Scamming Sympathy
On September 7, Toni Christina Jenkins was working her shift at a Franklin, Tennessee Red Lobster restaurant and got quite a shock when her customer, 20-year-old Devin Barnes, left her a scrawled note on his receipt: under “Tip”, he wrote “none”. And under “Total”? “Nigger.” Jenkins snapped a photo and posted it to Ye Olde Book of Face…
There’s just one problem…well, actually, no, there are SEVERAL problems. First, Barnes claims he did nothing of the sort and went so far as to have his lawyer hire handwriting experts to analyze the note.
Barnes’ attorney and pastor, Richard Dugger, hired Thomas Vastrick, an independent handwriting expert who has worked as a specialist for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, to compare the receipt to writing samples provided by Barnes and his wife.
Vastrick determined that it was “more likely than not” that whoever wrote “none” was not the same person who wrote the racist word.
“There is evidence to indicate that Devin Barnes (K-1) did not write the Total entry on Exhibit Q-1,” he concluded.
…
A second handwriting analysis was performed, independent of Dugger and Barnes.
“I believe within a reasonable degree of certainty that the waitress actually wrote the word,” said forensic handwriting expert Bob Baier, who examined a sample of writing taken from the waitress’ Facebook account for TheDCNF.
“If you look at the g’s, the e’s, the r’s, they match up,” said Baier. “Those are the most unique writing habits she had.”
Baier did caution that a stronger analysis could be undertaken with a larger sample of Jenkins’ handwriting, as well as original copies.
Secondly, when she posted it, Barnes’ name was unredacted and he’s received death threats.
Barnes’ name was on the guest check. He told News 2 his life has been turned upside since the picture was posted and he has received death threats from all over the world.
He says he was wrongly labeled a racist by people who don’t know him and who don’t have any proof.
Barnes said, “A lot of people on the Internet who I don’t know are calling me a racist and I’m thinking people have their own opinion but I know I am not a racist. I don’t see color. I have many mixed color friends.”
Barnes says he’s also had to change his bank information and obtain new credit cards.
Barnes told News 2 he’s confused and upset but taking it “day by day.” “No one should go through this at all,” he added.
And thirdly, Jenkins has now collected over $10,000 from rubes who bought her story. Read the rest of this entry »
Features Versus Bugs, and the Double-Edged Sword
How many of you have, lately, complained about how Congress is constantly bickering and never gets things done of any real substance? If your hand is raised, this article is for you. It’s to explain to you exactly why you’re what’s wrong with America.
Let’s turn the clocks back to 1787…
The Founding Fathers had a bit of a quandary on their hands when it came to designing how Congress should work.
Virginia suggested a two-chamber legislature, both of which would contain representatives apportioned out by population, with the upper chamber’s members nominated by state governments and approved by the lower chamber. Deleware objected, feeling this would give the larger, more highly-populated states dominance in both chambers.
New Jersey put forth the idea of a single-chamber legislature, with each state having equal power.
The Connecticut delegation came up with an artful solution: a lower chamber, the House of Representatives, with delegates directly elected by the people and apportioned by population, and an upper chamber, the Senate, with each state having equal representation and with delegates appointed by state governments.
And with the plan in place, the Constitution could be written to properly delegate responsibilities; the House dealt with all financial matters, since matters of taxation directly affected the citizenry. And the Senate would approve Presidential appointments, since they would often be the liaison between the President and the state governments.
Hooray! Read the rest of this entry »
Peanut Butter Jelly Crime
Did you know sandwiches are racist? Yep. If you are anything but the whitest of lily-white caucasian crackafaces, you shouldn’t be touching that delicious meat/vegetable/preserve between two slices of white/wheat/whole grain. Because oppression and stuff. So saith Verenice Gutierrez, principal at Harvey Scott K-8 School in Portland, Oregon:
Verenice Gutierrez picks up on the subtle language of racism every day.
Take the peanut butter sandwich, a seemingly innocent example a teacher used in a lesson last school year.
“What about Somali or Hispanic students, who might not eat sandwiches?” says Gutierrez, principal at Harvey Scott K-8 School, a diverse school of 500 students in Northeast Portland’s Cully neighborhood.
“Another way would be to say: ‘Americans eat peanut butter and jelly, do you have anything like that?’ Let them tell you. Maybe they eat torta. Or pita.”
