"Can Opener" Bridge Keeps Claiming Dumb People, Despite It Being Raised

A classic "Penske Peel" at the infamous 11 foot 8 bridge in Durham,
North Carolina. They recently raised the bridge by eight inches, so now
it's the 11 foot 8+8 bridge. Still, dumb people are still crashing into it. 

There's a train tressle in Durham,  North Carolina with a street going under it.  I'm an absolutely huge fan of it.

The span was always known as the 11 foot 8 bridge, as that was the distance between the pavement on the street and the bottom of the bridge.

The bridge became an internet celebrity over the past decade or so due to the extremely high number of trucks that got their tops ripped off because truck drivers insisted on trying to make it under the span, despite the fact they couldn't fit.

This, despite all kinds of signs and sensor-triggered flashing lights and "Overheight Must Turn" signage that told truck drivers they won't fit under the bridge so stop. They'd keep going anyway, with disastrous results.

People in a nearby building have dutifully documented the carnage over the years with a surveillance camera.  It's turned into an extremely popular YouTube site.

I confess I was a little crushed, pardon the pun, when the fine people of Durham decided to raise the bridge by eight inches in the hopes of stopping this stupidity.   I get it that the overheight crashes were a pain in the ass for Durham police, public works and all that.

But I figured the idiot truck drivers deserved the public shame of crashing into this bridge an I hoped it would continue.

I, and many other people thought it was the end of the fun videos associated with the 11 foot 8 bridge.

But nope! It's now the 11 foot 8+8 bridge and people are still, gloriously crashing into it. Granted, the raised height of the bridge means the crashes aren't quite as dramatic as they used to be. But happily, they continue.

So here's to the stupid truck drivers everywhere who insist on crashing into things they need not crash into!

Videos of recent crashes of the 11 foot 8+8 bridge here:

First one is a piece of furniture being knocked off a truck on December 19. It features the walk of shame of the driver who had to retrieve it:



Then, we have the ever-popular "Penske Peel" with the top of a Penske rental truck being damaged. Penske peels have always been popular here:

Republicans Seem To Hate Wishes Of Voters

Another case of GOP anti-democratic instincts: South Dakota
Gov.Dennis Daugaard and his fellow state Republicans
are mad at his state's voters for approving an ethics las
for state lawmakers. 

In yet another example of how many Republicans seem to have abandoned the idea of doing the bidding of voters, South Dakota lawmakers are going to cancel a voter initiative that insisted on government ethics.

Republicans there just declared a "legislative emergency" since voters there had the gall to want ethics in their government.  Because it's definitely an emergency when voters want their lawmakers to be ethical.

According to Huffington Post, the goal of the "legislative emergency" is to wipe out the new ethics and campaign finance law South Dakota voters approved in November.

The regulations would create an independent commission to oversee proves into ethical misconduct by elected officials, impose tougher limits on campaign contributions and lobbyists' gifts to lawmakers, place restrictions on lawmakers who become lobbyists, increase disclosure requirements from independent political groups and set up a system to publicly finance elections, says the Huffington Post. 

Sounds pretty comprehensive, right?

Much too comprehensive for the Republicans running South Dakota. The state's governor, Dennis Daugaard said South Dakota voters were "hoodwinked" into voting for the law.

I don't think the voters of South Dakota are that dumb. They knew what they were doing, since there was a lot of back and forth about the merits of the proposed law before South Dakotans approved it in November.

But, the voters had the gall to want to hinder political hijinks. A big no-no, especially among Republicans, it seems.

The people have no right, apparently to influence the decisions of their so-called leaders.

Exhibit Number 1 is Donald Trump, of course, who obvious thinks what he wants in his Big Ego alternative universe, where he has a "mandate" despite losing the popular vote by around 3 million people.

Trump's life is life guided by "alternative facts" such as the YUUGE crowds that supposedly turned out for his inauguration, and the billions of lies he's told. (I don't have the space to list them, obviously.)

