And Now We Have Zipper-Gate Well Sorta

In a crowded city at a crowded bus stop, a beautiful young woman was waiting for the bus. She was decked out in a tight leather mini skirt with matching tight leather boots and jacket.

As the bus rolled up and it became her turn to get on, she became aware that her skirt was too tight to allow her leg to come up to the height of the first step on the bus.
Slightly embarrassed and with a quick smile to the bus driver she reached behind her and unzipped her skirt a little thinking that this would give her enough slack to raise her leg.
Again she tried to make the step onto the bus only to discover she still couldn’t! So, a little more embarrassed she once again reached behind her and unzipped her skirt a little more and for a second time attempted the step and once again, much to her chagrin she could not raise her leg because of the tight skirt.
So, with a coy little smile to the driver she again unzipped the offending skirt to give a little more slack and again was unable to make the step.
About this time the big Texan that was behind her in the line picked her up easily from the waist and placed her lightly on the step of the bus.
Well, she went ballistic and turned on the would-be hero screeching at him “How dare you touch my body!! I don’t even know who you are!”
At this the Texan drawled “Well ma’am normally I would agree with you but after you unzipped my fly three times, I kinda figured that we was friends.” 

~Steve~                                  H/T   dailyjokes.co

Alabama city backs off on disarming citizens in a “disaster”

Here’s an example of the power of the New Media of bloggers.

We may not be successful at dislodging corruption and incompetence from the White House and Congress, but in case after case, the volunteer army of citizen bloggers are successful in countering small petty tyrants.

A recent example is the mayor and city council of Guntersville, a city in Marshall County, Alabama. Located at the southernmost point of the Tennessee River on Lake Guntersville, the population of Guntersville was 8,197, according to the 2010 census.

On February 26, 2013, Paul Joseph Watson of Infowars sounded the alert that Guntersville’s mayor Leigh Dollar was working with city officials to pass an ordinance that would give police the power to “disarm individuals” during a disaster.

The new rule would allow authorities to confiscate guns of “unruly” people during an extreme weather event such as the April 2011 tornadoes or any other emergency. “The ordinance states officers could disarm individuals, if necessary, reports ABC 31. “Dollar says the proposal is just way to give officers more authority to protect themselves.”

Dollar denied that the ordinance would be used to take away constitutional rights, but residents questioned why authorities would need to pass a new ordinance given that police already have the power to arrest citizens who are being “unruly,” whether armed or not.

Watson called the proposed ordinance “a chilling example of how the second amendment is being assaulted via the back door” and reminds us of what happened in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, when the New Orleans Police, National Guard troops, and U.S. Marshals confiscated firearms and only law enforcement was allowed to have guns. The National Guard conducted warrantless house-to-house searches, targeting not just Hurricane-hit areas under the pretext of stopping violent looters, but also high and dry homes that were not even affected by the storm.

The Guntersville gun grab ordinance would be on the city council agenda at their meeting on March 4th.

After the story went viral, relayed by citizen blogger after blogger, Guntersville’s mayor Leigh Dollar backed down!

On February 28, 2013, four days before the city council’s meeting to consider the gun-confiscation ordinance, the City of Guntersville issued this statement on its website:

CITY OF GUNTERSVILLE

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS ORDINANCE STATEMENT

2-28-13

It was never the intent of the City of Guntersville Mayor or City Council to disarm individuals during a disaster.

As of February 27, 2013, the Emergency Preparedness Ordinance was officially withdrawn from consideration.

POW!!!

We won this one against little tyrants!

~Eowyn

A Little Southern Humor

Alabama
A group of Alabama friends went deer hunting and paired off in twos for the day. That night, one of the hunters returned alone, staggering under the weight of an eight-point buck.
“Where’s Henry?” the others asked.
“Henry had a stroke of some kind. He’s a couple of miles back up the trail,” the successful hunter replied.
“You left Henry laying out there and carried the deer back?” they inquired.
“A tough call,” nodded the hunter. “But I figured no one is going to steal Henry!”
Georgia
The owner of a golf course in Georgia was confused about paying an invoice, so he decided to ask his secretary for some mathematical help.
He called her into his office and said, “You graduated from the University of Georgia and I need some help. If I were to give you $20,000 minus 14%, how much would you take off?”
The secretary thought a moment, and then replied, “Everything but my earrings.”
Louisiana
A senior at Louisiana was overheard saying, “When the end of the world comes, I hope to be in Louisiana ..” When asked why, he replied, “I’d rather be in Louisiana because everything happens in Louisiana 20 years later than in the rest of the civilized world.”
Mississippi
The young man from Mississippi came running into the store and said to his buddy, “Bubba, somebody just stole your pickup truck from the parking lot!”
Bubba replied, “Did you see who it was?”
The young man answered, “I couldn’t tell, but I got the license number.”
North Carolina
A man in North Carolina had a flat tire, pulled off on the side of the road, and proceeded to put a bouquet of flowers in front of the car and one behind it. Then he got back in the car to wait. A passerby studied the scene as he drove by and was so curious he turned around and went back. He asked the fellow what the problem was.
The man replied, “I have a flat tire.”
The passerby asked, “But what’s with the flowers?”
The man responded, “When you break down they tell you to put flares in the front and flares in the back. I never did understand it neither.”
Tennessee
A Tennessee State Trooper pulled over a pickup on I-65. The trooper asked, “Got any ID?”
The driver replied, “Bout whut?”
Texas
The Sheriff pulled up next to the guy unloading garbage out of his pick-up into the ditch.
The Sheriff asked, “Why are you dumping garbage in the ditch? Don’t you see that sign right over your head?”
“Yep”, he replied. “That’s why I dumpin’ it here, cause it says: ‘Fine For Dumping Garbage’.
You can say what you want about the South,
But you never hear of anyone retiring and moving North

