Internet punsters are celebrating Megan Barnes as Florida’s “Pubic Enemy,” others are chattering about her “razor sharp focus.”
The 37-year-old Barnes catapulted to instant fame for an alleged multi-tasking mash-up that earned the bottle-blonde’s mug shot a spot on hundreds of Web sites.
According to a startled Florida Highway Patrol trooper, Barnes was shaving her bikini area while driving south on the famed Overseas Highway when she crashed into the rear of an SUV March 2.
In the police report obtained by ABC News, the trim job was apparently essential because the arresting officer, trooper Gary Dunick, said the Indiana native told him she was heading to Key West visit her boyfriend.
“She said she was meeting her boyfriend in Key West and wanted to be ready for the visit,” Dunick told the Key West Citizen.
It gets weirder. In order to pay full attention to her sensitive regions, police say Barnes enlisted her ex-husband, Charles Judy, who was riding shotgun, to hold the wheel.
Yes, her ex-husband.
Much more information at the link.
sukabi
Careful Adam… Tramping all over Betty’s territory…
Mike J
Weird. John Cole quoting Trump on Twitter, twitter asks if I want to translate from Estonian.
Omnes Omnibus
I can’t even.
NotMax
Honest mistake, misreading public highways as pubic highways?
In other news, you just know the quality and selection will suffer.
End of a tool era: Sears sells Craftsman to Stanley Black & Decker
Adam L Silverman
@Mike J: According to Gary Kasparov and his assistant, if you want to know what the President-elect is going to tweet just pay attention to English language Russian news media 24 hours prior.
https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/817184126121943041
hovercraft
So is it the air in Floridah or what, this woman is from Penceville and yet she’s behaving like a local? That is some serious “still friends” relationship they have there. What was he going to do when they got to Key West? Was he going to wait in the other room while they got busy?
dexwood
Read Carl Hiaasen’s Razor Girl in which one of the characters engages in this practice to aide her kidnapping activities for the mafia. Hiaasen said he got the idea for her MO from a news story about a Florida woman who was doing the same thing when pulled over for a traffic violation.
Mnemosyne
I realize this marks me as some kind of sooper jenius in Florida, but she didn’t tell her ex-husband to drive while she shaved because … ?
(Actually, I’ll bet he lost his license because of too many DUIs. Any takers?)
Anyone but Trump
@dexwood: I just read that book, and it’s the first thing I thought of when I started reading this thread. I love his books…
SiubhanDuinne
You do realize that this story is from March 2010, right? Before the PPACA was even signed into law. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s a great story, but not exactly breaking news, even of Florida.
//
NotMax
Maybe a bit of kind’a, sort’a related easy listening?
dexwood
2010? That could be the incident Hiaasen referred to.
OSweetMrMath
Am I a spoilsport if I point out the story is from 2010? It’s still fun, though.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Anyone but Trump: me too, and I just realized I never picked up Razor Girl. I took a look at Hiassen’s website and I see he finally devoted a whole book to Skink!
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s why there isn’t a Breaking News in the title.
Major Major Major Major
“Guess which state” is always such an easy game. The answer is always Florida.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Major Major Major Major: Jonathan Chait has tried to make “Ohio Man” a thing, because he went to Michigan.
Dog Dawg Damn
James Woolsey press release everyone is noting is worded oddly.
https://twitter.com/leahmcelrath/status/817162303426756608
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: Unless it involves beer/brandy, cheese, and snow, then it is WI.
Adam L Silverman
@Dog Dawg Damn: DCI Woolsey is an odd fellow.
Major Major Major Major
@Dog Dawg Damn: That’s not that weird, is it?
Mnemosyne
So I saw a production of The King and I for the first time last night and really enjoyed it. I think it’s probably been slightly retooled since the 1950s (or it was directly differently), because Anna’s uptight Victorianism comes across as just as strange and foreign as anything the Asian characters do. It probably helps that all of the Asian characters are now played by actual Asian-American actors, not white actors in yellowface.