State Republican-led legislatures are big into this game, too, and it's not just South Dakota.

We saw the spectacle a month or two back, after North Carolina voters narrowly got a Democratic governor into the State House.

The Republicans there pounced, calling an out-of-the-blue special session in December stripping the new Democratic Governor Roy Cooper of many of his powers before he took office on the first of January. (Cooper is of course suing these Republicans.)

Republicans have been deft at gerrymandering Congressional districts, .adopting voter suppression laws, and pleasing their dwindling ultra-conservative base.

CNN noted the Republican M.O. in relation to the atrocity in North Carolina, but they could have been talking about Trump and many other Republicans across the nation.

"Extremist Republicans wo cut taxes for the wealthy, denied health care to poor people, attacked public education, suppressed votes and targeted immigrants and minorities with mean-spirited legislation are making their last stand against the ballot box and the courts."

Despite the huge damage that Trump, Congressional Republicans and many rank-and-file Republicans in red states are doing and will do, I'm still optimistic that demographics and decency will win out.

We're just going to have to spend a few painful years first. I can see already that Trump is proving every bit as terrible a president as his many critics predicted.

The arch-conservatives are overstepping, and people are going to rebel. The first real sign of that was the Womens Marches last weekend. Almost all of them drew far more participants than even some of the most optimist organizers predicted.

It was basically old white people that got Trump into power, and have enabled Republican state legislators to do their damage to everyone else.

I still think these mostly old white people will realize they've been conned. Also, as crass as this sounds, a lot of them are dying off, leaving us with a far more diverse, tolerant, moderate populace.

Moderate does not mean "not pissed off." People are pissed off, and the pendulum will swing. We'll have to be patient.

Push Americans far enough, though, and they tend to get revolutionary. Yep, we are living in interesting times. Let's hope the short term pain of the next few years leads us to long term gain.

That prospect is what keeps us going.

North Carolina Exhibit One On How GOP Could Destroy National Democracy

Demostrators rail against an undemocratic power grab
by North Carolina Republicans. At least 20
were arrested, including at least one journalist.  

Autocrats entering the White House under Donald Trump need to look no further than North Carolina on how they can end democracy and usurp the will of the people.

The Republican legislature in North Carolina this week basically launched a coup d'état against the recently elected governor, a Democrat.

As numerous news organizations, including Daily Kos point out, Republicans in North Carolina, at least, don't give a shit about such niceties as the rule of law, the will of voters and fair elections.

The Republicans in North Carolina held a surprise special session in which they took a lot of powers away from the governor and gave it to the legislature. That's because a Democrat, Roy Cooper was just elected North Carolina governor.

They also changed the Supreme Court into elected positions, to ensure Republicans get on the state's highest court from the Republcans' badly gerrymandered districts.

That's because the North Carolina Supreme Court has in the recent past ruled against the Republicans' shenanigans, power grabs and voter suppression moves.

If you think this is just a North Carolina thing, it isn't. That's why you should be worried. The Donald Trump administration is likely to do similar things writ large in the entire United States.

Your rights to pick and choose who leads the nation might be going by the wayside, which is a truly terrible and terrifying thing.

North Carolina has been at this for awhile. It's a lot of work destroying democracy, apparently, but they've proven it can be done.

Daily Kos notes that this has been the M.O. of some GOPers for awhile, and it might only get worse.

"Republicans had previously gerrymandered the legislature so aggressively that they won to-proof majorities in 2012 despite losing the popular vote, and they easily maintained them in 2016 despite McCrory's loss. 

A courty in 2016 struck down those maps as unconstitution racial gerrymanders, meaning the North North Carolina Republicans are using an illegally obtained legislative majorityto ursurp the powers of the fairly elected new Democratic governor. 

Democracy relies on electoral losers recognizing the legitimacy of the victor, and this breathtaking power grab can only be describd as a full-blown legislative coup d-etat design to subvert democracy itself."

