Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Family losing home because of seven-cent mistake:

A Michigan family is losing its home because it underpaid the mortgage by 7 cents in January, a legal aid group says.

The statement is presented as straight fact in the lead. However:

Rooks said [redacted] of Deckerville, in the Thumb, inadvertently underpaid their mortgage because a postal clerk issued a money order for $440 rather than $440.07. The couple didn’t catch the mistake and they were four weeks late making February’s payment of $690.07. She said they had been late before.

Though the Bergers caught up by mid-April, Rooks said, Countrywide Financial and its new owner, Bank of America, rejected the couple’s payments. Bank of America countered that it and earlier loan servicers bent over backward to accommodate [redacted], who has been repeatedly delinquent since purchasing the modest four-bedroom frame bungalow for $38,650 in 1997. It said [redacted] rejected a reasonable offer last week to get reinstated.

Those allegations by the people who know and who own the paper mean nothing; the paper and its wire service have their hook and story. It was the seven cents, and that illustrates how capricious and darewesay evil companies are. Only the benevolent government and its press corps can save the people.

Man wins a gunfight with a knife:

Normally you lose when you bring a knife to a gunfight, but not Ramiro Silva.
. . . .
The gunman stuffed the shotgun into a bag and ran into the woods and Mr. Silva grabbed his machete, a fearsome looking blade, and went in after him.
. . . .
Silva wacked the suspect with the sword, using the face not the blade.

Knife, machete, sword…. All the same to the kids writing news these days.

I suppose we should just be glad that it wasn’t called an assault blade.

Two disparate headlines indicating that state-run health care does death better than health:

• Health plan covers assisted suicide but not new cancer treatment
• Gov’t insurance would allow coverage for abortion

Dying is cost-effective when you’re just a number in parentheses on the government ledger.

So, if you’re a reporter, is every single discharge of a firearm “gunning down” now?

A 51-year-old man who gunned down at least three squirrels from inside his home near N. Teutonia and W. Custer avenues Sunday surrendered to officers after the Milwaukee Police Department’s tactical squad was called to the scene.

When I was a young man, this was called feeding your poor family.

I wonder why the reporters didn’t bother calling the .22 an assault weapon.

The Post Office’s budget is falling short, so it responds appropriately: It threatens to close a pile of local offices.

Browsing the list, it looks like they would close pretty much all of the nearby ones. That should save a pile of money. Maybe not.

About 1,750 people work for the Postal Service in the St. Louis area. Hughes said the closings would not entail layoffs.

Probably not.

I get it, though. I’m supposed to get into high dudgeon that they’re going to close my local post offices and contact my Congressman to provide additional subsidy.

You know what? They’re not closing the local FedEx Kinko’s. So I will pass, and I’ll insist that my vendors and friends and family will ship that way so I don’t have to drive downtown to pick up packages.

‘Lost’ painting by Titian reclaims place in history

Disabled kids put ‘do’ in tae kwon do

Is this editor ignorant of martial arts, or is he or she saying the disabled children put the D’oh! in Tae kwon do? Because that isn’t pronounced like the verb do.

I’m going to start working “Is that oak?” into normal conversations with normal people.

BECAUSE I AM NOT NORMAL!

Call him, respectfully, Mr. West.

Nothing gets an academic hotter than being confused with a competitor in his field of study, I reckon.

Driver tells Conn. police snakes led to SUV crash:

Police say a driver blamed a car crash in Hartford, Conn., on two pet baby snakes that he said escaped from his pants pockets as he was driving.

Fortunately, no one aside from the driver was injured, so I don’t feel as ghoulish when I laugh.

A former Marine defends his camping children from a bear:

The ex-Marine saved the lives of his three young sons when a 300-pound bear attacked their Georgia campsite last weekend.

While cleaning up after dinner, the family came face to face with the large animal.

“From out of nowhere we heard this loud crash,” Everhart said on “Good Morning America.” “For a second, I didn’t know what it was, but I realized it was a bear. I went to the back of the Jeep to get my pots and pans to scare the bear off.”

At the same time, Everhart’s 6-year-old son, Logan, tried to frighten the animal. Instead of running away, the bear turned on the boy. Logan’s brother, Kyle, tried to help him.

“I threw about five rocks at the bear to keep him away,” Kyle Everhart said.

Realizing his sons could be killed, Everhart grabbed a log and threw it at the bear’s head, striking and killing him.

Gall as big as church bells.

On the other hand, you have to do what you have to do.

The patient:

On October 2, 1996, at age 25, Armstrong was diagnosed with nonseminomatous testicular cancer. The cancer had spread to his lungs, abdomen and brain.

The treatment regimen:

The standard chemotherapeutic regimen is BEP (Bleomycin, Etoposide and Cisplatin (or Platinol). Armstrong, however, chose an alternative, VIP (Etoposide, Ifosfamide, and Cisplatin), to avoid the lung toxicity associated with the drug Bleomycin. Armstrong had surgery on his brain tumors, which were necrotic, and an orchiectomy to remove his diseased testicle. After his surgery his doctor admitted that he had had less than a 50% survival chance.

I wonder if a government health program would have been so flexible.

Or would Lance Armstrong have received a couple of prescriptions for pain pills and the affected bureaucratic sympathy in a form letter?