~Steve~                               H/T  Miss Miranda

More to come?

Jefferson County Commission votes 4-1 to file nation’s largest municipal bankruptcy

The Birmingham News:  The Jefferson County (Alabama) Commission has voted 4-1 to file and estimated $4.2 billion bankruptcy, the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

The commission’s action came after it spent approximately six hours over two days meeting with its lawyers to discuss legal options, including a Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing and a settlement with creditors on the county’s $3.14 billion sewer debt.

Commission President David Carrington told his colleagues that it would take political courage to do what each and every one of us knows needs to be done today.  “It means that each one of us individually and collectively need to lead by example by replacing the threats of re-election consequences with thoughts of what is best for Jefferson County and our citizens,” he said in statement before the vote. “It is time that this commission shows, by example, other elected officials in our state and nation what it means to be statesmen, instead of mere politicians, when confronted with a difficult decision.”

Jefferson County has been flirting with bankruptcy since Feb. 12, 2008, when it first publicly acknowledged that it was in financial trouble. Interest rates on some of the county’s $3.2 billion in sewer debt, which had been 3 percent just weeks earlier, have soared to 10 percent because of the fallout from the nation’s subprime mortgage crisis, county officials said. Payments jumped to a point where they were no longer affordable.

The situation quickly triggered a financial emergency the plunged the county’s debt to junk-bond status and began the government’s slide to what will be the nation’s largest Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy filing. The county owes more than $4 billion.

There’s plenty that led up to this – a sewer debt, repeal of occupational tax, spending, etc. Read the rest of the story here.

This shouldn’t be a surprise given the massive debt cities and counties have accumulated due to multiple reasons:  expanding government, unsustainable pensions, decrease in tax revenue, etc.  On October 1 this year Charles Stockdale reported on the top nine cities and counties that are heading for broke – and Jefferson County was number 3 on the list (with the second largest debt on the list).

Given the terrible state of our economy – due in part to local, state, and federal policies and spending - I wouldn’t be surprised if we see other public agencies follow the same path as Jefferson County in the near future.

DCG

A (partial) win for Alabama

 

Parts of Alabama immigration law blocked by federal appeals court

From CNN:  A federal appeals court has blocked enforcement of parts of a controversial immigration enforcement law in Alabama.  The injunction issued Friday from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta came after the U.S. Justice Department — supported by a coalition of immigrant rights groups — requested the legislation, known as HB 56, be put on hold until the larger constitutional questions can be addressed, a process that could take some months at least.

The 16-page order gives both sides partial victories, allowing some parts of the law to go into effect while others are temporarily blocked.

The Obama administration says the Constitution does not permit states to deter illegal immigration, saying an issue with foreign policy implications is the exclusive mandate of the federal government.

Among the provisions temporarily blocked from being enforced are:

• One requiring state officials to check the immigration status of students in public schools.
• One making “willful failure to complete or carry an alien registration card” a misdemeanor for immigrants.

But the state will be allowed to enforce these contested sections:

• One requiring that police during “lawful” stops or arrests “attempt to determine the immigration status of a person who they suspect is an unauthorized alien of this country.” That provision is similar to other laws aiming to crack down on illegal immigration passed by other state legislatures over the past year.
• One barring state courts from enforcing contracts involving undocumented immigrants, if the hiring party had a “direct or constructive” knowledge that the person was in the country unlawfully.
• One making it a felony for illegal immigrants to enter into a “business transaction” in Alabama, including applying for a driver’s license or a business license.

The appeals court also announced it would hear oral arguments on the constitutional questions on an expedited basis, as early as December. The issues in Alabama and in other states with similar crackdown laws may ultimately have to be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, who signed the law in June, has said it would not have been needed “if the federal government would have done its job and enforced the laws dealing with this problem. However, they have failed to do that.”

I believe that the provisions the State of Alabama one are the most important.  Hopefully the state will win all the mandates they request and be able to do what the federal government has not been able to do (or refuses to do).