Slate describes how serious the North Carolina situation is:

"What's happening in North Carolina is not politics as usual. It is an extraordinarily disturbing legislative coup, a flagrant effort to maintain one-party rule by rejecting democratic norms and revoking the will of the voters.

It is the kind of thing we might expect to see in Venezuela, not a U.S state. It should terrify every American citizen who believes in the rule of law. This is so much more than a partisan power grab. This ia an attack on democracy itself. "

Oh, sure the courts might overturn what North Carolina Republicans did. Until we get new judges. In North Carolina, newly elected governor Roy Cooper plans to sue the legislature for what they've done.

What do we do when Trumpsters get rid of federal judges that rely on things like the rule of law and precedent in favor of hacks that would do their bidding?

Then, we would see the North Carolina-style autocratic rule go nation wide. Democracy would die.

As a patriotic American who has used his First Amendment rights to criticize, praise or mock elected officials, I really worry if my ability to do so will soon end.

 We can all hope that cooler heads prevail, and lawmakers, judges and such will find their moral compass and act in accordance to the Constitution, and not some autocratic dimwit like Donald Trump and his ilk .

But we can't count on it. North Carolina Republicans didn't find their democratic moral compass, so why should we rely on others?

Since Trump was elected, I've kept hoping that my fears about the stability of our democracy and rule of law were overblown.

Unfortunately, those fears look more and more like they're well placed.

I don't know if we as citizens can fight back all that well. Still, the time might be coming for a new American Revolution.

Restaurant Patrons Who Think They Are Christians Insult Waiter In Un-Christian Way

Click to make it bigger
and see how some
so called "religious"
people insulted a
waitress at a North
Carolina restaurant. 

Alexandra Judd is a waitress in a Charlotte, North Carolina restaurant and a recent experience she had proves that there definitely are bigots in that state.

North Carolina is in the news spotlight over the so-called "bathroom bill" that in some cases would force transgendered people to use public restrooms that don't correspond with their gender. It also effectively endorses the "right" of some people to discriminate against the LGBT community.

Judd, who is a lesbian, said a group of patrons left without leaving a tip.

Yeah, that happens sometimes. People don't leave tips and that screws over the waitstaff.

But that wasn't what bothered Judd.

The group left a hateful message on the bill, and pointed Judd to that ever popular Bible verse, Leviticus 20:13 that bigots use to shroud their homophobia in "religion," says television station WBTV in Charlotte. 

"If a man also lie with mankind as he lieth with a woman, both them have committed an abomination....They shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them," reads the Old Testament Bible verse.

So there you have it. This group of so-called Christians thought the Christian, holy thing to do is insult somebody.

If these "Christians" don't like gay people, fine. Going out of their way to insult people?

If that's what their religion says to do, I'm staying away from it as far as possible.

This post isn't a swipe at all Christians. It's a swipe at the small minority of them who are actually confused over who is holier than thou.

Certainly not the idiots that visited the restaurant where Judd works.

The people who left this "tip" for Judd also wrote "praying for you."

Yeah, right. Praying that the only see and hear from people exactly like them, is more like it.

Anyway, Judd was of course infuriated and hurt by this, but she's not going to let it get her down. Why should she? Why should she waste her time thinking about morons who are nothings anyway?

She wrote this message to the morons on Facebook: "Don't pray for me, darling. I have everything I could possibly want and need in my life."

Which is certainly more than the people who left the "tip" have. It must be awful to have so empty a life that they have to go around insulting random people in the name of "religion."

Pathetic.

North Carolina Residents Can't Even Get Porn Because Everybody Is So Angry Over Hate Law

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Right Wing Groups: Help Us Boycott PayPal By Donating To Us Via PayPal!

The Family Research Council hates PayPal for hating
North Carolina's anti-LGBT law, but at least for now
you can donate to the FRC via PayPal. Hmmm.  

