Patterico's Pontifications

6/2/2019

Headlines from the States

Filed under: General — DRJ @ 1:20 pm



[Headlines from DRJ]

ColoradoColorado’s Jared Polis, nation’s 1st gay governor, signs bill banning conversion therapy for minors:

Democratic Gov. Jared Polis put pen to paper on two bills dealing with LGBT rights, including the conversion therapy bill and another allowing transgender and intersex individuals to update the gender on their birth certificate without needing proof of surgery by a court order or a legal name change.

VirginiaVirginia Beach gunman gave 2 weeks notice Friday but was in ‘good standing’ in his job:

The longtime Virginia Beach public works employee behind the nation’s latest mass shooting put in his two-weeks notice on Friday morning, hours before he carried out an attack that killed 12 and wounded four, city officials said Sunday.

Virginia Beach city manager Dave Hansen said the shooter’s job performance was “satisfactory,” did not face any disciplinary measures before he notified the city that he intended to quit and he was not fired.

UPDATE: LINK NO LONGER WORKS. Try this one: Gunman emailed resignation hours before killing 12 people in Virginia Beach’s deadliest shooting

Texas: Texas governor signs law banning red-light traffic cameras, plus
More Texas: In September, Texas plumbers will go unlicensed and unregulated.

And finally,

FloridaAggressive, 11-foot alligator busts through window of Clearwater home:

A woman delivering the newspaper heard the sound of breaking glass at about 4 a.m. and called 911. Police responded, and took pictures.

You really should click the last link and look at the photos.

— DRJ

14 Responses to “Headlines from the States”

  1. When the next mass grade school shooting occurs watch out gunners.

    lany (aa5ce8)

  2. That last picture on the gator link really gets the message across.

    And for some reason made me think of toy poodles.

    Kevin M (21ca15)

  3. big boss burke, getting indicted didn’t matter, nor the reopening of the Gillum matter?

    narciso (d1f714)

  4. In September, Texas plumbers will go unlicensed and unregulated…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a97J7j84gWY

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  5. Unregulated plumbers? Does that mean they don’t have to conform to any building codes? Or know what they are?

    Kevin M (21ca15)

  6. Gator country takes a special individual to survive.
    Regulated or unregulated?
    fill er up with regulated, please.
    and if you don’t mind can you check the tires?

    mg (8cbc69)

  7. I assume it means that plumbers will no longer be licensed but they and the property owner will still have to comply with any local building codes/permits. I guess we’ll see.

    DRJ (15874d)

  8. Oh, you can be an unlicensed plumber in Chicago. But you won’t get the big jobs. You can install things up to the wall and rod out pipes already inside the wall, but you won’t be laying pipe. And on that point, does Texas distinguish between plumbers and pipefitters?

    nk (dbc370)

  9. Aw, of course, we are just invading on the gator’s territory. He was just defending himself and his babies or… and his…well, mating instincs! Otherwise he would have been a really nice guy. And humans are bad. Or something.

    Patricia (3363ec)

  10. Don’t let anybody tell you size doesn’t matter. People who will mulch any number of garden fauna with their riding mower every Saturday afternoon, and set traps and poison for mice and rats, will go gaga over a gator breaking into their kitchen or a raccoon being shooed off a boat.

    nk (dbc370)

  11. A soup-to-nuts Medicare supplement plan from Blue Cross for a 65yo current smoker costs less than $200/month. Yet the district pays an average of $7100. This doesn’t seem all that efficient. I guess they cover things that no one else does, like dental implants. What a racket.

    Kevin M (21ca15)

  12. #12 wrong post. Sorry.

    Kevin M (21ca15)

  13. That’s a pretty big alligator. At 11 feet, weighing around 1000 lbs., with a gaping mouth that can exert a bite force of over 2100 psi, it would be scary to have something like that break into your house. Look at him thrash around in the video. Extremely dangerous, especially if cornered or trapped in a foreign environment, that alligator will kill you quick. Swipe your legs out from under you with its powerful tail, and chomp! You’re gator food. Yeah, there was a story just like that a couple of years ago. This poor old woman was sitting on the porch of her lakeside house, just drinking tea and enjoying the view, when an alligator leapt out of the water and ate her right out of her rocking chair. Florida gators, they’re scary.

    You know what’s even more scary? South Texas alligator gars. They’re akin to inland barracudas, so named because their mouths resemble alligators’, and they grow pretty big too, swimming in lakes, rivers, estuaries, and the gulf. Ambush predators, they lurk below the surface waiting for prey– mostly fish, water fowl and mammals–to swim nearby, then strike, bite and spin. An alligator gar can take a circular pound of flesh from your side in seconds. There are horror stories of attacks on humans, but none of them have ever been confirmed. Although I have no doubt that a human, happily swimming in a lake or river, could be attacked and killed, that’s not what makes alligator gars scary.

    It was a lazy weekend in the summer of 1977, when I got together with a group of my friends for a slow ride. We packed a cooler of beer and climbed into a pickup truck–two in the cab, six in the bed–then drove way out into the country and cruised at about 5 mph down a dirt road, alongside a wide tributary canal. Hey, there wasn’t much else to do, besides it beat watching television.

    So, there we were, just a couple of country boys, drinking beer, taking a slow ride on a dirt road by a canal. Suddenly, this one guy jumped up and said, “Hot damn, look at the size of that fish!” We looked, and there was this humongous alligator gar swimming down the canal. This was a monster fish, it had to be at least 16-feet long. No, seriously, this was a gargantuan gar. And this crazy cowboy climbed out of the back of the truck and jumped into the canal on the back of this monster. (He was a bull rider, and those guys have to be crazy, but this? This was insane. Gargantuan gar riding?) Are you freaking kidding me?

    Holy Sh!t, stop the truck! Stop the truck! And the rest of us got out and watched in abject fear while this cowboy rode that giant fish. “That thing will kill you! You’re going to die!” we kept shouting. Yet somehow, someway, unbelievably, he wrestled it to shore. “Lookee what I caught, boys,” he said.

    Incredible, really. Terrified before, somewhat relieved after, we were like, okay, what are you going to do with it? It won’t fit in the back of the truck. Finally, we agreed to leave him with his giant gar, drive back to town and call for help.

    He made the front page of the newspaper. Yep, above the fold, there was a picture of him smiling and holding up a gargantuan alligator gar. Now, that was a headline.

    True story. The only reason I can think of as to why that fish is not recorded as the largest alligator gar ever found is because the McAllen Monitor had limited circulation at the time.

    Gawain's Ghost (b25cd1)


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