Illinois Secedes

Well, Governor Rod Blagojevich won’t surrender his arms:

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich put the Pentagon on formal notice Monday that he will not approve its proposed move of F-16 fighter aircraft from the 183rd Fighter Wing in Springfield to Indiana.

In a letter sent to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the governor argued that under federal law if he does not consent to the realignment, the change can not legally be made.

What do you think it means?

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McClellan on Kelo

I often disagree with Bill McClellan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, but when he pans Kelo, who am I to argue? He says:

City Councilman Barry Greenberg was the only city official who attended the meeting. Good for him. On the other hand, it was awkward to see the relationship the people have with the councilman. They had to restrain their anger. He has the power to ruin them. He will be voting for or against the development plans.

I have a duty to look at these plans, he said solemnly.

Why? That’s what I wondered. Since when do local officials have the responsibility to decide whether to use eminent domain to let developers take away homes and businesses? By the way, ideologically, this seems to be an equal opportunity crime. It was the liberal wing of the U.S. Supreme Court that recently declared local governments have that right, but the mayor of Maplewood is a former radio executive who yanked the Dixie Chicks off his station when they criticized George W. Bush. It’s as if both sides of the political spectrum have come together to agree on one thing: Money rules.

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Suspect Taken Quietly; No Congratulatory Demonstrations

Family sets up murder suspect’s surrender:

Kevin Johnson, the suspect sought in the shooting death of a Kirkwood police sergeant, was arrested without incident in north St. Louis County on Friday afternoon, police said.

Johnson, 19, was the subject of an intense manhunt after Tuesday’s shooting of police Sgt. William McEntee. McEntee was responding to a call in Kirkwood’s Meacham Park neighborhood just before 8 p.m. when he was shot several times.

Johnson surrendered at the Ventura Village Apartments on Jacobi Drive and Nemnich Road, police said.

Northwoods Police Chief Greg Moore said Friday night a detective in his department received a call from one of Johnson’s family members just after 5 p.m. Friday.

Moore said Johnson “wanted to turn himself in without any fanfare and without being harmed.”

The detective who received the call and another officer drove to pick up the family member, then headed to Ventura Village Apartments, Moore said.

When they arrived, the relative directed them to an apartment near the back of the complex. Moore said another relative greeted them at the door.

Johnson was sitting on a couch in the apartment with his hands in front of him, Moore said.

Moore described Johnson’s demeanor as “humble and cooperative” as he was taken into custody.

Well, in an alternate universe, the one painted by racial agitators, the cops don’t need an excuse to kill a young black man, and when one is suspected of shooting a middle-aged white police man, the police will surround his hideout and kill him and some nearby blacks in a hail of retaliatory gunfire.

That didn’t happen in this situation; as a matter of fact, the aphrension of the suspect was smooth and without conflict. Perhaps we don’t live in the racial agitators’ alternate universe after all, but this possibility hasn’t inspired any marches.

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Smoking Now Abrogates Contractual Obligations

Jury finds heavy smoking to be grounds for eviction:

In a case that tobacco law specialists say is one of the first of its kind in the nation, a Boston Housing Court jury ruled that a South Boston couple could be evicted from their rented water-view loft for heavy smoking, even though smoking was allowed in their lease.

The landlord who rented the Sleeper Street unit to Erin Carey and Ted Baar ordered them out within a week last November, after neighbors complained of the smoke odors filtering into their apartments.

Carey and Baar, who each smoke about a pack a day and run an information technology sales business out of the one-bedroom unit, fought the eviction, arguing in court that the converted warehouse’s shoddy construction and aging ventilation system were to blame for the wayward odors.

Last Friday, a jury ruled in favor of the landlord and the eviction. Even though the landlord could have written a nonsmoking clause into the lease and didn’t, the jury found that the couple’s heavy smoking violated a more general clause banning ”any nuisance; any offensive noise, odor or fumes; or any hazard to health.”

Beware the word any within your contracts.

Of course, this is not so much a smoker’s rights issue as an issue for all of us. Within any of the standard contracts that govern our rights–from the terms of use for our Web hosts, to the service contracts for ISPs or cellular phones, and into the terms of our leases or mortgages, any number of the clauses are written to make the big corporation with the shrewd attorneys and uninformed, gloss-overish salespeople who only want you to sign the standard contract so they can get their commissions. Those corporations won’t renegotiate the finer points with you because you, individual customer, are not worth the trouble.