A fun little side issue in the Great North Carolina PayPal move controversy is the people who want us to boycott PayPal want us to use PayPal to donate to their organizations.

As noted previously, PayPal announced earlier this week they wouldn't be locating a processing center in North Carolina after all.

PayPal executives were understandably annoyed with North Carolina's legislature and governor adopting a weird law that would, among other things, make transgendered people use bathrooms that correspond to their birth certificate, and not to their current gender.

There's also some other anti-LGBG goodies in that law.

Anyway, the law goes against PayPal's corporate philosphy about inclusiveness, so they'll look elsewhere to locate their new office.

(Note: Already, other states, including here in Vermont are yelling for PayPal: Over here! Over here! Come here! We'll see how that goes.)

Predictably, various and sundry evangelical and right wing activist groups are annoyed with PayPal for being annoyed with North Carolina's law.

These groups want us to boycott PayPal, and donate to their organizations to fight the heathen PayPal.

According to JoeMyGod, at least two of these groups, the Family Research Council, and Franklin Graham's outfit, tell us the best way to donate to fight PayPal is through, um, PayPal.

Ooookay then!

Tony Perkins of Family Research Council says they will remove the PayPal option soon. Let's see if they do.

Franklin Graham complains that PayPal operates in countries that are very abusive and hostile to gays and that's true. But they don't have their corporate offices in these countries.

Nevertheless, Graham says PayPal is hypocritical for backing out of North Carolina when it does business in oppressive countries

But Grahams's web site invites you to donate to him via PayPal. 

No that's not hypocritical, uh-uh.

North Carolina Hates Me, No, I Won't Go Back There

Because of North Carolina' lawmakers' and
governor's stupidity, this dude would legally
have to use womens bathrooms and
locker rooms. Makes sense, right?

4/5/15 UPDATE:

The Associated Press this morning is reporting that PayPal has canceled plans to build an operations center in Charlotte, North Carolina because of the state's new pro-bigotry law.

The PayPal center would have created 400 jobs in the Charlotte area.

This is the first major company to make good on its threat to bail out of North Carolina because of their anti-LGBT law, that the governor signed last month.

Meanwhile, says the AP, Braeburn Pharmaceuticals is re-evaluating an earlier decision to build a $20 million center in the state.

That project would create about 50 jobs, each with a salary of over $75,000 a  year.

Lionsgate has opted to abandon the idea of filming a pilot for a new comedy in North Carolina and will do so in Canada instead. Several companies have also pulled out of a major interior design show in North Carolina.

The anti-LGBT lawmakers in North Carolina are surely saying they're putting "morality" ahead of money, but what's the morality in harming a segment of the population, while simultaneously denying economic opportunity and jobs to both straight and gay North Carolinians?

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION:

I've been to North Carolina, and it's a beautiful state. From the Atlantic shores of the Outer Banks to the Great Smokey Mountains, it has a lot to offer.

Too bad its legislature and governor are so intellectually and morally ugly.

Earlier this year, the city of Charlotte, North Carolina passed an anti-discrimination ordinance that protected gay and transgender people.

The North Carolina legislator and its odioius governor, Pat McCrory, panicked over this and called together an emergency (and expensive) special legislative session to put a stop to Charlotte, tad burn it!

Basically, the new law bars any municipality from enacting ordinances that ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The legislation basically allows businesses the right to refuse to serve customers based on the owner's religious beliefs. 

As is always the case when these types of laws come up, the legislation centered on panic over bathrooms.

Charlotte's nullified ordinance, along with existing local ordinances and state laws across the nation,  allow transgender people to use public bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity.

The bigots that came up with laws like North Carolina's say that would allow men to go into womens' bathrooms by pretending they are women so they could sexually assault innocent women and children.

Or something.

First of all, there are no reported instances of these transgender rights ordinances and laws encouraging sexual assaults. Furthermore, last time I checked, sexual assault is illegal everywhere, including in North Carolina.

