dumb

Strange In San Antonio reports:

I truly wonder sometimes what motivates our local news media.

Look what KSAT-12 is reporting now:

San Antonio is seeing it’s [sic] share of tough economic times this summer. AT&T is moving it’s [sic again] headquarters to Dallas. The highly touted savior of the southside, Toyota, will shuttle [I think they mean "shutter". --ed.] production until late fall. And two airlines have said goodbye to the San Antonio International Airport.

The changes, along with rising gas and grocery prices, has [sic] many worried, and wondering, when will things turn around?

It’s a question we posed to psychic Sean Harribance, who quickly zeroed in on issues surrounding the airport.

Yep. Everyone's wondering when the bad times are going to get better, and obviously the first person you're going to visit is a psychic who "in 1994 correctly predicted today’s price of a barrel of oil." 

The K-SAT article continues:

San Antonio will weather these tough economic times because businesses like to be here. As for those companies that leave, “Any company that leave … they’re gonna want to come back to San Antonio”, says Harribance. “A lot is going to happen in San Antonio”, he says, “it will be world famous for sports, medical discoveries, and tourism”.

Our mayor and city council all get the thumbs up from Harribance, who says “Most politicians do deals and contracts and they cheat .. I would say we have an honest city council and mayor”.

Still, San Antonio will see crime increase this fall, and the city raising taxes next year and in 2010. Outside the city limits, he sees large tanks used for storage, possibly water storage. And in 10 years or so, “all of downtown is going to have casinos and slot machines”, Harribance tells us.

At the bottom we find out:

Shari St. Clair and Ursula Pari contributed to this story

Are they really that bad at their jobs?

This agency gives jobs to very thick people because they're very skilled at certain things, such as winning arguments, because they never realize they've lost.

A woman in Barrie, Canada is considering legal action against her child's school after claims of sexual abuse were made to the Children's Aid Society. The student's "educational assistant" went to a psychic who told her that 'somebody with a name starting with the letter "v" was being sexually abused by a 23-26 year old man. From the National Post:

Shortly after arriving home, Ms. Leduc received a phone call from Victoria's teacher.

"The teacher said you have to come back to school right away -- it's urgent. My heart was racing," said Ms. Leduc, who went back to the school and met with the teacher, vice-principal and principal.

"The teacher looked at me and said: 'We have to tell you something. We have to tell you that Victoria's EA went to see a psychic and the psychic asked her if she works with a little girl with the initial V. When the EA said yes, the psychic said, 'Well, you need to know that this girl is being sexually abused by a man between the ages of 23 and 26.'"

The school officials then gave Ms. Leduc a list of behaviours that Victoria was exhibiting.

"You must remember that Victoria has severe autism and is entering puberty so she is exhibiting behaviours that are very common with children of this age but, being autistic and not having been taught otherwise, she will exhibit these behaviours in public," Ms. Leduc said.

The list included putting her hands down her pants, spitting, seeking to sit on cold objects and gyrating against staff members.

"The principal looks at me and says, 'We've called CAS.' Then I got sick to my stomach.

"I challenged them and asked if the other children in the class with autism exhibited these behaviours. They said, 'Oh yes, all the time.' But they were not reported to the CAS because they didn't have the psychic's tip."

This is some stupid s#!+. Nobody should ever consider the vague ramblings of a psychic to be evidence in a criminal case. This could have ended a lot worse, and I'm glad to say that as soon as the CAS got involved, the investigation was ended.

Remember: Psychic's don't need your gas money.

Until further notice AP articles are banned from Cahoots.

Some people just have no idea how the Internet works. I suspect it may be because they've never used it correctly or at length. The Associated Press has sent seven DMCA takedown notices to a blog called "The Drudge Retort" after small snippets of text and quotes were used under fair use. Remember, these weren't entire articles, and the authors linked directly to the AP. From Cadenhead:

The Retort is a community site comparable in function to Digg, Reddit and Mixx. The 8,500 users of the site contribute blog entries of their own authorship and links to interesting news articles on the web, which appear immediately on the site. None of the six entries challenged by AP, which include two that I posted myself, contains the full text of an AP story or anything close to it. They reproduce short excerpts of the articles -- ranging in length from 33 to 79 words -- and five of the six have a user-created headline.

Here's one of the six disputed blog entries:

Clinton Expects Race to End Next Week

Hillary Rodham Clinton says she expects her marathon Democratic race against Barack Obama to be resolved next week, as superdelegates decide who is the stronger candidate in the fall. "I think that after the final primaries, people are going to start making up their minds," she said. "I think that is the natural progression that one would expect."

If you follow the link, you'll see that the blog entry reproduces 18 words from the story and a 32-word quote by Hillary Clinton under a user-written headline. The blog entry drew 108 comments in the ensuing discussion.

Do you see what I did there? I just quoted another article from THE INTERNET. I didn't quote the entire article, just an interesting snippet. You can choose to follow the link to their article to read the whole thing, click some ads, and make them some good money for their content. On the Internet, anything that matters gets linked to.

And now, AP, you will pay dearly. You will not get any more links or clickthroughs from this site or many others, because you've really pissed us off. We happen to like free speech, and we happen to enjoy using copyright law to our advantage. I'd like to remind you that filing false or malicious DMCA takedown requests is illegal under Title 17 of the US Code.

Dick Cheney revealed his incestuous bloodline today:

Talking about his family roots and how he's distantly related to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, the vice president noted that he had Cheneys on both sides of his family.

"And we don't even live in West Virginia," Cheney quipped.

"You can say those things when you're not running for re-election."

He said that when his wife, Lynne, was doing research on a book, she discovered that his grandmother was descended from a man named Richard Cheney. "So I had Cheneys on both sides of the family," he said.

So Dick Cheney, who really was the result of incest, makes a joke about West Virginia. Huh?