sketch myself, but apparently they've made, as one reviewer says, one of the best comedies in recent years.

Two jokes I like -- the villain is named "Van Cunth," with a silent "h," and that business about parking 20 blocks away at the end of this. more...

Posted by: Ace at 03:39 PM | Comments (235)
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I can't believe I just found out about this. The DoD is hosting the first ever Warrior Olympics for over 200 wounded American heroes at the Olympic Training Facility in Colorado Springs.

The opening ceremonies were held on Monday with all due pomp and ceremony.

(I moved the video below the fold because I think it was hanging up the site as it loads)

As you can imagine, the military as whole is made of pretty competitive individuals. That doesn't change just because they have suffered serious wounds. In fact, it seems to bring it out even more in many vets.

Army Sgt. 1st Class Jacque Keeslar had both legs blown off when the Stryker vehicle in which he was manning a .50-caliber machine gun hit a roadside bomb in Rawah, Iraq, in June 2006.

Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Cheramie lost his left leg below the knee when he stepped on a bomb while on patrol in Now Zad, Afghanistan, in December 2008.

... Keeslar, 40, will compete in swimming events, shotput and wheelchair basketball. Cheramie, 21, is set to swim the 50-meter freestyle, 100-meter freestyle and 50-meter breast stroke.

Cheramie has been a patient at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. Keeslar is a platoon sergeant at the barracks for wounded and injured personnel receiving therapy at the Naval Medical Center San Diego, which is sending 10 athletes (one sailor, seven soldiers, two Marines) to the games.

Both centers specialize in the use of prosthetics and in guiding personnel back to active lifestyles through sports. In San Diego, the center has classes in archery, scuba diving, rock-climbing, volleyball, kayaking, surfing and more.

"It's that competitive thing," Keeslar said. "It's very healing."

Cheramie said he hopes to serve as a role model for other military personnel.

"I want to show them it's not over just because you've been injured," Cheramie said in a telephone interview. "Everybody goes through that 'I'm ugly, nobody will love me, I'm stuck in a wheelchair' depression. You have to move on."

Mark Seavey of the American Legion turned me on to this story and he's at the games. I wrote to him saying it must be motivating to be there. His response, "It's the greatest thing ever".

God knows these men and women deserve all of this and more.

More at the Legion's BurnPit blog. more...

Posted by: DrewM at 02:44 PM | Comments (19)
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She won't date anyone with "Winnie Cooper fantasies," to which I can only say, "Bravo, dear lady, and who are you exactly? Were you on Hardcastle & McCormack?"

The Nero Wolfe Mysteries?

Airwolf?

Whoever this person is, and whoever "Winnie Cooper" might be (I have no idea at all myself), she seems to be keen on math.

She says of the shoot, “It was fun. We went with a collegiate theme with some knee socks which are always fun.”

...

The actress-turned-mathematician is about to release her third book, “Hot X: Algebra Exposed” in August. She explains to the magazine, that her books are intended “to help girls who [believe] that stigma that math is only for guys or you have to be a nerd to like math.”

Instead, she says, “Let’s make math fun and sexy and glamorous. Smart is sexy, that’s one of my main messages."

The actress, who has been married for a little over a year finds guys with good math skills sexy. “It’s really cool when a guy tips 20 percent quickly and effortlessly so that when the check comes, he opens it and signs his name and done,” she says.

...

“Here’s how you do it. You look at the total of the check and you move the decimal point over one spot [to the left] so now it’s a smaller amount and then you double what you see and that’s your 20%.”

Sure, that trifling calculation may take an extra 10^-5 seconds, but I can spare the 10⁴ microjoules of effort. Q.E.D.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:29 PM | Comments (325)
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Here's the backstory. He's showing up on local newscasts around the Midwest, and I think you can see why.

(PS -- More videos at that link!)

Thanks to MattM.

Don't hate me for the headline... had to sell it.

It's really hard to fake out the professionals in the news gathering business, isn't it? They really work so damn hard on getting the story nailed down, tight as a tick before broadcast, eh?

More: K-Strass' explanation for his poor performances:

"We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience, Kenny is growing through some rough times and we wish him well in the future."

The MFM digs into the truth behind "K-Strass."

Posted by: Ace at 01:15 PM | Comments (83)
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Well knock me over with a feather.

This one snuck up on me like a ninja assassin with the power to cloud men's minds and wrapped in a Predator-tech chameleon-field Snuggie.

I swear, by Jack Lord's Hair, I never saw this one coming.

As a Judiciary Committee staffer in 1995, Kagan wrote an article in which she panned Supreme Court confirmation hearings as "vapid" and "hollow" because nominees refuse to specify their positions on hot-button topics. Durbin said Kagan — who was visiting several senators' offices in the Senate on Wednesday — understands better now why nominees can't be more candid.

"She said, 'Well, the world looks a little different from this vantage point,' " Durbin said of Kagan's response when he raised the topic of the article. "I think she will be as open and candid as she can be. But there are limits. She acknowledged that in the article that she wrote, that you just can't expect the nominee to speak out on every issue and prejudice a case that could come before you in the future. So she has to be careful to respect that line in her respect to the judiciary."

...

Durbin said Kagan was simply frustrated at the time.

"She wrote that article as a staffer who sat back in the chairs, listening to the answers, hoping for more," he said. "And now she comes to this [process] understanding that there are limits... She's going to do her best to answer questions fully and completely, but there is a limit. We cannot expect her any more than any other nominee to prejudice a decision that she may face on the Court."

Bear in mind, too, that when she wrote that article, she was but a fresh-faced wet-behind-the-ears blushing ingenue, a mere thirty-five years young.

Posted by: Ace at 01:05 PM | Comments (37)
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Eh, that's an old joke by... uh.. Dom Irrera, I think?

But Mark "Hot Lips" Sanford has communed with God, atoned for his previous sins, and prioritized what's really important in life.

And what's important is nookie.

“As a matter of record, everybody in this room knows exactly who I was with over the weekend,” Sanford said, referring to the rendezvous.

“That is no mystery to anybody given what I said last summer,” he said. “And, you know, the purpose was obviously to see if something could be restarted on that front, given the rather enormous geographic gulf between us. And time will tell. I don't know if it will or won't.”

Charo just emailed me to say "Coochie-Coochie!"

Posted by: Ace at 12:47 PM | Comments (79)
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