eh_notsomuch

Glimpsed as a comment on Arlen Specter's Facebook page:

obama is not going to kill your grandparents. the current system is killing your grandparents and my parents. i just recently found out that my step-mother has not been taking her cholestrol and high blood pressure medication because she can't afford it. she is 72...so what's wrong here?

Found via my subscription to This is True. I can't even believe this really happened.

Single mom in Ontario, Canada, drops off her 11-year-old autistic daughter at school. School calls her and asks her to come back right away. Frightened, she returns.

She is informed that they believe her daughter has been sexually abused. What's the evidence?

"The teacher looked and me and said: 'We have to tell you something. The educational assistant who works with Victoria went to see a psychic last night, and the psychic asked the educational assistant at that particular time if she works with a little girl by the name of "V." And she said 'yes, I do.' And she said, 'well, you need to know that that child is being sexually abused by a man between the ages of 23 and 26.'"

People, I shit you not.

..."But things got worse when school officials used the "evidence" and accepted the completely unsubstantiated word of the seer by reporting the case to Children's Aid, which promptly opened a file on the family.

"They reported me to Children's Aid," Leduc declares, still disbelieving. "Based on a psychic!"...

...under the Child and Family Services Act, anyone who works with children and has reasonable grounds to suspect a youngster is being harmed, must report it immediately - and the CAS has an obligation to follow up.

And so a case worker came to the Leduc home to discuss the allegations of sexual misconduct, only to admit there wasn't a shred of evidence that anything had ever happened at all. They labelled Leduc a "diligent" mother doing the best she could for her child under difficult circumstances, closed the file and left, calling the report "ridiculous."

"It is highly unusual, I will admit, to have a case called in based upon what a psychic might say," concedes Sue Dale of the Simcoe County CAS.

Look, I'm certainly not in favor of child abusers going free. And if you suspect someone is hurting a child, you should say something.

But to actually sic Child Services on a woman because of a psychic?

This teacher's assistant should not be anywhere near children. Ever again.

Wow. Just, wow. From UPI:

PORTSMOUTH, England, July 10 (UPI) -- A British man who bragged about his
benefit fraud scheme to a newspaper could face jail time after pleading guilty to the crime.

Barry Marsh, a builder, has been collecting weekly benefits after claiming a "bad back" prevented him from working, The Daily Mail reported Tuesday.

However, he told a newspaper after a vehicle he was traveling in overturned that he had been visiting a Turkey resort on vacation for seven years. The article was seen by staff at his local job center and a fraud inquiry was executed.

"Throughout the course of the search there were quite clear indications he was living a lifestyle well above the levels he could afford," government benefit fraud investigator Steve Cox told The Daily Mail.

"Benefit fraud is stealing from someone in need. Marsh was a man with a lot of money in his bank account yet he'd been stealing from people who needed that money."

Marsh pleaded guilty to the $63,000 benefit fraud scheme. He is to be sentenced next week.

Wow. If you had been getting away with something like that for 7 years, why would you tell a newspaper about it??? Not saying I'm in favor of welfare fraud, mind you.

From WSJ.com's Law Blog:

Manhattan federal judge Denny Chin yesterday dismissed a lawsuit brought by a Florida man against the company behind the Atkins diet, reports BusinessWeek.com.

Jody Gorran went on the low-carb Atkins diet in 2001. He says he ate mainly pastrami and cheesecake. His cholesterol spiked to 230 from 146 and in the fall of 2003 he underwent an angioplasty, according to the lawsuit.

Wrote Judge Chin: “Pastrami and cheesecake — large amounts of which Gorran admittedly consumed — may present risks, but these are risks of which consumers are aware.”

OK, not having read any Atkins books, I still feel I can go out on a limb and say that pastrami and cheesecake are probably not mainstays of their plan. Also, I'd like to know if this guy actually lost weight eating this crap everyday? Which, if not, should have been a clue that perhaps the "diet" wasn't working.

And as The Ferrett has pointed out before:( trimmed (hurr) for length )
So was the defendant in this case doing the real book version, or the "eat what you want as long as you don't eat fruit or cereal" version?

I can't find my iPod.

You know, the brand spanking new one I bought only a month ago to replace the one I stupidly left on the plane coming back from our honeymoon?

Yeah, can't find it. I definitely had it in my car last night, because I was listening to the Engadget podcast on it. I thought I had plugged it into my PC to get updated last night or this morning, but it wasn't there. Hubby and I searched for it as much as time allowed this morning. He thought he'd seen it just last night too.

It baffles me how I can be so smart about some things, and so frigging stupid about others.