From Here:

The Pasadena-based dating website, heavily promoted by Christian evangelical leaders when it was founded, has agreed in a civil rights settlement to give up its heterosexuals-only policy and offer same-sex matches.
EHarmony was started by psychologist Neil Clark Warren, who is known for his mild-mannered television and radio advertisements. It must not only implement the new policy by March 31 but also give the first 10,000 same-sex registrants a free six-month subscription.

So much for freedom of association. Best to host your website in a more open minded country, such as communist China.

Next:

In the Los Angeles County school system, health, pension, and workers compensation liabilities are so mountainous that an estimated one of every three dollars budgeted for the L.A. schools goes to teacher retirement costs. “The three Rs in the L.A. County school system are now reading, writing, and retirement,” moans Richman.

Cadillac retirement plans will be the death of big government (or the governed) much as they’re putting old manufacturing union shops on the ropes. It’s one thing for a third world country to try and pull this stuff, but there’s no IMF loan coming for us.

Another:

President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday braced Americans for the unparalleled prospect of “trillion-dollar deficits for years to come,” a stark assessment of the budgetary outlook that he said would force his administration to impose tighter fiscal discipline on the government.

I don’t know how that guy could come to the conclusion that years of trillion dollar deficits can in any way equal ‘tighter fiscal discipline on the government’. It might not be beyond the Saudis or Chinese to give us enough rope to hang ourselves with, but I would tend to think that even they have an interest in getting paid back someday.

From a Reg article on additional warning labels on video games:

The type of parent who would buy their 8-year-old Grand Theft Auto is also probably not someone who’s going to catch the additional warning — given they’ve already ignored the ESRB warning, the title, the guns on the cover, and the description on the back of the box.

In other news, I got some new HP Procurve network switches at work, and I plugged the warranty into HPs site to make sure they were set. The graphic below shows that HP REALLY stands by their switches:

How about some more Obama madness?

Obama’s “regulation czar” Professor Cass Sunstein wants animals to be able to sue.
Animals can’t reason or express themselves, naturally, so the litigation would be handled by human lawyers, acting as ventriloquists on behalf of the animal kingdom. Think Mister Ed the talking horse, crossed with Eliot Spitzer.
“Any animals that are entitled to bring suit would be represented by (human) counsel, who would owe guardian-like obligations and make decisions, subject to those obligations, on their clients’ behalf,” according to Sunstein. The Harvard legal scholar first proposed the argument in 2002

Well at least, so far as we know, he didn’t cheat on his taxes.

A little Ohio news:

Gov. Ted Strickland last week warned that the tough economy would force him to make painful decisions in his new two-year budget. Today, he revealed details, which include employees in the executive branch taking pay cuts of 3 percent to 5 percent and reducing the state’s contribution from 100 percent to 90 percent for vision, dental and life benefits. The savings would be about $200 million a year.

Executive branch employees paid NOTHING for their medical care? No wonder the state is broke. Speaking of which, if and when that travesty of a bailout goes through I’d like to thank our neighboring states of Kentucky and Indiana for helping to pay for Ohio’s governmental goodies since Strickland’s balanced budget relies almost entirely on Federal bailout money to do the balancing. Suckers!

Speaking of bailouts, here’s a thought brought up in relation to the U.K., but it’s just as relevant here:

“The UK has been hit hard because the banks took on enormously large liabilities in foreign currencies. Should the British taxpayers have to lower their standard of living for 20 years to pay off mistakes that benefited a small elite?” he said.

As we’ll find out on Monday when our own banking bailout plan is pitched, that’s certainly what TurboTax Timmy, Bling-Bling Obama, and the rest of our corrupt coastal elite think.

Speaking of which, isn’t it nice that our law enforcement officials have enough time to make sure that dangerous criminals like Barry Bonds and Michael Phelps are locked up while our betters like Bernie Madoff, Congressman William ‘Freezer Money’ Jefferson, and countless corrupt banking execs walk the streets? I guess it’s like they said on The Simpsons, there’s no justice like mob justice…