Instapundit comments on the Amazon Kindle revoking license to books:

The underlying issue here is that Amazon, among many others, see the rules for digital as different than those for other things. It would never have crossed Amazon’s collective mind to grab a physical book from you if the company had shipped you one that it did not have the right to sell.

I imagined the scenario if they had when Will Collier got his Harry Potter book early:

With no disrespect meant to J. K. Rowling’s innumerable devotees, I’m not a particularly big Harry Potter fan. But I’d read two or three of the early books, and being as susceptible as the next guy to the hype for the last book in the series, I placed an order a few weeks ago at DeepDiscount.com, the store that was offering the lowest price. Ironically, I didn’t even spring for expedited shipping.

The first thing I thought upon seeing the book was, “Boy, somebody screwed up.” Hallows is famously scheduled for release at midnight on July 21, more than four days after my copy arrived.

That would have ended very differently if booksellers did go to take back ill-gotten books with the ABA Black Ops team.

Conservative merchandise not available for sale at Concord Mills mall in North Carolina:

“Impeach Obama.”

“Al Qaeda’s favorite days: 9/11/01 and 11/04/08.”

“Work Harder. Obama needs the money.”

The bumper stickers and posters sold at “Free Market Warrior” at Concord Mills are meant to be “biting,” the kiosk’s owner Loren Spivack said.

At least one passer-by found them racist and bigoted, and took time to tell the mall in a letter and a letter to the editor of the Charlotte Observer.

Whatever your opinion, the fact is this: At the end of July, “Free Market Warrior” will not be allowed at Concord Mills Mall. The kiosk chain’s owner shared e-mail correspondence with Newschannel 36 that explains that the mall management has decided that the items sold are not “neutral” enough. The lease will be allowed to expire July 31, 2009 without an option to renew.

Meanwhile, Che shirts are probably still on sale at several of the trendy shops along with campaign merchandise from the current administration.

No word on whether the B. Dalton’s will have to remove Atlas Shrugged and The Road to Serfdom because they’re not neutral enough.

HR 3200, Health Care Reform.

Claire McCaskill’s office responds to protestors reprehensibly:

McCaskill’s office manager locked the doors, pull down the blinds, called the cops and forced the protesters across the street.

Senator McCaskill explains:

There was only one male staffer at the office on Friday, and I knew he wouldn’t do that. He is an Iraq veteran, who handles almost all of our case work for our veterans. He is soft spoken and hard working and just not the type to lose his cool.

Mystery solved. Our office only occupies the first floor, and a marketing and advertising firm has the office space above us on the second floor. They acknowledged that one of the men that works in their offices made the gesture and they closed their blinds.(On the first floor our blinds are always closed). It’s confusing because the signage makes it look like we occupy both floors.

However, previously, she said:

On Friday, our office was short staffed(four were attending community events and meeting with people in the St Louis area), and the protestors were frustrated with our inability to meet with them when they arrived. They began banging on windows and doors and ringing the buzzer, so that the two staffers in the office could not focus on the phones, that were ringing constantly. They asked the police to help calm the situation, and when one of our staff got back to the office at around noon she met with representatives of the group, and we have scheduled another meeting with the group.

Claire McCaskill and her staffers seems to have a bit of trouble accounting for the number of workers in the office at the time. And that’s a small office. Now, project that to the entirety of the Federal government. I think it’s a good instance of how management skills scale.

(Link courtesy of Instapundit.)

The White House is holding an economic report behind its back so you don’t see it.

How’s that stabilization working?

Last night, a photograph apparently depicted President Obama looking at a woman’s back side.

This morning, Good Morning America is on the case, giving an alternative explanation and mocking the French President to much laughter in the newsroom.

A question, good friends, is how often did the media throw its newsgathering apparatachiks into gear to provide context for an unflattering George W. Bush or John McCain photo? I believe that answer is and ever shall be Never.

The media continues to beclown itself with its haste to correct and contextualize anything unflattering about Obama I.

Now Congress has legislation in the pipeline to give the Attorney General the ability to identify and intern terrorists on his say-so.

Funny, they told me the Republicans wanted this sort of power. But Alcee Hastings is not a Republican.

The Constitution of the United States, Article 2, section 1:

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

The Obama administration:

With the clock running out on a new US-Russian arms treaty before the previous Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, expires on December 5, a senior White House official said Sunday said that the difficulty of the task might mean temporarily bypassing the Senate’s constitutional role in ratifying treaties by enforcing certain aspects of a new deal on an executive levels and a “provisional basis” until the Senate ratifies the treaty.

“The most ideal situation would be to finish it in time that it could be submitted to the Senate so that it can be ratified,” said White House Coordinator for Weapons of Mass Destruction, Security and Arms Control Gary Samore. “If we’re not able to do that, we’ll have to look at arrangements to continue some of the inspection provisions, keep them enforced in a provisional basis, while the Senate considers the treaty.”

Samore said administration lawyers are exploring the “different options that are available. One option is that both sides could agree to continue the inspections by executive agreement; that would work on our side. On the Russian side, as I understand it, that would require Duma approval.”

So, do you think our legislative branch of government will stop this power-grab by the executive branch? Aw, hell, no. That’s just one more actual responsibility removed from their plate so they can convene show hearings, pontificate, and abdicate their Constitutional duties for easy busy work.

(Link seen on Instapundit.)