The Florida Masochist

Soldiers' Angels needs help

Holly Aho has a letter posted from Soldiers Angels founder Patti Bader. Go over and read it and if you have any spare cash, please donate it. Remember you'll be helping our brave fighting men and women. God bless them all.

The no class show

Katie Couric interviewed Bill O'Reilly this morning. Note the typo.

This is a week after the same show had a staged scene with a canoe in ankle deep water. Again the MSM shows its true colors. Today won't have any reputation left if it even has one now.

Thank you to Politcal Teen who has the video also.

Miami Dolphins prediction and some sports notes

The Dolphins are playing their game tonight rather than on Sunday. This is due to Hurricane Wilma. This is the team's first Friday night game in 22 years but one of a half dozen times in last 12 years that Miami has had to re-schedule a game due to weather.

My opinion is the short week will affect both teams equally. Miami is going to get thrashed also, my prediction Kansas City 34, Miami 14.

*- The game will be broadcast on television in Kansas City, Miami, West Palm Beach and Ft. Myers television markets. But as James Joyner and the Tampa Tribune notes, the game won't be on NFL Sunday ticket live tonight or broadcast in the Tampa or Orlando areas. The NFL really needs to re-vamp their television rules.

*- How pathetic is it when a team that traded away a 2nd round pick to get a player have to turn around barely a year later by giving away a 6th to get rid of the same player. That's what Miami did the other day to unload AJ Feeley. A 6th round pick and Feeley for a QB that's never played a down in the NFL and is not likely to do so this year either. Why not release Feeley out right or just keep him to the end of the year. Just another dumb personel(or pardon the pun a lemon.) decision by Miami, and it looks like nothing has changed but the names of management for this team.

*- Houston Astros vs Chicago White Sox in the World Series. Two very dissimilar ballparks in my old Strat-O-Matic days. A lefty homer park vs. a Righty homer park. Creative managing and lineup juggling would be needed.

But we're talking real-life not a board game. I pick the White Sox in 6.

*- The Golf tours are winding down. The LPGA is off this week after seeing Annika stomp the field last weekend. They play in South Korea a week from now, then Japan before coming back to the US for the final two weeks of the year. Four weeks to the ADT Championship here in West Palm Beach. I will be attending.

This weekend's PGA tour stop is in Orlando. Tiger Woods is playing but Hunter Haas is leading so far. So there will be golf for me to watch this weekend.

Why do they mail these bills out?

My mother-in-law(She lives with us) had a cat scan done some time back. Today we get a bill in t he mail. For $0.00. Why do hospitals or medical facilities mail out bills like this? I get 2 or 3 of them a year at least. One of life's mysteries, like why there are interstate highways in Hawaii.

Waiting on Wilma or Is this Groundhog Day?

Fellow Florida Blogger Bright&Early is beginning to ask that question. It seems we're stuck in a time loop with Wilma always three days away from Florida.

The wait could prove to be good for Florida. Wilma stalling over the Yucatan is taking away most of the storm's punch. It should only arrive here in Florida as a Category 1 or 2 storm. That is alot less destructive than the original forecasts were two days ago.

On the other hand all the forecasting computer models have Wilma coming to Florida. One way or another some parts of this state or in for a destructive storm. Please pray for all the residents of this state.

Because of the storm, many people are re-arranging their schedules. That includes the Miami Dolphins. They will be playing their game originally scheduled for Sunday, tonight instead. I'll have my weekly prediction up later.

Overall the waiting on Wilma game continues here in Lantana. I'll post more updates here as news happens.

The Knucklehead of the Day award

Today's winner is Michael Drennon. Mr. Drennon held up a bank in Bensalem PA last Friday. Guess what he used for the note for the bank teller? An old paycheck stub with his name and address on it! 

BENSALEM, Pa. - A note handed to a bank teller demanding $20, $50 and $100 bills "the quicker the better" was written on a pay stub that led police to a robbery suspect even though the name and address were crossed out with a marker.

"It wasn't a huge forensic undertaking," Steven Moran, Bensalem director of public safety, said Wednesday. "We just put it under a light."

The FBI charged Michael Drennon, 26, of Philadelphia, with robbing the Wachovia Bank in Bensalem on Friday. Drennon, who had been living in a halfway house while on probation, was being held at the federal detention center in Philadelphia pending a hearing scheduled for Friday. It couldn't immediately be determined if he had an attorney.

The man who slipped the teller the note Friday left the bank with about $2,500, authorities said. Police said Drennon had about $1,800 on him when he was arrested

Will their next child be named yahoo?

Some news from Sweden. Do parents ever think when naming their children? Specifically how it would feel to be called by their name. In this case, I don't think the parents gave much consideration to that. Giving a child an odd name is almost like cursing them to have other children pick on them or tease them.

Hat tip- Leopold Stotch at OTB who quips there should be sterilization for morons.
Open Post- Jo's Cafe

KALMAR, , Sweden, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- A couple in Sweden who uses computers a lot have chosen to name their firstborn son Google, after the world-dominant search engine.

