The Glass is Half Full (but it has a fly in it)

Congratulations to Sgt. Earl Titman, Lt. Rich Hill and Sgt. Dave Bettin on your retirements from the police department and thank you for your combined 85 years of service to the residents of Novato. I hope that you are able to leave all the stress of a police job behind and have a peaceful and happy retirement.

Kyto, the police dog will also be retiring. Kyto is 9 years old — 63 in human years — and wants to take advantage of early retirement Social Security benefits before they raise the retirement age to 11 ...

In startling news out of Washington today, the administration admitted that although the War on Drugs has been a colossal failure, the problem was not one of strategy and execution, but rather a grammatical error. Apparently, calling it a War "On" Drugs led countless law enforcement agencies to believe that shipments of marijuana, cocaine and heroin were arming themselves with the guns that Americans kept selling them. A keen eye in the Obama White House pointed out that we should actually be focusing our attention on growers, distributors and dealers of drugs. Visitors to Richard Nixon's grave-site reported hearing a deep, jowly voice say, "Oops. My bad."...

In a related story, OSHA has issued new safety standards for meth factories in an attempt to keep people from regularly blowing themselves up. ...

President Obama today addressed a joint session of Congress announcing that he has come up with a plan to solve our economic, employment and infrastructural problems in one fell swoop. "America currently has over 1,000 military bases on foreign soil. Today, by executive order, I have authorized each country where the United States has bases to build an equivalent number of bases here, with the same amount of buildings as we have in their countries. Fair is fair. We have over 200,000 buildings on our foreign military bases, so they'll get to have over 200,000 here as well. That means jobs. We have nearly two billion square feet of structures to erect and a proud American workforce waiting to build them. Each of the countries will be responsible for the costs of building and maintaining their bases, as well as the surrounding infrastructure to support them. Add to that all the budiness needed to support the base — that means even more jobs. Plus, this will drive up the value of real estate all over the place."...

In related news, the White House press secretary confirmed that Haliburton and (the company formerly known as) Blackwater will not be allowed to bid on this work because they are, after all, "You know, evil." ...

In legal news: Motel Six is suing Team Six for trademark infringement, claiming that Team Six purposely, "Left the Light On." Tom Bodette could not be reached for comment. ...

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Walmart's favor today in Walmart's fight against a class action suit brought by more than 1,000,000 female employees claiming discrimination in hiring, promotion and pay. As part of their opinion the justices stated, "How can we possibly be qualified to rule on this case? We wouldn't be caught dead in a Walmart."...

In California, a three-year study by a federal judge and a law professor has shown that California could save $184 million each year by not executing inmates. ...

Warden Antoinette, complaining about prison food bills proclaimed, "Let them eat cake." ...

John McCain has retracted earlier comments in which he blamed the massive forest fire in northeast Arizona on illegal immigrants, after the State Forest Service said it had absolutely no evidence to support McCain's claims. McCain did not directly apologize for his comments, but merely said, "Hey, this is Arizona. Blaming immigrants for everything — that's just how we roll." ...

McCain also expressed his relief and happiness at not being elected president in 2008, noting that anyone who expected Obama to fix in 2 1/2 years what Bush and both parties in Congress spent eight years screwing up needs to have their head examined. ...