Interesting trivia: Anna Leonowens, the woman whose story the play was based on, was herself of mixed European and Asian (Indian) heritage, something she went to great lengths to conceal during her lifetime. Casting a part-Asian actress in that part could be an interesting experiment — maybe Phillippa Soo could give it a shot once she’s done with the stage version of Amelie?
Smiling Mortician
@dexwood: Life imitating art imitating life. Imitating art.
Suzan
@dexwood:
Gawd, I hope so. Hate to think there are two of them.
Dog Dawg Damn
@Major Major Major Major: I don’t know. Everyone is reading tea leaves and entrails at this point.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: His defection is a signal to those in the Intel Community that worked for him/started under him that its okay to get out. DNI Clapper’s remarks today, DCI Hayden’s tactful remarks on various networks, even GEN (ret) Dempsey’s tweet in support of IC personnel – both analysts and opps – are all warning shots. They are warnings to the incoming Administration not to pick this fight. They are warnings to the GOP majorities in both chambers of Congress about who does the unseen, uncredited, dangerous work that no one knows about when it goes right (most of the time) and who aren’t acknowledged (no purple hearts, no public memorials, no names on “In Memoriam” plaques), except to receive blame, when things go wrong. And a warning to the men and women in the IC that their leaders, past and present, know what they do, appreciate them, and that they should do what they need to to protect themselves.
While it may have looked like the three senior IC leaders were restrained today at the SASC hearing, if you know anything about them, or about leadership within the IC, they were furious. DNI Clapper’s remarks about getting out as much info as possible in the unclassified report for public release was one sign of that.
Mary G
@dexwood@Anyone but Trump: I just finished listening to the audiobook too! Love Carl Hiassen.
NotMax
@Adam L.Silverman
In many ways he has always struck me as a throwback to the Henry Stimson school of spookery.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: so… what’s weird about the wording?
Mary G
@Adam L Silverman: Is the “overhaul of the intelligence community” really just getting rid of the enemies of Mike Flynn, whose judgment is always right?
amk
shouldn’t this come with the usual ‘don’t try this at home’ warning?
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: I only know he went in whole hog for a lot of the most out there, conspiracist, and extreme paint with the broadest brush possible anti-Islam stuff possible post 9-11. That’s what I meant by odd. As DCI he seemed okay.
Omnes Omnibus
@amk: No. Those of us smart enough not to try it are fine. The rest are likely Trump voters.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: I think @Dog Dawg Damn: was referring to this bit
as weirdly worded.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: I just don’t see what’s weird about it. So I assume I’m missing something.
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: I have no real idea. I saw the WSJ article last night. I saw the different walk backs by Spicer and other transition officials this morning. LTG Flynn has been arguing for over five years that the IC needs to be reconfigured in terms of how we collect information, where we collect, who collects it and where, how we analyze it, etc. I intend to go back and reread his CNAS report where he lays out a lot of his reform arguments and then I’ll be able to post on it. I haven’t looked at it since it came out. Though I did write a response at the time:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/01/18/the-flynn-report-v-how-to-feed-the-beast/
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Major Major Major Major:
It can be seen as oddly specific. The usual cliché would be simply “I wish them the best” or “I wish them all success in the future,” etc.
Adam L Silverman
@amk: I did start the post with “Don’t do this!”
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: I think the “their time in office” seemed to be somewhat of a strange way to express sentiments for an effective and successful administration. Sort of sounded ominous like the time in office would be limited or shortened. It might just be a sort of strange way of stating something completely innocuous.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: Ahh.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: I think that’s what @Dog Dawg Damn: was getting at. To be honest, only DCI Woolsey knows what DCI Woolsey really meant.
rachel
…for those of you who don’t feel you know more than you wanted to about these people already.
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: I got that impression too. I can’t imagine anyone choosing “their time in office” instead of “wish them all the best” or “wishing the new administration great success” or something more general unless they want to send some kind of message about the “time” part. As in, it could be limited.
I hate that I’m already doing the Kremlinology analysis stuff. We shouldn’t be in the position of feeling like we have to do that to have any understanding of what the people who work for us are doing.
