Opa-Locka "Decorum Rule" to be Tested

At their last meeting, Opa-locka, Florida commissioners approved a decorum resolution defining appropriate behavior at city meetings. The rule faces its first test at this Wednesday's commission meeting.

Opa-locka has a long-standing decorum rule to deal with how residents must behave when addressing the commissioners. For instance, when attempting to bribe a commissioner, residents are required to address the commissioner as 'sir' or 'madam' and are required to say 'please.' The decorum rule also prohibits residents from blackmailing a commissioner more than once with the same photograph of the commissioner with a prostitute.

Commissioner Esther Williams, sponsor of the decorum ordinance, said she was concerned about the lack of propriety on the commission. Williams said, "Just last Thursday, I was called a 'skank' by that rat bastard." Williams refused to identify to which 'rat bastard' she was referring. "He knows who he is," she said. 

Among other things, the decorum ordinance will prohibit the use of the words 'skank', 'ho', 'f---er' and 'bitch' during the commission meetings. Also prohibited are such behaviors as making disparaging comments about a fellow commissioner to the press, or urinating in a fellow commissioner's gas tank or the office coffee pot.

The commission acknowledged that they forgot to dictate penalties in the ordinance and expect to correct the oversight in an upcoming meeting. 

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Aircraft Deployed to Protect US Northern Border

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have deployed Predator B aircraft to the U.S. northern border to provide early warning against a feared invasion of Canadians.

The drone is scheduled to begin patrolling the northern U.S. border in January. Its flights will originate from the Grand Forks base.

"It is vital to America's security that we protect our borders, particularly the northern border," said Senator Kent Conrad, D-N.D. "The Grand Forks Air Branch plays an essential role in helping shut the door on Canadians who want to sneak across the border to strike on U.S. soil."

Conrad said the state's congressional delegation has been working for four years to establish patrols along the Canadian border. "Although the threat from the Canadian menace has been growing ever since the National Hockey League established the Boston Bruins in 1926," added Conrad.

Fearful that their attempts to dominate American culture would be thwarted by the regional popularity of hockey, Canadians were reportedly sent to infiltrate American popular culture. Some prominent celebrities suspected of being Canadians include William Shatner, Jim Carrey, Keanu Reeves, Pamela Anderson, Shania Twain, Mike Myers, Avril Lavigne, Alanis Morissette and Celine Dion.  Some are also known to speak French.

Fears over a Canadian invasion have grown throughout the Bush presidency. With the inauguration of Barack Obama only weeks away, the Bush administration is taking no chances with the Canadian menace.

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Bush Prepares for His Greatest Challenge

As the days dwindle until President Bush joins what Herbert Hoover called the "most exclusive trade union in the world," the unpopular commander in chief appears decidedly enthusiastic about leaving the political limelight.

Early ex-presidents quickly descended into obscurity, but modern ex-presidents commonly embark on a high-profile, and potentially very lucrative, consulting and speaking careers.  While this can be a difficult job for any ex-president, historians and political observers say that it will be especially difficult for Bush. He not only must oversee the construction of a presidential library and write his memoirs, but he must also attempt to salvage his legacy.

Bush was forced to struggle with how to define his legacy in favorable terms even before his presidency began.  However, Bush quickly swept aside lingering concerns about having been wrongly declared the winner of the 2000 election by embarking on a series of shockingly destructive initiatives.

Bush was quick to point that he doesn't want to be remembered as the guy "who helped Enron pillage California; or who appointed an incompetent fool to head FEMA; or who eliminated the use of science or facts as the basis for making decisions; or who left a generation of children behind in their education; or who initiated and mismanaged a long, very expensive and ill-advised war; or who accumulated a record national debt; or who nearly destroyed the world economy."

"Those things are all so negative. I want to be remembered as the president who did positive things like reducing taxes for thousands of wealthy Americans and liberating Iraq from tyranny," Bush said.

Bush is reported to be contemplating a post-presidential path similar to that of Jimmy Carter, except for the parts about helping to ensure free and fair democratic elections and helping to construct low cost homes, which Bush described as "a lot of hard work."

Bush was non-committal about the prospects for his presidential library.  "One thing's for sure, it won't have that damn Pet Goat book," Bush said. Sources close to the president say that he is planning to create a "Bush Freedom Institute" that will seek to reduce taxes on wealthy citizens of many nations and also impose democracy on nations whose citizenry is unprepared to receive it.  

Bush is also said to be considering soliciting speakers fees from governments and companies in exchange for guarantees that he will not give speeches to them. "People just want Bush to go away. I think we can leverage that desire with the president's interest in not doing very much actual work to get rich," said an aide who asked not to be named.