And if some guy is intent on ignoring the law and committing a rape, do you think he would be stopped by North Carolina's stupidity?

Also, check out the photo of the dude at the top of this post. It's a photo that went viral. He's transgender, definitely a guy now. Would McCrory want this guy sharing a public bathroom with his wife? Would the idiots in the North Carolina legislature want him barging in on their daughters locker room at the gym?

Under their law, he'd have to.

The dude in question, James Sheffield, Tweeted his photo when the law was signed and it went viral. It's jokey but Sheffield isn't really laughing that hard.

"It's super funny to think about some bearded hillbilly in a stall next to the governor's wife while she clutches her pearls," he said.

However, Sheffield said this would happen:

"The more likely scenario would be that I take a road trip through North Carolina - which I do often - stop at a gas station and try use the rest room..... I can follow the law and go into the women's room in a state that's a Stand Your Ground state with a very liberal open carry law, and if I do that, are women gonna stop me and ask me if I'm trans? 

Or are they just going to shoot me because they think I really am a predator because all they see is some bearded buy walking into the women's room?"

Sheffield just nailed it. The law is all about making life dangerous, or at least more difficult for LGBT people because McCrory and the legislature just don't like dem perverts!

McCrory is trying to tell us the law is about "etiquette," that men shouldn't use women's bathrooms and women shouldn't use men's bathrooms. "All of a sudden through poltical correctness we're throwing away basic etiquette," he told NBC.

So, basic etiquette is telling men they must use the ladies room because their birth certificate says they were born female? I wonder what the Emily Post Institute has to say about that.

McCrory says the uproar over the law is the child of "left wind activists groups" who are threatening local businesses and pressuring them into saying they don't like the law. "There is politicallly correct blackmail being directed toward somw of our businessess... They are caught in a very coordinated political theater."

Oh, right. I'm sure the politically correct left wing pressured North Carolina's largest newspaper, to blast McCrory.

The Charlotte Observer pulled no punches in its editorial. It read, in part:

"It was, in the end, about a 21st century governor who joined a short, tragic list of 20th century governors. You know at least some of these names, probably: Wallace, Faubus, Barnett. They were men who fed our worst impulses, men who rallied citizens against citizens, instead o leading their states forward.

This is what Pat McCrory did Wednesday, in just 12 hours. I wasn't the stand in the schoolhosue door. It was a spring past the bathroom door and straight into the South's dark, bigoted past."

Was it the political left that prompted the conservative governors of South Dakota and more recently Georgia to veto similar legislation, despite the pressure from religious onservatives not to do so?

Republican Presidential Ted Cruz had a hissy fit over the Georgia governor's veto, which tells us what kind of awful president he would be, as if we didn't know already

And what about the North Carolina Attorney General, who's running for governor of North Carolina and wants to replace McCrory? He said today he's not going to defend the state against a lawsuit that says, most likely very accurately, that the new law in North Carolina is unconstitutional.

By the way, if you're so proud of this law, McCrory, why did you and your cronies in the legislature ram this law through with little or no advance warning, with not time for public debate, no time for the public to weigh in?

I guess you don't like democracy. Who appointed you king, anyway?

The law focuses on transgendered people more than anything else. But it's a swipe at all LGBT people.

North Carolina says "we don't want your kind here." North Carolina is apparently for straight people only.

Fine. I won't go there. And neither should anyone who opposes bigotry. Because bigots may only go to North Carolina now, Gov. McCrory has regally decided.

Morons Oppose Solar Panels Because They Will "Suck Up Sun's Energy"

Hmm. The vegetation near these solar panels looks
nice and green, so I don't think they're "sucking all
the energy away" and preventing photosynthesis.
A couple in North Carolina publicly worried
that would be the case. 

If you ever wonder why there are idiots in our Great Nation, I'm about to give you one reason why.