But when someone wants to cut you out, revoke your lease, or foreclose upon you, they rely upon these nebulous things within the contract stacked against you to do so.

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This Must Be On A Loop

  1. Bombing in Western country by Moslems kills innocent Westerners.
  2. Moslems worry, loudly and publicly, about backlash.

    Arab newspapers urged Britain on Friday not to turn against Arabs and Muslims after bloody bomb attacks in London blamed on al Qaeda Islamist militants.

    While all editorials condemned the onslaught, some linked it to Britain’s part in the Iraq invasion or its backing for a U.S.-declared “war on terror,” which, they said, ignores the injustice of occupation fueling militancy in the Middle East.

    The Friday prayer preacher in Tehran said Britain, which has said Thursday’s attacks bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda, should remember that Osama bin Laden’s group was a U.S. creation.

    Beirut’s English-language Daily Star predicted that Muslims would suffer more discrimination after the carnage in London.

Everyone remember the mosque bombings after 9/11, or the internment? No, me either. So rest assured, Islam, that we in the West can even control our radical outliers in response to the slights and subtle injustice of carnage and thousands of dead innocent bystanders while the majority of the Islam watches silently and probably roots for the radicals in your culture who have, if not your overt support, at least your overt rationalization.

“In spite of the fact that all acts of ‘Islamic’ terrorism blatantly contradict Islamic teachings, such acts serve to further distort the image of Muslims and Islam,” it said.

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Word Problem

If John is as dumb as a sack of hammers, and if Mary is as dumb as a three-quarters-full sack of hammers, who is smarter?

Arithematically, we might express it this way:

JohnIQ = 1s(h)
MaryIQ = .75s(h)

So on the surface, it would look obvious that John is smarter than Mary, but this assumes that the intelligence factor of multiple hammers is measurable in a number greater than 1. However, if each individual hammer actually reduces intelligence, that is, each individual hammer’s contribution to overall intelligence actually detracts from overall intelligence, in which case Mary, by having her intelligence diminished by a smaller number of hammers in the sack, would have the higher intelligence.

Man, I should have taken more, that is to say “any,” mathematics in college. However, as I do hold a degree in English, I can identify quickly within the word problem the patriarchy’s obvious oppression of Mary, wherein she’s only worth three quarters of the hammers of an equivalent male. This realization provides me with enough indignation to determine that to answer this word problem is to support the capitalists that hold Mary down. Also, I need to determine whether the hammers within the sack represent the proletariat and whether, by keeping them in the sack, both John and Mary (Biblical names–ergo Christians) are actually oppressors, but that’s another word problem of its own….

UPDATE: For my gentle European and Canadian readers working on this problem, I’d like to point out that 1 sack of hammers (SoH) is equal to 2.54 boxes of rocks (BoR), the metric measurement.

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Mohair Supply Also In Jeopardy

London attacks fuel debate over U.S. transit security:

Debate erupted Thursday over federal funding for U.S. mass transit security after four bombs in London ripped through several commuter subway trains and one bus, killing at least 37 people and injuring hundreds more.

So heavily-subsidized, under-used transportation concerns (Amtrak, metro rail programs, and so on) need more subsidies to handle their security. Which should be a standard feature of the service or a risk assumed by the consumer, I would expect.

I suppose the alternative is providing an unimpeachable and unavoidable extension of the TSA to cover these public/private companies. No word on when the Federal government will begin providing additional security for restaurants, shops, and other soft targets, but it will probably follow the realization that these groups can band together to lobby to push off another cost of business onto the taxpayer.

(Link seen on Law, Terrorism and Homeland Security.)

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Dark Day

Evan Hunter, who wrote Ed McBain detective series, dies at 78:

Evan Hunter, who wrote the Ed McBain 87th Precinct detective series as well as novels including “The Blackboard Jungle,” died of cancer of the larynx, his agent said. He was 78.

The world is somewhat darker without the possibility of a new 87th Precinct novel. However, with a backlist of over 50 books, we have plenty of good reading to revisit.

