Reasons we have consumer and occupational safety laws:

Exhibit A

This Yahoo News article talks about how the “Popular Vote Plan” – the idea that all of the agreeing states will cast their electoral votes with the popular vote, regardless of how their state actually voted – is pretty much dead.

Killed by Montana and North Dakota, no less. And no wonder – the reason we have an electoral college is so that the small states actually have a say-so in the election; as the article mentions, if it were any other way then the election would be selected by New York, L.A., Houston, Chicago and Miami. Considering the morons that are voted into the leadership of those towns, well, let’s not be too rash about changing things, eh?

Seriously, the reason for this is that there is a very good reason this country is named the United States – it is a federated republic of soveriegn states, not individuals. As such, the states are the basis of the vote system for the supreme executive. This is not a democracy, it is a democratic republic.

Time to drag out the link to Math against tyranny again, it seems.

Mind you, this is far from the first time the “popular vote” canard has been brought up in this country, and I doubt it will be the last. Good riddance until next time.

On February 6th Pam and I celebrate 13 years of marriage – lucky 13!

When I examine it that number of years seems like it should be a long time, but in reality it seems to have zipped by. I find that good times tend to do that for me, while a horrible experience seems to last forever. Here’s to many, many more very fast years.

I love you, Pam.

I’ll admit, I’ve never liked Boston. An entire town full of people who can’t even say “Chowder” correctly. But I never suspected that the people who ran that over-rated burg were so incredibly stupid.

In case you haven’t heard – and if you haven’t, where you have been? – Boston had a bomb scare yesterday. “Multiple devices found!” “Highways closed!” – yada yada yada. The news media went into a feeding frenzy and certainly did their best to whip it up as high as possible.

End result? No bombs. These were light up marketing devices for the Cartoon Network/Adult Swim show “Aqua Teen Hunger Force”. Here is my favorite picture:

Oh, come on! It’s a Lite Brite! What “terra-ist” is going to make a bomb that is so conspicuous? (Well, now they might because of this embarrassment – thanks, Boston.)

Well, they found the evil “culprits” – two performance artists who were hired by an advertising firm to do “Guerilla Marketing” – placing it on buildings, on overpasses, that sort of thing. Perhaps the less retarded members of the mASSachusetts attorney generals office and the boston police decided to look on YouTube, ‘cause you can find the video of the two perps putting up the “devices” at this link.

More pictures of the items are here

Ok, ok. So they made a mistake. Perhaps they will say “Mea Culpa” and let the whole thing drop, eh? Oh, no – there is no room for admitting mistakes in the body politic of Boston (and, sadly, almost anywhere else in the USA). This post has more details. Go read it now, it’s really, really good. I’ll wait.

In case you don’t want to read it, I’ll summarize by saying that the Mayor of Boston – that idiotic, bloated sack of protoplasm – is loudly proclaiming how they will be prosecuting these two guys for… well… doing nothing illegal, apparently. But, of course, all the while saying that this was a “bomb hoax” .

Places like FARK are, of course, having a field day with this. But they aren’t the only ones – the two “perps”, upon being released on bond, held a press conference where they refused to play the media game… to the obvious frustration of the press corps. It was certainly the most interesting press conference I’ve ever seen. You can check out the Reason article here or, if you prefer, simply jump straight to the YouTube video here.

Cartoon Network/Adult Swim even got into the act by putting up a new bumper that addresses the issue.

Finally, for those of you who would like a commerative t-shirt of this “One small misstep for a man, one incredible leap of idiocy for Boston-kind”, you can check out the shirts at Cafe Press or at Raplica.

The Mooninites (one of which is depicted on the “device”) have always insisted that everyone was smarter on the moon. It took Boston to convince me that they might be right.

One last snark/comment: The Mayor of Boston is insisting that Cartoon Network/Turner Broadcasting have their broadcast license removed. It seems to me that the only thing that needs removed (at the next election) is a large number of elected officials in Massachusetts.

Update! This just in!

Update, Part Deux! It turns out that they found some actual “real” fake bombs in Boston yesterday, but although they’ve identified the suspect they have yet to arrest him.

Why? My guess is that he didn’t expose the upper levels of Boston government as the idiots that they are.