Click here to see some funny images.

"Airplane!" is often cited as many things -- one of the funniest movies of the '80s, a landmark in the spoof genre, the movie that launched the comedy career of the late Leslie Nielsen -- but it's not often recognized for its ability to foresee the future in oddly specific ways. For instance, we found ten ways that "Airplane!" predicted the current TSA regulations and subsequent outcry over its perceived invasion of civil liberties. Really! Take a look at its foretelling, and by all means, if you haven't seen "Airplane!" lately, do yourself a favor. And vote for your favorite prediction!



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/30/a...

HOUSTON -- Houston's red-light cameras were still operating on Wednesday, one day after voters gave the issue a red light in Proposition Three.

Fifty-three percent voted to turn off red-light cameras on Tuesday. The cameras document motorists who run red lights at 70 Houston intersections.

"This is over. The citizens have voted. They said take the cameras down," attorney Paul Kubosh said.

Kubosh led the fight against the cameras and he wants them turned off now.



http://www.click2houston.com/politics/2562...


It's gonna get hot in the city of Houston if these babies don't come down....

HOUSTON -- It may take longer to count the votes on Election Day, Harris County election officials warned Monday night.

It's been five years since ballots were delivered in locked boxes, and this year it will be a trip back in time after a massive fire destroyed the majority of the county's election equipment.

Paper ballots became a key part of a quick backup plan.

Sixty percent of the votes have already been cast and the early vote results will come just after the polls close at 7 p.m

http://www.khou.com/news/Paper-ballots-exp...

Some phone lines are down in the North part of town as well.


See also this story I posted last week about the poll workers already harassing voters


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...


Something is going on here in Houston. Anything happening like this in any other cities?

POSTED: Thursday, October 21, 2010
UPDATED: 6:16 pm CDT October 21, 2010

HOUSTON -- Federal monitors have been requested for Houston polling places after complaints of harassment earlier this week.

The county attorney and district attorney are investigating complaints that some poll watchers intimated voters.

At seven early voting sites on Monday, black and Hispanic voters complained that white poll watchers disrupted the voting.

Most of the poll watchers were allegedly trained by a conservative tea party group called the King Street Patriots.



http://www.click2houston.com/politics/2546...

at itself in the mirror.



talk amongst yourselves...

that you must have faith, and just believe he will be ok. That is all you can do because as you know, you feel downright helpless to do anything, no control at all... That was the hardest part for me, was letting go of the fact that I no longer controlled what happened to my son.

You will be happy to know he returned home in good shape after a year, and I know your boy will too.


I will be thinking of you and your family, let me know if you need a shoulder...


Shawnee

Rep. John Kline was among several members of Congress who signed a resolution praising the work of James O’Keefe, who was arrested Monday for using false pretenses to enter a federal office with intent of interfering with telephone lines. The October resolution praised O’Keefe’s undercover investigation of ACORN as “exemplary actions” and is states that he is “owed a debt of gratitude by the people of the United States.”

O’Keefe was arrested yesterday; authorities say he and another man aided and abetted two others in attempting to interfere with the phones at the offices of Sen. Mary Landrieu in New Orleans, a felony because it was on federal property.


Read resolution here

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.x...



http://minnesotaindependent.com/54557/klin...

I wonder how Rep John Kline is feeling today?

(CNN) -- Donna LeBlanc gave her husband, a former restaurant manager, the stark ultimatum: become a pizza delivery man or their family "wouldn't make it."

The Lafayette, Louisiana, family of six was struggling with $45,000 of mounting medical debt from Donna LeBlanc's unexpected case of pneumonia and tonsillitis a year earlier. The family savings account had dwindled to $100.

"It's embarrassing for my husband to take a job he is overqualified for, and I know he feels ashamed at times," says Donna LeBlanc, a 35-year-old mother with four children. "But this is what we have to do and we're going to make the best out of it."

She watched her husband, Rob LeBlanc, 35, load Domino's pizza boxes into their family car and deliver orders until near dawn for $10 an hour.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/personal/01...

Source: ABC News

Washington has quieted down. The president is hard at work. The Obama girls are back in school. The Jonas Brothers have left the White House.

But as the first family settles into its first weekend in their new home, an interruption in Sasha and Malia's privacy has already given them a taste of the new normal.

This week Michelle Obama's spokeswoman, Katie McCormick Lelyveld, explained how the first lady feels about new dolls on the market that share her daughters' names.

"We believe it is inappropriate to use young private citizens for marketing purposes," Lelyveld said in a statement.



Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/President44...

(Mental Floss) -- Work hard, get promoted, succeed in your new post, and eventually you'll start earning the big money. This progression seems like a firmly ingrained part of the American Dream, and it's certainly worked for a lot of people.

However, these steps aren't absolutely necessary to fatten your bank account, as Washington Mutual CEO Alan Fishman learned last week.