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Please Don’t Feed the Moonbats

AP reports on the London bomb attacks:

British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before Thursday’s explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said.

Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had planned to attend an economic conference in a hotel over the subway stop where one of the blasts occurred, and the warning prompted him to stay in his hotel room instead, government officials said.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said he wasn’t aware of any Israeli casualties.

Israeli warnings spared Jew lives. Where have we heard that before?

UPDATES:

  • Power Line guesses correctly!
  • Michelle Malkin thinks the record will be corrected. Forget it, once AP ran the story, it became the truth forever to be covered up by, well, facts.

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Book Report: Naked Prey by John Sandford (2003)

This book represents the third of the Lucas Davenport series that I inherited from my aunt. It’s the second book following Chosen Prey, so certain personal situations within Davenport’s life have resolved themselves. Not really to the detriment of this particular item in the series, as they really only provide characterization and background in this book instead of Important Life Decisions which the main character must face.

Lucas Davenport now works for the state of Minnesota (crap, I ruined it for the single reader who’s made it this far into the review). He’s got fewer of the previously-developed characters within the Minneapolis police department to prop him up, but a richer supporting cast of temporary (but perhaps recurring) characters to help him out.

The plot deals with a northwestern Minnesota car theft/drug dealing ring exposed when small-time members decide to kidnap and kill children for ransom. Well, they only kidnap for ransom and then kill, but the whole thing comes crashing down when a murderous Republican comes to town and inadvertently destroys the compassionate drug-reimportation smuggling ring run by some Catholics with conscience.

Aside from the laughable political aside and the other implications, the book makes a quick read. I like the Minnesota winter as a character slightly more than the millionaire political appointee detective main character, but Sandford makes the book compelling enough to read if it falls into your hands.

“Do you want to buy more in the series?” my beautiful wife asked. “Not for more than $1 a book,” I replied. So there you have it. A good set of stock novels set in the upper Midwest, but in a Democrat stronghold (which the books remind you).

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Starting a Rumor

Hey, did you hear that Roger Waters and Dave Gilmour were seen going into King’s Rood Studios outside of London on Monday?

Me either, but since this is the Internet, it might be true. If true is a synonym for “made up on the spot.”

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Spam of the Day

opt-in broadcast email advertising is a completely legal method of
reaching millions of people with your message instantly…

is your business or organization utilizing broadcast email advertising
to reach millions of people a day for free…?

Funny, I didn’t opt in for that….

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Wisconsin Lottery Discriminates Against The Poor, Journal-Sentinel Imagines

Apparently, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel wants to paint that picture. Poor get poorer in lottery land: Higher-poverty areas win less:

Nearly one-third of all state lottery tickets sold in southeastern Wisconsin last year were sold in poor neighborhoods, and players in these areas hoping to strike it rich have not seen as many big payoffs as the rest of the region, a Journal Sentinel analysis shows.

Longtime lottery player Tim Butler, who lives on Milwaukee’s west side, didn’t need to see the numbers to know that he and his neighbors are not exactly reaping big rewards from their investment in lottery tickets.

“I have never won any decent amount of money with tickets I bought in the inner city,” said Butler, a Milwaukee County bus driver, shortly after returning home with another $20 worth of Pick 3 and Pick 4 tickets.

He said in the seven years he has been buying lottery tickets – usually several every day – his biggest prize has been $500 won in the Super Cash game with a ticket, he makes a point of noting, that he purchased on the city’s south side.

By far the worst abuse of statistics to support a cracked hypothesis that I have seen in my lifetime.

Shame on the Journal-Sentinel. Analysis?

(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)

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Disextinction

Scientists flip over new dolphin:

A NEW, dinkum, species of dolphin has been found living in the crystal waters of the Great Barrier Reef.

The Australian snubfin dolphin, or orcaella heinsohni, was originally believed to be the Irrawaddy dolphin, found in coastal waters and rivers in Asia and northern Australia.

But James Cook University Townsville marine researcher Isabel Beasley said yesterday investigations carried out in collaboration with Dr Peter Arnold from the Museum of Tropical Queensland revealed enough differences to identify the mammal as a new species.

When species die out, the environmentalists blame humans. So do we get credit for new species?

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