Dog Dawg Damn
@Adam L Silverman: Yes, and also limited to success in office. Not wishing any more success than is absolutely necessary to be polite.
Typical Trump sycophant sign-off is: “I wish him all the success as he Makes America Great Again!”
I mean, gotta compare and contrast a bit.
Yarrow
This tweet is from hours ago, so it’s hardly “breaking” anymore, but it’s still interesting.
rachel
@Major Major Major Major: If the story is dumb and weird, it’s Florida; but if it’s dumb and mean, odds are it’s from Texas.
amk
@Adam L Silverman: my bad.
Adam L Silverman
@amk: Didn’t want you to think we were asleep at the switch!
Dog Dawg Damn
@Yarrow: Am I right in thinking this is the biggest shitshow of a transition anyone can remember? (I can only remember back to Obama)
Another Scott
I just heard a teaser that
BerWilmer is going to be on NPR’s Morning Edition in the morning to tell us that Team D lost (even though they had 2.8M more votes) because they’re the “party of Wall Street” and “addicted to big money”.The man has no awareness of who Donnie is appointing to his Administration, apparently. He still thinks his speech from April 2015 is just as good today, I guess…
(sigh)
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
(“Can I get a refund of my very early donation?”)
Yarrow
@Dog Dawg Damn: I can’t think of a bigger shitshow of a transition. I think Clinton to W. was probably kind of a mess because the election decision dragged on so long. But not a mess like this. And Twitter wasn’t a thing and even if it was, W. probably wouldn’t have tweeted his narcissistic comments all day throughout the transition. I’ve never heard of a president-elect going on a ‘victory tour.’ The horrors just continue to mount.
Mnemosyne
@Another Scott:
Well, that can’t be true, because I had people on this very website telling me today that we had to let go of being angry about Wilmer’s campaign and come together to let bygones be bygones. Could it be that those people don’t realize that Wilmer himself is one of the people who refuses to STFU and stop re-litigating the primary?
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne: Has he been calling out the Russian hacking? If no, why not? One wonders….
Anyone but Trump
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Skink, best character of all time!
Dog Dawg Damn
@Yarrow: Tin Foil Hat time, but on Twitter, he’ll tweet some “We Need a Minimum Wage” shit right after some Russia bombshell drops.
Tad Davine has a direct link to Manafort in Ukraine, correct? Anyway, it’s all very bizarre. I don’t want NON-PARTY-MEMBERS to run *in either party*.
This whole year has seemed like a coordinated attack with two major non-party-member candidates disrupting each party’s process.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Has anybody heard anything about this? Seems incoming President Trump (and I’m writing “President Trump” because I’m trying to get used to it) owes $315,000,000 to about 150 companies. This is the Wall Street Journal the link links to, but I don’t have a subscription, so I can’t read the article itself. Maybe somebody here has seen it and can shed a little more light on the whole mess?
Anyway, all in all, I’d say we’re in for a rough ride over the next four years, and I’m not talking about Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, I’m talking more about Mr. Toad’s Fucked-Up Crack Deal.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: Be nice if he joined the party. That one little part REALLY sticks in my craw and makes me not want to listen to a damn thing he has to say about it.
Mnemosyne
@Yarrow:
I’ve been told that it couldn’t possibly be because of Tad Devine’s strong connections to Russia. There must be another, totally unrelated reason, just like all the other totally unrelated connections to Russia in this election, amirite?
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Tax returns would shine light on both of these…
Mnemosyne
@Dog Dawg Damn:
The metaphor I’ve been using is that Putin is the guy who goes to the racetrack, bets every which way on every horse, and manages to hit the Perfecta just by the sheer number of bets that he placed.
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Have you ridden Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride at Disneyland lately? Spoiler alert: at the end of the ride — inside Disneyland — you end up in a fiery hell with demons poking pitchforks at you. Not. Making. This. Up.
NotMax
@ Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Some more info here.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
this woman always struck me as being a bit off, I never thought she’d confirm that so spectacularly
Another Scott
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I thought the total was ~ $1.5B including minority interests?
