Category: Humor

Report shows professionals cashing in on tea party push

Posted by dcrim – October 3, 2011

A look at some of todays stories while wondering how the Cardinals overcame a 4-0 deficit against Cliff Lee:

If you’ve got fundraising muscle, it pays to be tea party. That’s the takeaway from recently released financial reports for five of the biggest conservative groups that latched onto the small government movement, according to Politico. The groups – Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, Club for Growth, Leadership Institute and Tea Party Express – raised $79 million last year. That’s a 61-percent increase from their haul in 2009, when the tea party first started gaining traction, and an 88 percent increase over their tally in 2008, according to a POLITICO review of campaign reports and newly released tax filings.

Writes Kenneth P. Vogel:

It’s an entirely different story for the rag-tag local groups that form the heart of the tea party, which struggle to raise cash.

The imbalance is worrisome to some grassroots tea party activists, who warn that the movement is at risk of becoming dependent on the type of centralized, top-down political structure that contributed to tea partiers’ distaste for both political parties, as well as Washington’s conservative establishment.

Former NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Fran Tarkenton excoriated teachers unions in a Monday Wall Street Journal editorial that envisions what would happen if some of America’s education policies were applied to the football field.

America’s favorite curmudgeon delivered his final rant on Sunday’s ‘60 Minutes’ after 62 years at CBS News. From grumbling over Bill Gates to moaning about his eyebrows and bellyaching over mixed nuts, see Andy Rooney’s best essays.

Cartoonists’ views of the news

Posted by dcrim – July 21, 2011

You might say this TV weatherman was partly cloudy

Posted by dcrim – January 26, 2011

On oldie but goodie from 1987. Former KPNX weekend weatherman Dick Leighton forgot he was supposed to work a Friday night. He apologized later, saying he had been out having a few drinks. At 10 p.m. he went on air live. The rest is history.

Merry Christmas from the Griswolds

Posted by dcrim – December 24, 2010

This movie never gets old.

Rest in peace to the master of parody, Leslie Nielsen

Posted by dcrim – November 28, 2010

Leslie Nielsen, who dazzled with deadpan in The Naked Gun and Airplane!, passed away on Sunday at a hospital near his home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where he was being treated for pneumonia. (That would be a big building with patients in it, but that’s not important right now.) He was 84.

Hangover Helpers, beware of the cane and costly telephone call

Posted by dcrim – November 27, 2010

• Your head aches, you’re hungry and your house is littered with sticky plastic cups. Who ya gonna call? Hangover Helpers.

The Boulder Daily Camera reports two University of Colorado graduates are marketing a new business by that name in Boulder, home of CU’s main campus. They’ll bring in breakfast burritos and Gatorade the morning after a party — and clean up the mess.

The Daily Camera reports that Marc Simons started cleaning party houses about a year ago for extra cash and realized he’d found a niche, despite the bad economy. He teamed up with high school friend Alex Vere-Nicoll and started Hangover Helpers. They charge $15 per roommate.

• Authorities in Callaway, Fla., say an irate 84-year-old man hit a deputy in the stomach with his cane when the officer warned him to leave a clinic where he had been cursing at an office manager.

The News Herald newspaper reports that the northwest Florida man was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and resisting an officer. Bay County sheriff’s deputies were called to Callaway Clinic on Wednesday night because the man was yelling and cursing at an office manager.

According to a police report, the office manager asked authorities to remove the man from the clinic. Once outside, the man’s rant grew louder. When the deputy warned the man he would be arrested if he didn’t leave, the man allegedly hit the officer in the stomach with his cane. Deputies say the man also hit the officer in the leg as he was being handcuffed.

• Eugene, Ore., police didn’t have to go far to find a bank robbery suspect. They say 23-year-old Nathan Alan Bramlage was spotted after walking into the Eugene police station Wednesday to use a public phone in the lobby.

The Register-Guard reports an officer recognized the man from surveillance video of the bank robbery the day before. Detectives followed and arrested him about two blocks away. Detective Ralph Burks says Bramlage apparently assumed police wouldn’t recognize him.

Bramlage was booked into Lane County Jail on a robbery charge and told police he had used the phone to call his parents.

