Did he think I don’t own a computer?

So NewMexiKen and Donna are driving down the street the other day and we see an ‘03 Honda S2000 roadster in the front of a dealer lot. I continue on down the street, think what the heck, make a U-turn and we go back to check it out. I’ve had my eye on this particular model since 2001 — considered one then but took a pass because dealers were getting several thousand more than the MSRP.

The sales consultant wanders out and tells me $18,995 for this particular vehicle, which appears very clean. One owner he tells me.  Traded it in because his wife was pregnant and the car would be too small with a child.

I’m interested but it’s hot, and besides I know better than to act too interested. I’ll come by next week, I say.

Guess what? The car is listed online by the dealer for $1,000 LESS THAN THAT and has had three owners in its five years (in three states) according to CarFax. Not good.

(Even before she knew the car’s biography and actual price, Donna told me she’d offer just $15,995 for the vehicle. I am hiring Donna to negotiate all my major purchases. And “major purchase” for NewMexiKen is anything over ten bucks.)

Update: Donna called the sales manager late this afternoon. He acknowledged two prices and two (but not three) owners. She said he didn’t seem to care all that much that we had been interested in the car, but now wouldn’t trust them enough to buy Cinderella’s used pumpkin.

Don’t eat the peppers

In its latest update on the Salmonella outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control today confirmed that the investigation has uncovered a second suspect: jalapeños.

“The accumulated data from all investigations indicate that jalapeño peppers caused some illnesses but that they do not explain all illnesses,” the agency said in a statement. Tomatoes, however, remained under investigation along with serrano peppers and fresh cilantro.

The Lede

John, NewMexiKen’s official younger brother, became very ill while visiting Albuquerque several weeks back. He now thinks his may have been one of the early cases of Salmonella. He didn’t get medical attention and recovered nicely, but it wasn’t pretty for a couple of days.

“[S]tay away from fresh salsa, guacamole and pico de gallo if [you] wish to reduce the risk of infection, says the CDC.

You’d think this was from The Onion, but it’s real

Take the case of two Dallas County commissioners. One of them commented that so much paperwork had been lost in an office that it had become a “black hole”.

Another commissioner took great offense at this, and said it was more like a “white hole”. Then a judge demanded that the first commissioner apologize for his “racially insensitive” remark.

Bad Astronomy Blog

Why do they still keep calling him Senator?

98 senators voted on the Dodd-Feingold-Leahy amendment today that would have taken telecom immunity for past warrant-less wiretaps out of the FISA bill.

Two senators did not vote.

1. Ted Kennedy, recuperating from brain surgery
2. John McCain

Senators Obama and Clinton voted for the amendment, along with 30 others.  66 voted against.

Update: Actually McCain was the only senator absent all day today.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts walked triumphantly into the Senate on Wednesday for the first time since learning that he had brain cancer, hoping to provide Democrats with the crucial, single vote that they need to reverse a cut in Medicare reimbursements to doctors.

The Caucus

Update 2: Here are the 28 U.S. senators who took their oath to defend the Constitution seriously and voted against the bill itself.

Akaka, Biden, Bingaman, Boxer, Brown, Byrd, Cantwell, Cardin, Clinton, Dodd, Dorgan, Durbin, Feingold, Harkin, Kerry, Klobuchar, Lautenburg, Leahy, Levin, Menendez, Murray, Reed, Reid, Sanders, Schumer, Stabenow, Tester, Wyden.

Thank you Senator Bingaman.

How many things can you find wrong with this paragraph?

“I just don’t drive as much,” said Herman Heaton, a 72-year-old retired lumber mill worker, leaning against a Chevy Silverado pickup that now costs him $80 to fill up. “We don’t go to Mobile as much as we used to for shopping.” Heaton said he now spends about $600 a month on gas, about 10 percent of his income and about double what he spent last year.

The above from an MSNBC story.

A retired lumber mill worker in Alabama has an income of $72,000 a year?

He’s buying, roughly, 150 gallons of gas a month? Even figuring just 10 miles a gallon, what’s a retired 72-year-old doing driving 18,000 miles a year?

He says he “just don’t drive as much,” but he also is said to be spending double on gas when gas has gone up just 33%.

Best line of the day, so far

“I still do not have a computer, but having resisted an iPod as long as I could, I have now succumbed. On my iPod at the moment I have nothing but Bach, but I have all of Bach …”

Oliver Sacks, who turns 75 today. He has the entire 157-CD Bach set on his iPod.

Sacks has recently resumed piano lessons after a 60-year break.

Close call

English and American troops under British Major General Edward Braddock were routed by French and Indian forces near Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh) on this date in 1755. The leading colonial officer, George Washington, had two horses shot out from under him, his coat torn by bullets and his hat shot off, but — as you may have heard — he survived.

Get Your War On

Click cartoon strip for larger version or here for more Get Your War On.

A disgrace, all right

Hey, NewMexiKen was just phoning it in and I still had the McCain Social Security disgrace at 11:23 AM yesterday!

The big time bloggers like Paul Krugman, Hullabaloo, and Talking Points Memo are just catching up.

McCain = Bush = Offensive

A 61-year-old librarian was ticketed (her court date is July 23rd), escorted off a public plaza outside a McCain town hall meeting, and threatened with arrest for carrying a sign that read “McCain=Bush.”   (Hey, it’s a free country – you ought to be able to be arrested for anything, so long as it’s not hurting other people, right?) 
 
You really have to watch the two-minute video.  I love what she asks at the end:  “Why is [the sign] offensive? Why would Republicans who voted for Bush find it offensive?”
 
I suppose it would be gilding the lily to note that when the grotesquely unchristian Reverend Phelps holds up signs reading “God Hates Fags” outside funeral services, he is not ticketed, forced to leave, or threatened with arrest.  (Nor, in America, should he be.)

Andrew Tobias

This took place in Denver.

Correction

A front-page picture caption on June 26 describing an 11-month-old boy whose legs were in casts stated that his legs were broken and that his mother said the injuries were caused by an episode of state-sponsored violence in Zimbabwe. After the picture and an accompanying article that also described the injuries were published, The New York Times took the boy to a medical clinic in Harare for help. When the casts were removed, medical workers there discovered the boy had club feet. Doctors said on Monday that X-rays of the baby’s legs showed no evidence of bone fractures.

The mother subsequently admitted that she had exaggerated injuries she said had been sustained by the boy during an attack by governing party militia. …

Corrections - NYTimes.com has a bit more.

Best line about McCain today, so far

“McCain doesn’t want to talk about his time as a POW. Except in his ads. And speeches. And debates. And interviews. And at fundraisers, meetings, lunch, in his sleep and in the middle of saying he doesn’t want to talk about it”

FARK.com

Losers

The liberal blogosphere was aflame today with new accusations that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) is trying to win the 2008 presidential election.

Suspicions about Sen. Obama’s true motives have been building over the past few weeks, but not until today have the bloggers called him out for betraying the Democratic Party’s losing tradition.

The Borowitz Report .com

Hoops