Donnie being in hock to the banks and conflicts of interest has been out there for a long time, we’re just getting more details now.
Mother Jones from September:
I believe that Donnie bought out another investor at the Old Post Office and the additional money came from DB. So, of the ~$200M for the project, Donnie put up ~ $30M and DB loans are the rest. (The link has been posted here before.)
No conflicts there, no sir.
(groucho-roll-eyes.gif)
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
cckids
From top:
Jesus Christ in a sidecar, how much more info can there possibly be?
Major Major Major Major
@cckids: Only one way to find out…
Dog Dawg Damn
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think at this point, people are really underestimating how dangerous Donald Trump’s behavior is.
By signal-boosting Assange and praising him over our intel, he’s exposing himself to liability down the road.
This is so incredibly obvious, of course, that I can’t believe no one has told him this. Assange has leaked on both prior administrations, and he’s not a Trump fan, so much as an anti-USA guy.
The short-sightedness of how he’s handling this is revealing. If he handles other crises like this, we’re in for a big fucking.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
One weird trick to read WSJ articles!
Take the article’s headline—”Trump’s Debts Are Widely Held on Wall Street, Creating New Potential Conflicts”—and search for it verbatim in Google. One of the top links should be to the story itself on the WSJ site, and if you click on that you can read the whole article.
Dog Dawg Damn
I’m also really annoyed with his surrogates constantly saying 8 years, 8 years, 8 years.
I find that deeply disrespectful. Should be 4 years, and if American public allows us privilege, 8. But acting like this razor thin margin guarantees him 8 years is spitting in our face.
Mai.naem.mobile
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: how much more unflattering can you get than “their bitch.” “Their whoring bitch”, gay slur with whoring bitch, gay slur whoring mf’r bitch. The latter slurs don’t really make sense because it makes Putin sound bad too.
Major Major Major Major
@Mai.naem.mobile: Some things are worse insults because of culture-specific things, not just more-or-less-universal procreation-based insults.
NotoriousJRT
@efgoldman:
Florida, the repository of distilled US Cray Cray.
Mai.naem.mobile
I don’t understand why Obama’s people gave the exact time of the hacking presser or presentation whatever it’s going to be on Monday at 2pm. Isnt that a heads up to Lumpy to tweet another shiny object at say 1230 pm? I would have announced it for 2pm but done it at 10AM.
ThresherK (tablet)
@Steeplejack (phone): I hear that “Publishers hate it!”
Transition team? I am old enough and Dem enough to remember when Bill Clinton’s was being made into a punchline on Murphy Brown. That’s when I knew that show was junk for satire.
Major Major Major Major
@Steeplejack (phone): @ThresherK (tablet): or just don’t read WSJ articles.
Mary G
@Mnemosyne: It’s been like since at least 1959, where it terrified me on my first visit.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mary G: Yeah, I’ve not been to Disneyland in about 20 years and I always thought it was like that.
(And I return to lurking to learn everything I wanted to learn about Lightroom and was afraid to ask).
Kathleen
@Another Scott: Peter Daou said on Twitter that Wilmer supposedly praised Trump for penalizing companies who planned to move operations to foreign countries. I don’t have link and I block Wilmer so I can’t confirm if or what he said.
Kathleen
@Mnemosyne: Still wonder if Wilmer & Co’s hacking of DNC was related to Russia’s hacking.
Aleta
@Another Scott: From April 2016, Buzzfeed:
Aleta
@Aleta: Two other notes to that:
Another Scott
@Aleta: Thanks for these posts.
The Old Post Office really is an iconic property (it’s the only building in DC taller than the Capitol). It would be fitting if it ended up being Donnie’s downfall (just like his inflated perceptions led him to vastly overplaying for the Plaza in NYC)…
The GSA can’t let go of this – they have to make him follow the rules, no matter who he picks to head it.
Cheers,
Scott.
pluky
@Major Major Major Major: The “in their time in office” was superfluous, with strong undertones of it might not be as long as they think it will. Snark concealing a threat.