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Use It to Pick Up Your Inflatable Date
XP Vehicles announces the Whisper™, an inflatable electric car:
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 13 –XP Vehicles™ (http://www.xpcarteam.com) today announced that it’s Whisper™ electric car is being developed for online direct ship distribution at sub $5000.00 price-points.
A baffled pressure tube system (think Zodiac™ rubber boat) provides the actual supporting and protective structure of the vehicle. How safe is it? Recall that NASA recently threw tens of millions of dollars of ultra-sensitive electronics onto the surface of Mars from nearly a mile up and then bounced that same delicate gear for over a mile over boulders and everything worked flawlessly.
This was due to the instruments being shrouded in an already expanded inflatable housing that has served as the model for the Whisper™ body structure. Anyone looking at the warnings on their visor can be concerned about the dangers during airbag inflation so XP simply built a vehicle entirely out of next-generation, always inflated, safety airbags. The engineers for the Whisper are confident you can drive it off a 25-foot cliff without serious injury to its passengers. They claim this is the safest car ever designed for drivers, passengers and pedestrians.
Wheeeeeee!
Shakespearean Daily Diss
“The multiplying villainies of nature
do swarm upon him.” —Macbeth, 1.2.11-12
Lying About Endangered Species
There’s nothing the Bush Administration can’t screw up, and their screw-ups are always tilted in the corporatist/dominionist direction, and always involve information disappearing from public access. Today’s story of corruption involves a Bush appointee to the Department of the Interior:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday reversed seven rulings that denied endangered species increased protection, after an investigation found the actions were tainted by political pressure from a former senior Interior Department official.
In a letter to Rep. Nick Rahall, D-West Virginia., the agency acknowledged that the actions had been “inappropriately influenced” and that “revising the seven identified decisions is supported by scientific evidence and the proper legal standards.” The reversal affects the protection for species including the white-tailed prairie dog, the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse and the Canada lynx.
The rulings came under scrutiny last spring after an Interior Department inspector general concluded that agency scientists were being pressured to alter their findings on endangered species by Julie MacDonald, then a deputy assistant secretary overseeing the Fish and Wildlife Service.
MacDonald resigned her position last May.
Rahall in a statement said that MacDonald, who was a civil engineer, “should never have been allowed near the endangered species program.” He called MacDonald’s involvement in species protection cases over her three-year tenure as an example of “this administration’s penchant for torpedoing science.
They’re not competent to govern, but they love to rule.
The Ultimate Answer
Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani responded to yesterday’s news of his bogus expense reports with his usual blather:
Rudy Giuliani dismissed a report Wednesday that he expensed the cost of his security detail to obscure city offices for trips to a Long Island resort as the then-mayor began an extramarital affair with current wife Judith Nathan.
“First of all, it’s not true,” he said during a GOP debate hours after the story broke. “I had 24-hour security for the eight years that I was mayor. They followed me everyplace I went. It was because there were, you know, threats, threats that I don’t generally talk about. Some have become public recently; most of them haven’t.
You guessed it! It was 9/11 made him do it—those darned terrorists! At any rate, I think we are guaranteed weeks of entertainment as he attempts to deflect and deny.
Neither he nor his aides, however, offered an explanation for why the tens of thousands of dollars in costs, which they say were routine expenses for protection for the mayor, were billed to city offices like the Office for People With Disabilities.
Tony Carbonetti, Giuliani’s mayoral chief of staff and his top campaign political adviser, said he’s asked Joe Lhota, a former city budget director, ex-deputy mayor and a Giuliani campaign adviser, to explain how such accounting practices could have occurred and why security expenses were not billed to the police department…
American Express bills and travel documents…detail hotel, gas and other travel expenses for Giuliani’s New York Police Department security detail during 11 trips over three summers of visits to Southampton, the Long Island town where Nathan had a condominium.
Shakespearean Daily Diss
“Throw this slave upon the dunghill.” —King Lear, 3.7.95
Giuliani Over?