‘As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly’

Posted by dcrim – November 25, 2010

Here are some other miscalculations to think about on Thanksgiving Day:

• Ohio State president E. Gordon Gee says Boise State and TCU don’t deserve to play for the college football championship because they play “the little sisters of the poor” compared to the murder’s row (I guess he means Eastern Michigan, Ohio and Marshall) that awaits the Buckeyes every week. Ohio State, by the way, is 0-8 all-time against the SEC in bowl games, so the Buckeyes had better hope the Sugar Bowl likes TCU better against the SEC host school.

• The Yankees have offered Derek Jeter $45 million over three years, or about $4 million less than he earned over the life of his 10-year contract that just expired. Jeter wants more money and more years. The Yankees are telling their superstar to test the mark. Mike Lupica wonders what is going on here.

• You think LeBron James wishes he had thought his free agent partnership with Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh through a little more? And that maybe a couple of rebounders and role players had taken their talents to South Beach?

Want to get out of jury duty? Tell judge you knew Jeffrey Dahmer

Posted by dcrim – November 10, 2010

NEWS: An Ohio man was excused from jury service after mentioning he was a childhood friend of cannibalistic serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

John Backderf was among prospective jurors being screened last week by a judge in Cleveland. When asked if he’d known anyone convicted of a crime, Backderf responded: “I had a close friend in high school who killed 17 people.”

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports the answer caused the judge to freeze and lawyers to drop their pens. Backderf explained he knew Dahmer, who was raised in northeast Ohio. Dahmer confessed to killing and dismembering men and boys in Milwaukee. An inmate killed him in a Wisconsin prison in 1994.

VIEWS: Some people will say anything to get out of jury duty.

NEWS: A New York man looking to buy drugs misdialed and got the sheriff’s “Crime Stoppers” line instead.

Erie County Sheriff’s Detective Alan Rozansky says he got a call around noon Monday and answered with his usual “Crime Stoppers.” The caller apparently didn’t hear that and told Rozansky he was looking “to score” drugs. Rozansky told WIVB-TV that he was surprised but played along and arranged a meeting with undercover officers.

The officers didn’t arrest the caller but used him as an informant to lead them to another transaction taking place down the road. There, police arrested a 35-year-old woman trying to sell her prescription painkillers to a Buffalo man. The careless caller is off the hook for now.

VIEWS: The late Gil Feld, a longtime coordinator for Quincy Regional Crime Stoppers, would have had a hoot detailing this call. He loved stupid criminals.

NEWS: Police in western Massachusetts say a man has been arrested in the robbery of a food delivery driver after he returned to the driver’s restaurant for seconds.

Sgt. John Delaney says police arrested 23-year-old Edward Blatch on Monday at Fu Wong Restaurant in Springfield after the delivery driver identified him. Delaney said the driver and cooks surrounded Blatch and held him until officers arrived. Blatch is scheduled to be arraigned on an armed robbery charge in Springfield District Court.

Police say two men robbed the 23-year-old restaurant driver at gunpoint when he made a delivery in September, taking the food, $200, a cell phone and a high school class ring.

VIEWS: Not exactly John Dillinger.

NEWS: A man who trapped and killed an alligator so big it pulled his boat around a lake has snared what authorities say is Florida’s longest gator on record, exceeding 14 feet.

Wildlife officials say the gator caught by Robert Ammerman, a nurse who traps gators as a hobby, weighed 654 pounds and measured 14 feet, 3 1/2 inches. It was caught Nov. 1, the last day of Florida’s alligator harvest, in Lake Washington near Melbourne.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says the previous record was a 14-foot, 5/8-inch alligator trapped in 1997. The state’s heaviest gator on record was taken in 1989, weighing 1,043 pounds.

Ammerman said the gator thrashed and pulled his boat for about 45 minutes after being harpooned and took two hours to tow to dock.

VIEWS: Golf is a hobby. Don’t know about anybody else, but I’m not messin’ with a 14-foot, 654-pound gator.

A few laughs, Halloween edition

Posted by dcrim – October 31, 2010


Posted by dcrim – October 25, 2010