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Boy George Guilty of False Impersonation

A jury convicted pop singer Boy George of falsely impersonating a female on Friday.

The iconic '80s singer, whose real name is George O'Dowd, admitted to applying girly makeup, plucking his eyebrows and adopting many female mannerisms, but denied tattooing his shaven head and generally looking like a creepy old dude.

Jurors were shown photos and videos which the prosecutors said had been inflicted by O'Dowd. The singer denied that he was responsible.

This was not the singer's first brush with the law.

Two years ago O'Dowd was able to plea bargain a cocaine possession charge down to filing a false police report. O'Dowd was given the relatively harsh penalty of sweeping New York City streets because he reported didn't know that cocaine possession was illegal for celebrities.

More recently, O'Dowd was again in trouble with the law for allegedly tying up a male escort and forcing him to sing Do You Really Want to Hurt Me. The judge warned that some jail time was probable.

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Recession Confirmed by National Bureau of Flipping Obvious

The United States economy officially sank into a recession last December according to the National Bureau of Flipping Obvious.

NBFO Chief Economist, Dr. Paul Pable compared the current economic downturn to postwar recessions, which have averaged nearly 11 months. "The absence of amelioration in current economic indicators suggests the possibility that the current recession may exceed the mean postwar recession duration," he said. 

As if to add an exclamation point to Dr. Pable's announcement, or to emphasize its shocking cluelessness, Wall Street's benchmark Dow Jones industrial average plummeted nearly 8 percent.

Both Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury secretary Henry Paulson pledged to use all the tools at their disposal to restore the economy. Mr. Bernanke said that it was "theoretically feasible" to reduce the Fed's benchmark overnight lending rate below its current target of 1 percent. "Although we've been giving away billions for months with no apparent effect," added Mr. Paulson before curling into a fetal position and crying.

 

"Suddenly, it doesn't seem like such a great idea to base our entire economy on having banks lend money they don't have to people who have no means of repaying it," said Mr. Bernanke.

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Born to Code? New Test for Geek Gene

When Raji Ramnani learned recently that a simple genetic test might be able to determine which technology field will suit the talents of her 2-year old son Sanjay, she instantly said, Where can I get it and who cares what it costs?

"I could see how some people might think the test would pigeonhole your child into doing search optimization, xml coding or chip design, but I think it's good to match them with the right activity," Ms. Ramnani, 28, said as she watched a toddler web design class struggle to perform a Google pagerank calculation in between afternoon snack and nap time.

"I think it would prevent a lot of parental frustration," she said. "Why should I be spending $1,000 each week to send Sanjay to a web design pre-school if he's going to grow up to design tera-scale processing chips?" 

In tech-conscious Mountain View, California, 23andYou has been optimizing tests for variations in the ventral patterning factor Sonic Hedgehog that coordinates the growth of telencephalic subregions which has been shown to correlate strongly to preference of technology careers.

Some experts say that Sonic Hedgehog testing is in its infancy and virtually useless.  Dr. Thadeus Nadwadny, the director of the Fresno Institute of Technology's interdepartmental gene therapy program, called it "an opportunity to sell new versions of snake oil."

A 23andYou spokesperson said that they were developing an entire suite of genetic testing for early identification of sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wasteoids, dweebies and dickheads.

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Palin Joins Chambliss Campaign in Georgia

The Alaska governor and former Republican vice-presidential nominee is back on the campaign trail, teaming up with Senator Saxby Chambliss in the state's Senatorial runoff election. "I'm just so pleased and honored that Saxby asked me to join his campaign and so you have to be committed to the mission, this mission that we're on, reform of this country and victory in the war Iraq and so I didn't blink then even when he asked me to campaign with him," said Palin.

Chambliss is the freshman Republican senator from Georgia who narrowly edged Democrat Jim Martin, but Georgia law requires 50 percent plus one.  A third party candidate denied Chambliss the outright victory forcing the runoff election.

When asked to describe her role in the runoff election, Palin said "That's a great question.  Piper asked me the same question just this morning.  As vice senator, my role will be to be Saxby's teammate and partner in the senate, so if we want, I can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will benefit you and your family and all the Joe six-packs and hockey moms out there in this great nation of ours."

"[Palin has] got to go back to Alaska," said Ed Rollins, a GOP strategist.

Sixty-seven percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters said that they would like to see the Alaska governor make a bid for the next GOP presidential nomination.  Meanwhile, ninety-three percent of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters and one hundred percent of late-night television hosts said that they would like to see the Alaska governor make a bid for the GOP presidential nomination.

"What's the difference between Sarah Palin and a train wreck?" asked Daily Show host Jon Stewart. "Lipstick!"

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