Oh great. Now some moron is going to try an use this “revelation” to try and make it sound like John McCain is not fit for office. For the record, this post is not an endorsement of John McCain, I can’t do that just yet. I do think, however, that the very thought that he is “unfit” simply because he is receiving a tax-free disability pension is ludicrous.

Sen. John McCain has long said he is in robust health and is strong enough to hike the Grand Canyon, but he also is receiving what his staff Monday termed a “disability pension” from the Navy.

When McCain released his tax return for 2007 on Friday, he separately disclosed that he received a pension of $58,358 that was not listed as income on his return.

On Monday, McCain’s staff identified the retirement benefit as a “disability pension” and said that McCain “was retired as disabled because of his limited body movements due to injuries as a POW.”

So? What’s the problem here? John McCain served his nation with honor and great distinction. He was taken prisoner and served five-years in a POW camp under the worst of conditions. He was injured physically and psychologically. Who cares if he can hike the grand canyon. He suffered a great disability while serving his country. Why is it so hard for people to feel that we owe men like him a debt of gratitude?

While John McCain might be a little more unpredictable than a computer memory upgrade, I hardly think we need to question his fitness.

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If someone attacked you and you felt your life was threatened, how much would you sue them for?

How does $137,000 sound? Doesn’t that sound kind of low for a “life threatening experience”?

What if the person who attacked you only offered you $20,000? Would you take it?

After all, the attack left you with a split lip, some cuts on your face, and a heaping plate of embarassment.

What if your life was never in danger and you basically got your ass kicked by a 62 year old man?

Yeah, maybe you should have taken that settlement, huh?

A photographer who said he worried he would be killed when Zsa Zsa Gabor’s husband punched him in the face on a Beverly Hills street was awarded $4,510 in damages Friday.

…

In his complaint, Dirk Smeten claimed Von Anhalt, 62, angrily approached and began punching him while Smeten tried to photograph him in May 2005. The blows caused Smeten to fall to the sidewalk, according to the complaint.

…

“I have this camera over my shoulder trying to photograph my wife. No respect whatsoever,” Von Anhalt said. “I pushed him away. He came back. I pushed him away again. He came back again.”

Von Anhalt said he wanted to settle the case, and had offered Smeten $20,000.

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Sherri Shepherd says she has never voted.

On The View this morning, Sherri Shepherd recounted her close call of almost missing the cutoff for registering to vote via absentee ballot for the election in November. (Shepherd resides in New York, but is a California resident.) And apparently this is the first time that Sherri will be voting…ever!

Having turned 18 in 1985, the now-41-year-old has missed out on the past five presidential elections because she “never knew the dates or anything.” She said it was important to vote in this one, though, because otherwise, she wouldn’t have a right to complain on The View about whomever is elected for an entire year. (She probably meant to say “four years.”)

Elected for an entire year? Is she serious? First she thinks the world is flat, then she thinks the president is elected for one year. She must have attended one of those famous government run schools.

Maybe there’s a reason why she hasn’t voted. (cough)

Last night I was having a hell of a time with my internet connection. I don’t know what it is that Bellsouth AT&T does but ever since Bellsouth and AT&T became one big happy family again, my internet connection has been spotty as all heck.

I knew it was coming. I mentioned it back in October. As soon as AT&T got their hands on my little DSL modem’s neck, all heck was going to break loose and it seems to have done just that. The problem I have with internet providers is the same problem I have with television providers. I have limited choices.

Cable does not run down my street. Why? I have no idea. I bet, if Charter Communications ran the cable down our street on a Monday, they would get 30 subscribers before Friday. But they wont, at least they say they wont. Heck, if someone selling satellite internet walked door to door on our street, they would probably pick up more than their fair share too.

My only options for internet access are dialup (via AT&T), DSL (via AT&T) and high speed satellite internet. I actually looked into HughesNet back in October, but I even with AT&T’s crappy service, I could not justify the extra expense.

Satellite internet access has certainly come a long way in the past five years. Every time I think about it, I see all these bits of computer data streaming from the roof of my house up to the stars. I know, I am weird.

I have been thinking of ways to increase traffic around here ever since Google decided to smack everyone who wasn’t trying to make money with Google Adsense. Oh come on, you know that was the real reason for the “smack” that many websites received a couple months ago. They smacked people who were running text link ads (ads listed in the sidebar), yet they have no problem with people who run adsense, which, to me at least, was a total waste of space because I made no money with adsense.

As far as the traffic is concerned though, it actually didn’t drop as much as I thought it would, and I still get a boatload of traffic from Google every day. Yeah, I know, it’s strange. Anyway, I have been giving some thought on how to get more website traffic by looking at different ways to optimize my site.

The last time I looked for a website optimization firm was back in 1999, I think. It was quite a while ago, so I don’t really remember. I was working on a project for a trucking company, and they were too cheap to pay me. If they had paid their bill on time, I would have finished the project and they might not have gone out of business. HA!

