In Bad Taste

Please read the following, posted the morning after Sen. Edward Kennedy died of brain cancer last week.

Brad Mahlstedt I hope it is hot down there Teddy! God Bless Mary Jo and her family.
6 hours ago · Comment · Like / Unlike · View Feedback (4)Hide Feedback (4)

Jacob Kampen
Yeah baby! I'm sick of all the rosy GOP postings "Kennedy was a liberal, but we all loved him". Not.
6 hours ago

Brad Mahlstedt
He murdered a girl and should have been in jail rather than the senate...
6 hours ago

Matthew Cuyle
True Story "RIH" Teddy
4 hours ago

I have made these names public for a reason. Go find them on Facebook.

It's amazing how some people are so disrespectful of the dead. RIH?! Sen. Ted Kennedy may have messed up big time, but that was before any of these "birthers" were even alive. They barely know the details of what happened that night in Chappaquiddick. Well, maybe they still do. We all know what happened that night--Mary Jo Kopechne, who was the aide to Sen. Ted Kennedy's late brother Bobby, was driving with Kennedy over a bridge when he drove off the bridge into the water with her inside the car. He left the scene and waited 9 hours to report Kopechne missing. While he entered a guilty plea for leaving the scene of an accident and apologized for his "inexcusable" act, Kennedy has never been able to live it down. Hungry GOP obsessed fans can't get their hands off his dead body. I thought that after someone has passed away, we forgive. Take the man for what he is and what he did with the rest of his life. He served for 46 years in the US Senate. He was known as the "lion of the senate." Over 300 pieces of legislation written and sponsored by Kennedy were enacted into law. Give him the credit that he deserves, and shut up the day after his death. It's your day of silence. Respect the dead. Period.

"Atonement is a process that never ends." -TK

Talk About Stimulus Money

Do you get excited when you’re withdrawing cash from the ATM and out pops a wad of perfectly crisp new bills? Well, those grand moments may be all over for you.

In what researchers describe as the largest, most comprehensive analysis to date of cocaine contamination in banknotes, scientists are reporting that cocaine is present in up to 90% of paper money in the United States, particularly in large cities such as Baltimore, Boston and Detroit. Don’t worry if you live in the nation’s capital. While Washington, DC wasn’t mentioned as an example, it’s not because they don’t make the cut—it seems as though DC is overqualified. The scientists found traces of cocaine in 95% of the banknotes analyzed from Washington, D.C., alone. Just to provide a reference, banknotes analyzed in China and Japan had between 12 and 20 % contamination.

Why is this? Has the economy got everyone so down in the dumps they have to turn to cocaine? What’s troubling is that cocaine stays in your system for only about 2 days, while random drug tests run every few months. Our legislators could be passing us by in more ways than one.
Although the amount found on most bills was not enough to pose a risk to one’s health, it’s possible to cause a false positive drug test in someone who handles cash regularly (like store clerks and bankers). This could present a huge problem. Many jobs that require money handling also require security clearances and drug tests. Wouldn’t that also give any police officer with a drug-sniffing dog probable cause to search your home or vehicle?

I wonder what Marion Barry has to say about this story, since he’s probably wishing someone would have told him this so he could have blamed it on the a-a-a-dirty bills.

Thank You For Not Twittering

With the college football season revving up, the Southeastern Conference--one of the most competitive football conferences--plans to ban the use of social media at any of its sporting events. The media credential policy announced for the upcoming season bans both broadcasters AND fans from updating Twitter, Facebook, youtube, etc. with updates from the games. Fans at the SEC games are prohibited from sending out “any account, description, picture, video, audio, reproduction, or other information concerning the event.” Easier said than done when you consider that SEC member University of Tennessee’s Neyland Stadium seats 104,000 people, while the University of Georgia’s Sanford Stadium and LSU’s Tiger stadium can hold 92,000 loyal students and alumni. How do you prevent all of these fans from reaching for their cell phones to share a Twitter moment with the world? Will security guards be frisking football fans with mobile devices capable of accessing Twitter and Facebook accounts?

The SEC itself has already embraced the Twitter world, building an account called @SECSportsUdate, which is capable of sending “real-time” tweets about sporting events. Will they continue to do this once the policy has gone into effect?

Also, When the US government has not even made concrete guidelines or laws pertaining to how to monitor social media effectively, what makes the SEC think they can limit fans from sending tweets about their teams’ victories or losses?