Lawyer, Lawyer, Pants On Fire!

Attotrney Steven Guitierrez'a pants caught on
fire when he was litigating a Florida
arson case.

The sometimes unfair stereotype of lawyers is that they're liars, that "lawyer" is just another way of saying "liar."

And we've all heard the chant directed at the dishonest: "Liar, liar, pants on fire!"

Well, in Florida,  (where else would something like this occur?) while a defense attorney was litigating an arson case of all things, his pants caught on fire.

Literally.

According to the Miami Herald:

"Stephen Gutierrez, who was arguing that his client's car spontaneously combusted and was not intentionally set on fire, had been fiddling in his pocket as he was about to address jurors when smoke began billowing out his right pocket."

As you might expect, Gutierrez rushed out of the courtroom. Jurors were ushered out out, and soon, Gutierrez returned, without injury but definitely with singed pants. '

This was not an elaborate defense demonstration, the Miami Herald said. It was a faulty battery in an e-cigarette in Gutierrez's pocket.

The Miami Herald tried to contact Gutierrez, but he didn't return the calls.

Whatever happened, it didn't help Gutierrez'a client, Claudy Charles. He was convicted of second degree arson.

Gutierrez could be held in contempt of court because of the incident, the Miami Herald says, but this isn't the first time e-cigarettes have caused trouble.

As I noted back in November, e-cigarette batteries do seem to have a nasty habit of exploding and/or catching fire, which isn't a good thing for e-cigarette enthusiasts.

I guess that's one habit I won't take up, then.

 Repeated calls to Gutierrez’s cellphone went unanswered. Miami-Dade police and prosecutors are now investigating the episode. Officers seized several frayed e-cigarette batteries as evidence.

“A lot of people could have been hurt,” another observer in court told the Miami Herald.Gutierrez was representing Claudy Charles, 48, who is accused of intentionally setting his car on fire in South Miami-Dade. He had just started his closing arguments when the fire broke out. Jurors convicted Charles anyway of second-degree arson.

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Michael Hanzman, in the coming days, could decide to hold Gutierrez in contempt of court.

The 28-year-old lawyer graduated from Florida International University’s law school in 2015.

With millions of users across the country, e-cigarettes deliver vaporized nicotine through a heated liquid solution. But questions about the health and fire risks of the products have mounted, with the U.S. Department of Transportation recently banning e-cigarettes from checked bags on airplanes.

Last year, a Naples man filed suit in Miami-Dade after an e-cigarette exploded in his mouth, leaving him in a coma.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article137317553.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article137317553.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article137317553.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article137317553.html#storylink=cpy

Amazon Echo's Alexa Won't Tell Us If She Works For the CIA

Alexa, my Amazon Echo device, does not like it
if you inquire whether it's connected to the CIA.

Lot of us, including me, have Amazon's Echo, that device that just sits on a shelf,  gives you answers to your questions, plays music for you, helps you time your cooking and doing all sorts of tasks.

To make it work, you just announce its name, Alexa, and say something like, "Alexa, what's the weather forecast in Vermont today?"

Alexa will give you the answer to this and multitudes of other questions.

Pretty handy!

There's a weird viral video out there, that you can see below, in which a woman asks Alexa if she would ever lie to her.

The answer, essentially, is no.

Sometimes, when you ask Alexa a question, it can't process the question right, so it will tell you something like, "Hmmm I don't know the answer to that," Or, "I didn't understand the question."

This happens frequently if you ask a question in a convoluted way, which is understandable.

However, in these cases, Alexa doesn't just shut down unless you ask it this question: "Alexa, are you connected to the CIA?

With this question, Alexa just goes "blurp" and shuts down.

In the video below, you can see what Alexa does. I tried it on my own at my house and got the exact same response.

After awhile, once this viral video went out Alexa's answer for me changed to: "Sorry, I'm have a little trouble. Please try again later."