When WaMu failed and was seized by government regulators, Fishman had been on the job for just 17 days. However, he was contractually guaranteed $11.6 million in cash severance on top of the $7.5 million signing bonus he got for taking the job.

Basically, Fishman netted just under $20 million for 17 days of work, which is a pretty nice setup for the head of a collapsing corporation. (In Fishman's defense, it's tough to blame WaMu's failure on his leadership alone; it seems highly unlikely that any CEO, however determined, could crash such a large thrift in just two weeks.)

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/1...

Source: KTRK-TV Houston

GALVESTON, TX (KTRK) -- The death toll from Hurricane Ike has reached at least 27 in Texas. A body was found in a pile of debris in Chambers County. And hundreds of people are still unaccounted for in Galveston County and surrounding areas.

Gail Ettenger, Marion Arrambide, Ronald Auseberry and hundreds more are all linked by a common thread.

"We have about 400 active cases right now," said Bill Smither with the Laura Recovery Center.

Nearly 400 people are presumed missing 12 days after Hurricane Ike slammed on shore. Calls flooded a Galveston County missing persons hotline at the Laura Recovery Center. People are terrified a relative was lost in the storm.

Read more: http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=...

SMITH POINT, TX (KTRK) -- A grim reminder of Hurricane Ike is not only the property damage, but the tragic loss of life. More than 20 people are known to have died as a result of the storm.

And in Chambers County, investigators fear there could be more victims.
The county is full of debris-filled roads. At Smith Point, debris seemed to come from every direction.

"All the houses from Bolivar and Crystal Beach ended up here," said Chief Jay Prague with the Smith Point Fire Department. "We are cleaning the debris on the road coming into Smith Point, but the only access to the debris on the shoreline is by boat."

Chambers County Judge Jimmy Sylvia says the state brought in cadaver dogs and spent Sunday looking through rubble.


http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=...

Media restricted from covering Hurricane Ike’s devastation.


Yesterday in a local report on KTRK-TV in Houston, TX, reporter Wayne Dolcefino revealed that media have been blocked from covering Hurricane Ike’s devastation. In a press conference, Dolcefino pressed Gov. Rick Perry on why media aren’t even allowed to fly over parts of Galveston Island, noting that media access was far better in Mississippi and Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. Perry tried to brush off Dolcefino’s concerns, but eventually passed blame to federal officials:

DOLCEFINO: That is unprecedented and quite honestly not appropriate because it’s our job to inform people. Why can’t we go to Bolivar and West End?

PERRY: I think when the local officials decide it was appropriate, whether it’s the media or first responders or what have you. The fact of the matter, that is actually a local decision, Wayne, that is made by the local county judge and by the mayor of those —

DOLCEFINO: They don’t control that area.

PERRY: Last time, the state of Texas does not’t even.

DOLCEFINO: So it’s the federal government?

PERRY: I don’t know.



http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/15/hurric... /


I watched as all three local networks televised about this media blackout... The worst hit sections of Bolivar, Crystal, Gilcrest, High Island, Orange and others were being blacked out, not Galveston per se.... Since this storm hit us in Houston, I have had my local news turned on day and night... For two days it was a radio...

CHAMBERS COUNTY, Tex. — The rescue trucks and ambulances, neatly arranged in a double column, sat waiting at the point where State Highway 124, the road to the Bolivar Peninsula, disappeared underneath a storm-bloated ocean. Early Sunday afternoon, that was the closest the rescue workers could get to the string of little towns they had fled two days before as Hurricane Ike approached, leaving behind what they estimated were a few hundred holdouts


As they waited, stymied, for the waters to recede, their minds were occupied with visions of the worst. “There’s going to be substantial deaths,” said the emergency medical services coordinator for High Island, Robert Isaacks. “It looks pretty grim, to tell you the truth.”

He added, “The water’s slowly but surely going down now, but it’s not going down fast enough for us.”

The Bolivar Peninsula is a barrier island-like finger of land east of Galveston Island; between the two is the entrance to Galveston Bay. It is normally reached by ferry from Galveston or via the rice-farming country east of Galveston Bay, where on Sunday drowned cattle were half-buried in piles of debris along the gravel roads.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/us/15sce...

GALVESTON, Texas (AP) — The death toll from Hurricane Ike is remarkably low so far, considering that legions of people stayed behind as the storm obliterated row after row of homes along the Texas coast. But officials suspect there are more victims out there and say some might simply have been swept out to sea.

Exactly how many is anybody's guess, because authorities had no sure way to track those who defied evacuation orders. And the number of people reported missing after the storm, whose death toll stands at 17 in Texas, is fluctuating.

Search-and-rescue crews cleared out Wednesday after plucking survivors from Galveston and the devastated Bolivar Peninsula, and authorities are relying on Red Cross workers and beach patrols to run welfare checks on people named by anxious relatives.

"We don't know what's out there in the wilds," said Galveston County medical examiner Stephen Pustilniks. "Searchers weren't looking for bodies; they were looking for survivors."

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iGMMtnF...