Elias Kai, who is Lebanese, told The Local newspaper he's a "great fan" of the search engine, but the name means more to him than that.

"The word 'googol' means 1 followed by 100 zeros, and I want my son to have lots of friends -- I want him to be social, so the name also symbolizes this."

The Swedish tax authority, known for being iffy about allowing unusual baby names, did not stand in their way after the birth on Sept. 12.

"They just thought it was funny," Elias told the newspaper.

And so did management at the Silicone Valley, Calif.-based software company.

Now the Palm Beach Post needs a civics lesson

A week ago I blogged about a Post editorial that made me laugh. Here is another example. The topic is tasers and who should be making guidelines for their use. I'm only going to quote the very end.

But the leap from voluntary guidelines to questionable law could prove more of a shock to the public than the Taser-related deaths that spurred action toward standards and training. The questions are as basic as the legislation's lack of clear requirements regarding the civilians to whom the electric gun increasingly is being marketed. Tallahassee could make matters worse once lobbyists for the various interests enter the mix.

The problem is that there's no telling what might end up in the final bill. There's also no compelling reason why lawmakers, rather than professional law enforcers at FDLE and the Standards and Training Commission, should establish uniformity for Florida.

There is one compelling reason. Our legislators make the laws, not law enforcement. Our elected officials have the right to make the law here, get over it Palm Beach Post.

No respect for the law

And he is a judge in Spain. This story hasn't gotten much talk in the blogosphere with the exception of Indepundit and Outside the Beltway.

MADRID, Spain - A judge has issued an international arrest warrant for three U.S. soldiers whose tank fired on a Baghdad hotel during the Iraq war, killing a Spanish journalist and a Ukrainian cameraman, a court official said Wednesday.

Judge Santiago Pedraz issued the warrant for Sgt. Shawn Gibson, Capt. Philip Wolford and Lt. Col. Philip de Camp, all from the U.S. 3rd Infantry, which is based in Fort Stewart, Ga.

Jose Couso, who worked for the Spanish television network Telecinco, died April 8, 2003, after a U.S. army tank crew fired a shell on Hotel Palestine in Baghdad where many journalists were staying to cover the war.

Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk, a Ukrainian, also was killed.

Pedraz had sent two requests to the United States — in April 2004 and June 2005 — to have statements taken from the suspects or to obtain permission for a Spanish delegation to quiz them. Both went unanswered.

He said he issued the arrest order because of a lack of judicial cooperation from the United States regarding the case.

The warrant "is the only effective measure to ensure the presence of the suspects in the case being handled by Spanish justice, given the lack of judicial cooperation by U.S. authorities," the judge said in the warrant.

The Pentagon had no immediate information and said it was looking into it.

U.S. officials have insisted that the soldiers believed they were being shot at when they opened fire.

Following the Palestine incident, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell said a review of the incident found that the use of force was justified.

In late 2003, the National Court, acting on a request from Couso's family, agreed to consider filing criminal charges against three members of the tank crew.

Fort Stewart spokeswoman Jennifer Scales said the three no longer are assigned to Fort Stewart or the 3rd Infantry Division.

De Camp, who is now an adjunct mathematics professor at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., said three investigations into the incident — two military investigations and one by the Committee to Protect Journalists — had exonerated all three men.

"We had no clue there were journalists over at that hotel," he said. "We would not have shot at them."

I had originally planned to give Judge Pedraz today's knucklehead award except that a better candidate came forward. He is a runner-up knucklehead.

Just proof the US doesn't have a monopoly on out of control judges. What is it about the black robes that gives people like Santiago Pedraz a power trip like in this case. Three investigations cleared these soldiers. Plus living and working in a combat zone is dangerous. These journalists know that.

Most of all Judge Pedraz has no jurisdiction in the matter. He has to know that yet he moved forward with these warrants. A judge who has no respect for the law has no business being on the bench. These warrants are proof of just that with Judge Pedraz.

This gives new meaning

to the expression pissing away taxpayer money. The House wants to appropriate 2 million dollars to study flushless urinals. The company is in Michigan, so I guess its a congressman or congresswoman from that state pushing this idea. This would save Navy ships the cost of storing water but as James Joyner points out why is the taxpayer funding the study instead of the contractor?

Open Post- Indepundit

The House wants to divert $2 million in the Navy's FY06 operations accounts to boost a rapidly growing Michigan environmental technology firm that markets itself as the "world leader for waterfree urinals." In an unpublicized portion of the House version of the FY06 Defense appropriations bill, lawmakers added a conservation initiative that would pay for a Navy study exploring the use of "no flush" urinals. Advocates say the product could save thousands of gallons of water onboard ships and at military installations where water is scant. The initiative, which could help Falcon Waterfree Technologies expand its budding military contracting business, was added by appropriators even as they cut $2.9 billion from operations and maintenance accounts across the military services in an attempt to focus more spending on the global war on terrorism.