DCG

Arizona Legislator Lays it on the Line to the New York Times

Letter to New York Times

Enforce Immigration Laws

Published: September 6, 2011

To the Editor:

“The Nation’s Cruelest Immigration Law” (editorial, Aug. 29), about a lawsuit by four church leaders against new restrictions by Alabama on undocumented immigrants, says that those who support enforcing immigration laws “have made many in this country forget who and what we are.” Indeed, I think The New York Times seems to have forgotten who and what we are.

The United States was founded on law and justice. The only earthly hope of protecting the equality and dignity of all mankind is with a rule of law that holds both the janitor and the senator completely equal in both benefit and constraint. This was the founders’ dream.    

UNION DUES: It’s All About the Payroll Deduction

If you go on Google News and search “Union Dues” and “Payroll Deduction” you’ll see numerous states with legislation introduced to take government entities out of the dues collection loop for Big Labor.  In addition to Wisconsin;  Florida, Alabama and Tennessee are all in the news today.  

The unions are stirring up their  masses about  ”worker’s rights” and “collective bargaining” but, I believe the heart of the matter is dues collection.  They simply do not trust their members to voluntarily pay dues —- to gratefully sit down and write out that check and mail it in month after month.

If the payroll-deducted union dues system is lost, what other payment options do unions have?   One that comes to mind is requiring members to provide their Visa/ bank account information authorizing the union to automatically deduct it from their members’ accounts each month or online dues paying with Visa.    That would be a very interesting scenario!

In my opinion, in this day and age, unions are an unnecessary evil.  The federal government established the  Department of Labor in 1913 to address the issues of workers’ rights.  It’s grown exponentially since that time.  They even do random personnel audits of individual businesses to assure compliance with all the federal labor regulations!   A  Dept of Labor auditor once spent a week at a union business  where I  worked, combing through all the employee and payroll files and doing private interviews with minority employees.  In addition, each state has their own complex regulations and laws to protect workers rights. 

UNIONS  —   WHO NEEDS THEM? 

JUST  GREEDY POLITICIANS!

~LTG

Largest Earthquake Drill in Central U.S. History

What does our government know that it’s not telling us?

The last few days have seen swarms or clusters of earthquakes in Arkansas, ranging from 2.0 to 3.3 in magnitude. Arkansas is one of 8 states that make up the New Madrid Seismic Zone or Fault Line. The other 7 states are Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi.

In the video below, the state of Missouri’s state geologist Joe Gillman is calling on residents of these 8 states to participate in an earthquake drill – the largest earthquake drill in Central U.S. history, at 10:15 am on April 28, 2011. (H/t LookUpFellowship)

Here are excerpts from Wikipedia on the New Madrid Seismic Zone:

The 150-mile…long fault system, which extends into five states, stretches southward from Cairo, Illinois; through Hayti, Caruthersville and New Madrid in Missouri; through Blytheville into Marked Tree in Arkansas. It also covers a part of West Tennessee, near Reelfoot Lake, extending southeast into Dyersburg. Most of the seismicity is located between 3 and 15 miles…beneath the Earth’s surface.

The zone had four of the largest North American earthquakes in recorded history, with moment magnitudes estimated to be as large as 8.0, all occurring within a three-month period between December 1811 and February 1812…. Based on artifacts found buried by sand blow deposits and from carbon-14 studies, previous large earthquakes like those of 1811-1812 appear to have happened around AD 1450 and around AD 900, as well as approximately AD 300. Evidence has been found for an apparent series of large earthquakes around 2350 BC.

[The earthquakes on February 7, 1812, had magnitudes of 7.4 to 8.6 with their] epicenter near New Madrid, Missouri. New Madrid was destroyed. At St. Louis, Missouri, many houses were severely damaged, and their chimneys were toppled. This shock was definitively attributed to the Reelfoot Fault by Johnston and Schweig. It was uplift along this reverse fault segment, in this event, that created waterfalls on the Mississippi River, disrupted the Mississippi River at Kentucky Bend, created a wave that propagated upstream and caused the formation of Reelfoot Lake. The earthquakes were felt as far away as New York City and Boston, Massachusetts, where ground motion caused church bells to ring….

In a report filed in November 2008, The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency warned that a serious earthquake in the New Madrid Seismic Zone could result in “the highest economic losses due to a natural disaster in the United States,” further predicting “widespread and catastrophic” damage across Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and particularly Tennessee…. The earthquake is expected to also result in many thousands of fatalities, with more than 4,000 of the fatalities expected in Memphis alone…. The USGS [U.S. Geological Society] recently issued a fact sheet reiterating the estimate of a 10% chance of a New Madrid earthquake of magnitude comparable to those of 1811-1812 within the next 50 years, and a greater chance of a magnitude 6.0 earthquake in the same time frame.

Below is a video on the New Madrid Fault Line:

~Eowyn