From the BBC.

A women parked her car, and went in to a salon to have her hair done. When she comes out she discovers that the local government has made her parking space a “reserved for handicapped area”, dripping paint on her car in the process, and she has a £60 [$114] parking ticket under her wiper blade.

The amazing part is that the local government apologized, canceled the ticket, and agreed to pay the cost of removing the paint from her car.

[In the city of Coronado, California, they tow your car, claim you are lying about the re-marking, and charge you $100 to get it back.]

Badtux, the perceptive penguin, makes a very important point about Iraq: it’s no longer a war.

Under the “rules”, when the US captured Saddam, the leader of the “enemy”, the war was technically over, and the “occupation” began. So if the US pulls out, it isn’t a “surrender”, it’s an end to the “occupation”.

It would be nice if we helped to clean up, but there are a lot of things going on that need to be attended to and we’ll have someone throw a benefit to help with costs. In the absence of an official “war”, the violence is a job for the police, not the military. The new government can write and tell us how it worked out. We’ll do lunch.

Mustang Bobby notes the Miami raid that netted a half dozen unemployed Haitians living in a warehouse in Liberty City that they guarded while dressed like ninjas.

CNN and the BBC carry straight reporting, but the claims that these guys were “planning” to attack the Sears Tower in Chicago is over the top. Even the FBI admits that it was an “aspiration” rather than as serious threat. [Jose Padilla, who was going to build a “dirty bomb”, is charged with something like loitering and disturbing the peace.]

The “al Qaeda connection” is a Federal informant who told the MHNT that he was with al Qaeda.

Pretty much nothing was found in their “secret hideout”, cleverly disguised as a warehouse with a couple of guys in ninja uniforms outside to make it inconspicuous.

We have mental health laws to deal with these kinds of people. Anyone who can’t buy machine guns and plastic explosives in Miami isn’t really dedicated to their revolution. There would be a huge mark-up because they are Haitians rather than Cubans, but a deal could be made.

If they had started when Aristide was still in Haiti, the US would have just supplied the stuff. All they had to say was they were going to help push the socialists out of Haiti.

Chilling Out

The stuff on the table? It’s around here somewhere?

[Editor: Ringo has adopted Sox’s habit of jumping onto the table and sweeping it clean before laying down. She goes Sox one better by not sailing off the other side when she jumps on the table.

Friday Ark