While I am fairly proficient at web design and implementation, I can always use help when it comes to optimization, and utilizing a website optimization firm can make things a heck of a lot easier. They can focus on areas that will increase your search engine placement, which will allow you to do what you do best. Whatever that may be.

I love articles like this. Read the first paragraph…

Fourteen children working in a textiles factory have been rescued after media reports said an Indian clothing supplier to US retailer Gap was employing underage workers, an activist said Tuesday.

Police carried out the raid after alerts by a non-profit organisation which acted on a British newspaper report that Indian children as young as 10 were working for a Gap supplier in New Delhi.

Since most people read nothing more than the headlines and one or two paragraphs of a news story, you would think, based on what we’ve read that the Gap is using child labor to supply some of it’s products. Right? Not quite.

The children who were rescued late Monday worked in the building that houses the Gap supplier, but did not produce clothes for the US label, said the Save the Childhood Foundation, which works to rehabilitate child workers

“When we went there, we found a room where they had been living and working. Some children were ill and some were not being paid at all,” said Bhuwan Ribhu of the group.

Yes, the children were there, but no, they were not working for the supplier for the Gap. The article does not mention which company they may have been working for. But even so, the Gap pulled some clothes from their line. Talk about peer pressure.

Gap withdrew some garments from sale after Britain’s Observer newspaper said an Indian supplier in New Delhi’s Shahpur Jat area employed child workers.

My question is, if they weren’t working on garments for the Gap, who were they making them for? I couldn’t have been any “big” companies, or they would have mentioned them instead of, or in addition to, the Gap.

Cross posted at Kooks In Suits.

What’s worse than Hillary Clinton talking about health care reform again?

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is unveiling a sweeping health care reform proposal Monday that would require every American to carry health insurance and offer federal subsidies to help reduce the cost of coverage.

With a price tag of about $110 billion per year, Clinton’s “American Health Choices Plan” represents her first major effort to achieve universal health coverage since 1994, when the plan she authored during her husband’s first term collapsed.

…

The centerpiece of Clinton’s plan is the so-called “individual mandate,” requiring everyone to have health insurance—just as most states require drivers to purchase auto insurance. Rival John Edwards has also offered a plan that includes an individual mandate, while the proposal outlined by Barack Obama does not.

Hillary Clinton talking about health care reform that is government mandated.

Yes, Hillary thinks we need a government program that monitors whether or not we have health insurance. Heck they already do that with car insurance, seatbelts, and helmets right? So why not health care.

Of course it would be silly to think that there are people out there that wouldn’t want health care, but to make it a requirement with some law is utterly ridiculous.

First they started requiring car insurance, now they want to mandate health insurance. What’s next? Government mandated ass wiping?

Parents in the Panhandle may face jail time if their children continue to skip school.

Officials in Escambia County are weighing a tough new penalty that says if children have 10 unexcused absences in 90 calendar days, their parents would be put behind bars.

Officials said children who miss that much school put their entire futures in jeopardy.

And locking up their parents because of it is such a good way to make sure their futures look brighter. Give me a frickin’ break.

How disgusting is this?

A French paedophile accused of raping a five-year-old boy just over a month after he was released from jail was taking the impotence drug Viagra that he says was prescribed by a prison doctor, his lawyer said on Sunday.

Francis Evrard, a 61-year-old repeat offender who spent 18 years in prison for raping children before being freed on July 2, snatched the boy from a street in the northern town of Roubaix on Wednesday.

…

“He says very clearly that he asked for these products in prison and that they gave him a prescription which he collected when he was released,” Jerome Pianezza, Evrard’s lawyer told Le Parisien newspaper.

The police have yet to confirm where he obtained the drug.

I am a bit skeptical on this one, but, if his story turns out to be true, why in the hell would they prescribe Viagra to anyone in prison? Never mind, I DON’T WANT TO KNOW.

Is there something in the water? Three weeks ago a friend of mine found out that his wife wanted a divorce, and now another friend is going through the same process. Of course, the situations are different but the end result will be the same.

While Divorce is difficult on anybody, my first friend has it easier, because he and his wife have no children, and have only been married a short time. They don’t have much property to split, and they are both at a point where they have agreed to all of the terms of the divorce.

My second friend, however, is just starting the process of looking for a good Divorce Attorney. He doesn’t want the divorce, but his wife filed for it anyway. They have a couple of small children and a ton of mutual interests they will need to iron out, which will make their divorce much more complicated, that’s for sure.

The state he is in has a one-year waiting period for the divorce proceedings, and I’m sure he will be in agony the whole time. His family is his life, and if there is anyway for him and his wife to work things out, I am sure he will try. I’m not so sure she will be willing though.

Total Divorce is a site dedicated to answering all of your divorce related questions, like how is property divided, how long are we required to wait, and what happens with our children? They have a divorce case review form, and will even help you find Divorce Attorneys in your area. If you have to go through the process, it never hurts to have a resource like Total Divorce.