“Somali”…that’s oddly specific. Lot of Somali students in Portland, are there?
Regardless, the whole idea that a sandwich in and of itself is racist is patently ridiculous. If a school in Mexico uses a fajita or enchilada or taco or burrito as an illustrative tool, should it be considered racist if there’s a caucasian student in the class? Never mind that a good chunk of Mexico’s ruling class is, in actuality, of European descent and therefore whiter than even my Dutch-Irish-German behind (thanks to that little sliver of Muscogee in my family). How about if one of those Hispanic students went to the Mediterranean…how dare this Greek classroom talk about pita when all this child knows is tortilla?! Read the rest of this entry »
Rebranding: The Last Refuge of Scoundrels
In a speech to the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council on Tuesday, President Obama blamed Republicans for the failure of the PPACA…you know, the sweeping legislation the GOP was not even allowed into the conference room on, or even to read before its passage. Passage that, it bears noting, was facilitated by a complex and clandestine (though, sadly, totally legal) procedural shell game that allowed the Senate Democrats to pass the bill as a budgetary measure without actually passing an actual budget.
“What was already going to be hard was operating within a very difficult political environment and we should have anticipated that that would create a rockier rollout than if Democrats and Republicans were both invested in success,” Obama said.
“One of the problems we’ve had is one side of Capitol Hill is invested in failure and that makes, I think, the kind of iterative process of fixing glitches as they come up and fine-tuning the law more challenging,” he added.
That’s right, folks…the President actually had the balls to say that simply not wishing hard enough and believing in fairies caused the web site to fail.
But that isn’t even remotely the stupidest thing he said in his remarks, nosiree…
Once the problems with the website are resolved, the president said “we’re going to have to, obviously, remarket and rebrand, and that will be challenging in this political environment.”
Yes, people. The problem with Obamacare isn’t that it’s another uber-expensive, unprecedented takeover of an entire sector of our economy for the purposes of social engineering. It isn’t that the system is being run by the same morons who paid as much for a coffeemaker as I could for a decent used car. It isn’t that their meddling has caused both premiums and deductibles to skyrocket because the insurance companies now have no choice but to assume that all their customers are falling apart on the molecular level. No, no, it’s the BRANDING that’s the problem. Read the rest of this entry »
On Shortages, Psychoses & Civility
Earlier today, in a tragic turn of events, Democrat Virginia state Senator Creigh Deeds was, according to police, stabbed by his son, Gus, who then took his own life with a gun. I would never mock such a horrible situation. However, as the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports, the younger Deeds may have been suffering from mental health issues that contributed to his actions, issues that led to an emergency psychiatric hold being suggested for him:
Sen. Creigh Deeds was stabbed multiple times early today at his Bath County home and his son, Gus, is dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Gus Deeds had been released Monday following a mental health evaluation performed under an emergency custody order, an official said.
…
Dennis Cropper, executive director of the Rockbridge County Community Services Board, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that the emergency custody order, or ECO, allowed Gus Deeds to be held as long as four hours to determine whether he should be held longer, up to 48 hours, under a temporary detention order.
The son was evaluated Monday at Bath Community Hospital, Cropper said, but was released because no psychiatric bed could be located across a wide area of western Virginia.
Naturally, a horrible situation, both for the Deeds family and all those who are in desperate need of psychiatric care in the state of Virginia. So, when “Third Vice Chair of the SC Democratic Party” Tyler Jones commented on the lack of beds leading to Deeds’ release:
Dear God. Creigh Deeds’ son was released from a psychiatric unit because there weren’t enough beds. http://t.co/Xon728g8If
— Tyler Jones (@TylerMJones) November 19, 2013
Respondeth I:
@TylerMJones @JessaNaomi WELCOME TO OBAMACARE!
— Kenny Hitt (@fusionaddict) November 19, 2013
Now…crass? Perhaps. Unnecessary? Sure. And I apologized quickly. But I posted this to make a very important point, that being that the medical rationing which will (not could, but WILL) result from ObamaCare’s implementation is going to result in more situations just like this one, as I pointed out…
@fusionaddict @JessaNaomi dude, just shut up. That’s what you should do right now.
— Tyler Jones (@TylerMJones) November 19, 2013
“Shut up,” he explained.
First, I’ll further address my original point. Read the rest of this entry »
The Inanimate Carbon Rod 