That’s an early prediction based on today’s revelation that Mayor Giuliani expensed trips to see his mistress (and future wife). It’s more than rumor, being based on documents obtained via a New York statute:
As New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani billed obscure city agencies for tens of thousands of dollars in security expenses amassed during the time when he was beginning an extramarital relationship with future wife Judith Nathan in the Hamptons, according to previously undisclosed government records.
The documents, obtained by Politico under New York’s Freedom of Information Law, show that the mayoral costs had nothing to do with the functions of the little-known city offices that defrayed his tabs, including agencies responsible for regulating loft apartments, aiding the disabled and providing lawyers for indigent defendants.
At the time, the mayor’s office refused to explain the accounting to city auditors, citing “security.” The Hamptons visits resulted in hotel, gas and other costs for Giuliani’s New York Police Department security detail.
The expenses first surfaced as Giuliani’s two terms as mayor of New York drew to a close in 2001, when a city auditor stumbled across something unusual: $34,000 worth of travel expenses buried in the accounts of the New York City Loft Board. When the city’s fiscal monitor asked for an explanation, Giuliani’s aides refused, citing “security,” said Jeff Simmons, a spokesman for the city comptroller.
But American Express bills and travel documents obtained by Politico suggest another reason City Hall may have considered the documents sensitive: They detail three summers of visits to Southampton, the Long Island town where Nathan had an apartment.
Auditors “were unable to verify that these expenses were for legitimate or necessary purposes,” City Comptroller William Thompson wrote of the expenses from fiscal year 2000, which covers parts of 1999 and 2000…
Not even a Republican will be allowed to get away with this, right? Or at least he won’t be running for president anymore?
Erased
If the Bush Administration has nothing to hide, why do they work so hard to hide it? Here’s the story of Scott Bloch, head of the Office of Special Counsel, responsible for protecting whistle-blowers in government:
Scott Bloch runs the Office of Special Counsel, an agency charged with protecting government whistleblowers and enforcing a ban on federal employees engaging in partisan political activity. Mr. Bloch’s agency is looking into whether Mr. Rove and other White House officials used government agencies to help re-elect Republicans in 2006.
At the same time, Mr. Bloch has himself been under investigation since 2005. At the direction of the White House, the federal Office of Personnel Management’s inspector general is looking into claims that Mr. Bloch improperly retaliated against employees and dismissed whistleblower cases without adequate examination…
Recently, investigators learned that Mr. Bloch erased all the files on his office personal computer late last year. They are now trying to determine whether the deletions were improper or part of a cover-up, lawyers close to the case said.
Bypassing his agency’s computer technicians, Mr. Bloch phoned 1-800-905-GEEKS for Geeks on Call, the mobile PC-help service. It dispatched a technician in one of its signature PT Cruiser wagons. In an interview, the 49-year-old former labor-law litigator from Lawrence, Kan., confirmed that he contacted Geeks on Call but said he was trying to eradicate a virus that had seized control of his computer…
Jeff Phelps, who runs Washington’s Geeks on Call franchise, declined to talk about specific clients, but said calls placed directly by government officials are unusual. He also said erasing a drive is an unusual virus treatment. “We don’t do a seven-level wipe for a virus,” he said.
Whatever he didn’t want us to find, we probably won’t find it now. TPM’s Paul Kiel comments:
The punchline to all this is that even if Bloch were a paragon of integrity, his investigations of administration wrongdoing would be nearly pointless. For instance, Bloch launched an investigation of General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan after she asked her fellow employees “How can we help our candidates?” The comments had come after a political briefing by Karl Rove’s aide. Bloch’s investigation concluded that Doan should be fired. But that was in June. Bloch made his recommendation to the White House, which has done nothing since. And as for Bloch’s wide-ranging probe of Karl Rove’s political briefings to federal officials throughout the government? Don’t count on any results. It’s enough to make a man cynical.
Shakespearean Daily Diss
“I am stifled with this smell of sin.” —King John, 4.3.113
Shakespearean Daily Diss
“He’s a tried and valiant soldier.”
“So is my horse.” —Julius Caesar, 4.1.28-29