She's still fine with answering any other (non-controversial) question, though.

Probably just a system bug, but still a little creepy.

Watch:

A Helpful Congressman Chaffetz Explains Why GOP Hates Everyone Except The Rich

If only we stopped craving iPhones, we'd pay for all our
medical expenses ourselves, argues this Congressman

Thanks goes out to GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz for crystalizing in one simple, easy-to-understand paragraph the logic behind Republicans' repeal of Obamacare this morning.

As you might have heard all over the news this morning, Chaffetz, the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee said on CNN:

"Well, we're getting rid of the individual mandate. We're getting rid of those things that people said they don't want. And you know what? Americans have chocies. And they've got to make a choice. And so maybe rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to spend hundreds of dollars on that, maybe they should invest in their own health care. They've got to make those decisions themselves."

In that one statement, Chaffetz fully explains his and his colleagues' attitude toward all Americans who are too "stupid" and "lazy" to be millionaires.

A new iPhone, without signing up for a plan, costs maybe $650. A person without insurance who needs an appendectomy would probably have to pay very roughly $20,000 or about 30 iPhones.

Our appendectomy guy shouldn't have bought those 30 iPhones, I guess.

By the way, that iPhone people are craving? It might be the only ready access to phones available to most people. My only phone is an iPhone, and I need it to, say, connected to my job, communicate with my gardening clients, manage my finances, lots of things.

As the Verge points out, a smart phone is very often a necessity for maintaining a job, or finding one. You know, the job you get to get paid and stow away money for health care like Chaffetz wants?

As you would expect, Twitter lit up with this one.

Chaffetz handed Democrats a great talking point, as Charlie Pierce tweeted:

 Dear Democrats: @jasoninthehouse just handed you a big juicy attack-ad ready T-bone steak. Please try not to choke on it.

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) March 7, 2017

The response on Twitter really was withering, as you'd expect"

can't afford an annual cost of $10,000? yet I see you have purchased a nintendo, curious

— Matt Bruenig (@MattBruenig) March 7, 2017

Hey @jasoninthehouse: please double down & say everybody buying a Nintendo Switch deserves to watch their kid die of a treatable illness.

— Anil Dash (@anildash) March 7, 2017

@anildash @jasoninthehouse “Why are people deciding to get cancer when they know they can’t afford it?”

— Caroline ⚡️ (@crikitmoore) March 7, 2017

If you are old and on a fixed income, or chose a career which doesn't pay corporate CEO rates and you get expensively sick, well screw you. Just die already. We don't need or want you, say these GOP Congress creatures.

What's really going on is the GOP really wants Americans who are profit centers for their political donors to survive. Anybody else who doesn't become rich deserves to die. Because it is always 100 percent the fault of low and middle income people to not be zillionaires, in the eyes of zillionaires who inhereted their zillions.

Or got their zillions from corporate campaign contributors.

Don't you love the hollow lack of morality among our nation's leaders?

Alex Jones, Who Is Trump's Wacko Muse, Is Entertaining In A Scary Way

Alex Jones is one of Donald Trumps most, um,
interesting news sources.

One of Donald Trump's favorite news sources seems to be Alex Jones.

Jones is the visible head of something called InfoWars, which is, to put it mildly, a wildly crazy, train wreck of an extreme wacko conspiracy theories.

There's an entertaining video of him at the bottom of this post.

Jones is the guy who informed us that terrorist attacks and mass shootings in Orlando, Sandy Hook, Boston and other places were "false flags" by the Obama administration to take away all our guns and all of our freedoms.

He's the guy who informed us that the government is creating gay people by putting estrogen in juice boxes,thereby being a method of population control.

When a terrible tornado hit Moore, Oklahoma in 2013, he said the U.S. Air Force has the ability to control and direct swarms of tornadoes and launched a strike on Moore. No word from Jones yet on why the government targeted the fine people of Moore.

