News Roundup

• From the "Twisting in the Wind" Department - The New York stock market took a nosedive today after the Fed gave a distinctly un-rosy picture of the economy and initiated Operation Twist.  That's a scheme where the Fed changes out short to medium term debt for long term debt.  I'm telling all of my friends to invest in canned goods and shotguns myself.  I'm also buying precious metals:  steel, lead, copper, and brass.
• From the "Not Raised Right" Department - An older couple in Italy is turning to the courts in an effort to get their 41 year old son to move out.  My strategy for this is to make my childrens' life as boring and miserable as I can when they're 16 and 17 so they'll hightail it out when they turn 18.  Good tools for this include playing my music when I get up at 5 AM and they're trying to sleep, health and welfare searches of their rooms for contraband at the slightest suspicion, and insisting that they do lots and lots of chores.  I'd hire them out to a dairy farm as a barn cleaner if I could find one around here that would take them.  My goal is to have one of them join the military and discover that their drill sergeant is more reasonable than I am.
• From the "Big Brass Ones" Department - A young lady leading a trail ride with several tourists in Montana saved the life of a young boy when she and her horse squared off against a 700+ pound grizzly bear.   Apparently the bear was chasing a deer when it confused the horse the boy was riding with its prey and ran after it.  The young lady gave chase and used her oversized mount to shield the boy and to face down the bear.  Did I mention that she had neither a gun nor bear spray when she did this?  My only question:  Where do we get more like her?
• From the "Chutzpah" Department - The Florida teacher who pled guilty to having sex with a 14 year old student in exchange for three years of house arrest and seven years of probation has asked to have her sentence reduced.  Let's see, as a 23 year old teacher, she molested a 14 year old boy, didn't spend a day in prison, got to go on with her life, and now wants even that extremely light sentence reduced because "she's a responsible adult".  Hey, lady, you were supposed to be a responsible adult when you were 23 and schtupping a pubescent boy.  How about you serve out your probation while you say a few prayers of thanks that you happened to have two X chromosomes and were cute so you didn't get sent to prison for 20 years?  Things like this make me wish we'd never gotten rid of dueling.  Put her in a cage with the kid's parents and a couple of trench knives and we'll see some justice.