It's that there a few idiots among our mostly fine teachers, and these idiot teachers are "educating" kids

I bring this up because a retired science teacher of all things in Woodland, North Carolina spoke up in opposition to proposed solar panels in town, says the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald newspaper. (Note you'll have to answer a survey question to get access to the article in the link.)

The retired teacher, Jane Mann, said the solar panels would interfere with photosynthesis, the process by which plants absorb sunlight to live and grow. Apparently, she thinks the solar panels would hog all the sun energy coming into Woodland and leave any left for the trees and grass and shrubs in the community.

Mann says she's seen areas near solar panels where the plants are brown and dead because they did not get enough sunlight, reports the News-Herald.

Unless those plants were hidden way beneath the solar panels, I'm afraid those dead plants died of something else, dear Jane. Maybe drought? Insects? Or they gave up after exposure to your ignorance?

For the record, there are many solar panels and solar farms where I live in Vermont. Yes, the vegetation around them is brown now because it's winter. But in the summer, the panels are surrounded by lush green grass and trees.

 Mann also feared the solar panels would somehow cause cancer. Yes, if you stood out in the sun day in and day out, whether you were near the solar panels or not, you could develop skin cancer. But otherwise? Um......

Mann's husband Bobby was even worse. He opposed the solar panels because they would suck up all the energy from the sun and businesses would not come to Woodland as a result.

Yes, he really said that.

Also for the record, the amount of solar energy that hits the earth in just one hour is enough to provide the entire planet its energy needs for an entire year.

Geez, if Bobby Mann were right, you'd think he'd be happy. If the solar panels sucked up all the energy from the sun, so much for global warming, right?

What does he think? Sunlight is like water poured from a bucket? If you empty the bucket into a solar panel, there's none left for anything else?

A representative of the solar company involved actually had to explain to the Manns and others at the town council meeting that the only sunlight the solar panels use in generating power is that which hits them directly.

I thought everybody knew that, but apparently not.

In the end, the town council in Woodland rejected the solar farm, so the town is safe from the dastardly solar panels sucking all the energy from the town.

I just wish solar panels had the ability to suck away the ignorance and stupidity of some people.

Bridge Enforces Laws Of Physics Despite Best Efforts Of Truck Drivers

One of many trucks that tried and failed
to violate teh laws of physics by going into an
underpass that's not as tall as the truck. 

There's a bridge in Durham, North Carolina that is a graveyard for stupid truck drivers, and a source of shadenfreude entertainment for the rest of us.

Cars can fit just fine getting through the underpass beneath the bridge, which is really a train trestle.

But the bottom of the bridge is 11 feet, eight inches above the roadway, meaning it's trouble for trucks. (Technically the space is 11 feet, 10 inches, but they try to give people two inches of wiggle room, just to be generous. )

There's a number of warning signs and lights alerting drivers to the low clearance ahead, but somehow,  people driving trucks, especially inexperienced people driving rental trucks, just don't get it.

There's a whole website, called 11 foot 8, dedicated to all the stupid truck drivers who tried to get under the bridge,  Proprietors of the web site have recorded no fewer than 97 trucks smashing into the bridge.

As the web site notes:

"The train trestle prominently featured in all the videos here has earned a reputation for its unrelenting enforcement of the lawes of physics. If your vehicle is taller than 11 feet, eight inches, and you challenge this bridge, you might find ootage of your experience on this website."

Somehow, this bridge or train trestle insists on adhering to the laws of physics. Go figure.

The website says trucks crash into the bridge on average once a month. At least once a day, a truck trips overhead warning lights which makes them stop in time and turn around.

They can't simply block the road from trucks, because as you can see in the video below, there's a cross street right before the bridge. There are several businesses and restaurants on that cross street that need access by delivery trucks.

As long as those delivery trucks don't go straight into the underpass, no problem.

Here's a video of a bunch of crashes at the trestle through May, 2013. There's a LOT of them. People never learn, do they?