Also, Diet Coke is a by-product of a Pentagon study that would engineer e-coli bacteria and the fact that Taylor Swift endorsed Diet Coke in ads means that she loves genetically modified bacteria poop. 

So, yes, Jones is, um, interesting, which makes it very easy for me to pick on him. I know I'm being mean. I shouldn't abuse the mentally ill.

But in Jones' case, I can't help it. He needs to be taken down a notch.

Thankfully, we got some help from Vice, who tweeted the compilation you'll see below of clips from Jones' radio show.

Jones tends to have a temper, or which he also apologizes for. The wax and wane of these episodes is something to behold.  The dude certainly is excitable.

Watch the clip if you dare:

 Alex Jones wants you to know he’s sorry for his outbursts pic.twitter.com/i83ubKiwNp

— VICE News (@vicenews) March 5, 2017

Is Trump Administration Trampling The Rights Of Gold Star Dad Khizr Khan?

Is the Trump administration thinking of restricting
Khizr Khan's right to travel?

I'm really, REALLY hoping breaking news reports about Khizr Khan this afternoon are not true.

If the reports are true, we are in desperate straights.

You might remember Khan and his wife delivering a speech at the Democratic National Convention last summer.

He waved a copy of the Constitution and urged then-Republican candidate Donald Trump to read it.

Khan has been an American citizen for 30 years and his son, died in a bomb explosion as a member of the U.S. military in 2004.

If the reports this afternoon are true, then Trump did not read the Constitution, as Khizr Kahn suggested.

Kahn was scheduled to speak at a Toronto, Canada luncheon Tuesday, but canceled reportedly because his "freedom to travel abroad" is under review, according to several news outlets, including Politico.

"This turn of events is not just of deep concern to me but to all my fellow Americans who cherish our freedom to travel abroad.....I have not been given any reason as to why. I am grateful for your support and looking forward to visiting Toronto in the near future," Kahn said in a statement.

I'm writing this, but I'm still skeptical, because it seems so over the top. But you never know with Trump.

I'm hoping the whole thing is some sort of weird misunderstanding.

But if Kahn is right we should be totally worried about this if it's true.  I'll update if there's more confirmation, or it this turns out not to be true.

Connections Are The Theme Of This Great Movie, And This Great Ad

See this movie! 

The other day I watched a fantastic science fiction movie called "Arrival."

In it, 12 spaceships land on various places on Earth.

A scientist and a linguist are dispatched to Montana, where one of the ships has landed, to determine what the aliens are saying and what they want.

This is no big War of The World kinda movie, but, without being more of a spoiler than I already am, is a meditation on perspectives, fear and bravery.

The movie encourages us to view things in different, novel ways, to see the other side, to see how connections work rogether, to see how people could potentially work together.

See that movie!

Along the same lines is a viral video that advetises a Dutch television network. They have groups of people come into a room: A rich group, a poor group, an immigrant group, a rural group, an urban group, etc.

Then the MC mixes and matches the group. Everybody who was the class clown stand together. Anyone who was ever bullied stand together.

There's a series of these mix and match groupings in the video, with this message: We can slice and dice any group we want, and no matter what, there are going to be commonalities and differences.

Us vs. Them goes out the window.

Here's the great video:

Have I Got A Car For You

What a deal. (Stripper pole is under tarp_

Psst.

In the market for a new car?

I can help. Check this out.

The North Hills Auto Mall in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has for you a burgundy 1988 Lincoln Town Car with only 72,000 miles on it, reports BoingBoing.

It's got a snazzy 5-liter V8 engine, automatic four-speed transmission, cruise control, power steering, air conditioning, brand new inspecroin and the piece de resistance, a stripper pole!!

It's all yours for the low, low price of $14,999!

The stripper pole in this little ge. 

Go to Pittsburgh and get this awesome deal before it is gone forever!!

Imagine the parties you could have. You will be the coolest guy or gal on the block.

Get this car today!