Day: March 24, 2005

The Seattle market finally received the speed upgrade from Comcast tonight. My home cable modem Internet connection is now 6 MBPS.

Via AP:

Crystal Senger stopped at a convenience store in Bismarck, North Dakota to buy pop and cigarettes, and she saw the clerk being choked in a robbery attempt. She ran to call for help. Then she started throwing bananas.

Senger, 19, said she grew up playing organized baseball, and used those skills to pelt the suspect in the head with every banana she threw, from about 10 feet away.

“I was seven-for-seven,” Senger said in a telephone interview Thursday. “They were green bananas — not the ripe mushy ones — so they hurt.”

How long before Sen. Barbara Boxer introduces legislation to impose a 5 day waiting period for banana purchases?

Via Brit:

Clinton Connection

Two female senators embracing one another at a Washington Women’s History Museum may not sound like news, but video showing New York Democrat Hillary Clinton and Texas Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison hugging one another, is circulating among conservatives and Texas Governor Rick Perry’s campaign staff now admits they paid someone to shoot and produce the video.

Hutchison, a Republican senator, has expressed interest in running against Republican governor Perry next year and Perry’s campaign director says “News flash: Potential opponents trashing my governor are not going to get a free ride.” He adds, “We’re being very aggressive in everything we do. And you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Now, if this was a general election and the opponents were Republican against Democrat, I wouldn’t think twice about this tactic. I’d expect a Democrat to play this card. But two Republicans playing this game – that’s not right.

Politics is politics, I know, but this is a wrong move in my opinion. Republicans must show the electorate that they play a better game on the campaign trail. They must identify the Left as the party of dirty tricks. If they don’t, the tit-for-tat game will further alienate voters, and more will sit in disgust and avoid the polls in future elections.

Just click here.

Take it easy, Rod.

Has the media intentionally publicized the most youthful looking picture of Jeff Weise, the gunman who opened fire and killed ten people at Red Lake High School? Does a tragedy like this impact us more if we see outdated pictures depicting the shooter as a child? I wonder. Some reports have said Weise was 15 years old, others say he was 16, and yet another has aged him at 17 years. I’ve taken a look at a wide variety of news sites and have noticed that the most common picture of Weise is this one…

Meanwhile, other sites have shown this picture.

But, from what I can tell, their are 2 pictures of Weise that seem the most accurate. This one…

And this one…

It’s hard to imagine that the boy in the first and second picture is the same boy who described himself here, or the one who posted this nonsense, or who blogged at this site.

There were varying pictures shown of the Columbine shooters, but none of them were as disparate as these. What’s the goal? Is there a goal? What does the media have to gain, if anything? Are we as a society better able to accept tragedies like Red Lake if the murderer looks like someone who could commit the crime? Does it make better news to depict the monster as a child?

I wonder.