Author: Brian J. Noggle

A co-worker complains about threats made by another:

A 54-year-old doctor at St. Anthony’s Medical Center was arrested after being accused of threatening people during preparation for surgery by allegedly saying he would shoot up the hospital, police said.

Luckily, the SWAT team swooped in and got him before he could get his arsenal from his Lexus:

The doctor allegedly made the threat April 11 and it was reported to police April 23, officials said.

An almost two week lag time before the arrest? It sounds like someone got cheesed off later at the doctor and called the buttons on him.

There’s probably more to the story than the paper lets on, but each of these ill-described incidents leads me to believe that the police might come for me someday on some wisecrack gone awry.

St. Louis Magazine has a in-depth look at the Kirkwood City Council shootings this month with insight that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s coverage sadly lacked.

It looks like the online version has three additional parts not found in the print magazine, too, which means I have further reading to do.

Robert J. Samuelson, economic columnist for the Washington Post, usually offers sensible advice on economics. However, in this column about oil prices, he proffers the following dangerous aside:

(And yes, we need a gradually rising fuel tax to create a strong market for more-efficient vehicles.)

You know, I find it terribly inconsistent that so many people who lament the high price of gas are the same people who, only a couple short years or months ago, were clamoring for a high fuel tax to alter people’s behavior are now up in arms about the market-dictated rising prices of fuel. Just think where the price of gas would be if the East Coast “Conservatives” had had their way.

The behavior we alter with any new revenue stream is the government’s: it spends the money, and when the citizen behavior is effectively altered, the government will have to come up with alternative behaviors to modify or raise general revenue streams. We know that the only painful cuts the government tends to make are slower increases in spending.

Which is why I’m surprised at Samuelson’s advice here, coming as it is in the middle of a column on high fuel prices.

(Link seen on Instapundit.)

Headline: Texas polygamist kids abused, officials say. Evidence offered in the brief story?

Commissioner Carey Cockerell, who oversees the state agency now caring for the children, said medical examinations have revealed numerous physical injuries, including broken bones in “very young children.”

How many hundreds of kids did they take to find “numerous physical injuries” including broken bones in “very young children”?

Nearly 500.

Go to any elementary school. If you see a cast, that child has been abused, right?

St. Charles art center seeks more city aid:

A former industrial site that has become a hub for the local arts scene and a popular event venue is seeking more city money to plug a budget gap.

One would ask how popular it is, then, if it cannot sustain itself. Very popular, no doubt; ask anyone who’s there or who runs it.

Best quote of the day, though, for its galling honesty:

“The obvious thing is to go to your daddy” before seeking additional private money, said Dick Sacks, who heads the foundry’s board.

Who’s your daddy?

Kudos to the Metropolitan Mass Transit Boondoggle Association for getting a bill reduced $95,000:

A consulting firm that worked on Metro’s failed lawsuit against MetroLink designers has agreed to knock $94,617 off its final bill after the agency questioned some travel expenses and other charges.

Too bad the ill-conceived bucket was so big as to make this win negligible:

Metro, formally known as the Bi-State Development Agency, spent more than $21 million on its three-year legal battle against the original designers and construction managers of the Shrewsbury MetroLink line. But after a three-month trial, a St. Louis County jury ruled in favor of the defendants, who had counter-sued.

Metro later reached a $6 million settlement with the contractors — bringing the agency’s total trial cost to $27 million.

With enough judicious budgeting like this, the whole thing will take an extra 30 minutes to go bankrupt.

CNN Radio reported about an automobile accident in remote Arizona that killed and injured a large number of people jammed into a truck. Just people, the radio announcer said. A special kind of people, my mind inferred. This AP article alludes to what special people they might be:

A pickup truck jammed with people has crashed in remote central Arizona. Four people are dead and nearly 30 are injured.

Authorities are investigating the immigration status of those involved in the Sunday morning rollover crash.

Funny that the Public Health aspect of illegal immigration is never discussed. That public money is spent on chasing down and treating people suffering from exposure or dehydration crossing in the desert or in treating people hurt in accidents where large numbers of them are crammed into trucks or whatnot.

Spurious and scurrilous laws are passed with larger impact to protect far smaller sample sizes of citizens. How about taking illegal immigration seriously and enforcing the laws or erecting the walls in the name of public safety?

Hah! Just kidding. People who do illegal things will do them regardless of how more illegal you make them; it’s always easier to layer on more control upon the law abiding than to bring the existing criminals to heel. See also all gun control attempts.

You remember the last time the media got hopped up on a shark frenzy? Summer 2001.

Now it’s an election year, and maybe I’m just on a hair trigger for my normal paranoia, but when I start hearing about the sharks ramping up their attacks, I’m suddenly worried about what effect a mass casualty attack would have on American soil right before the elections.

The truthers taking to the streets claiming Bush did it to stay in power, and maybe Bush even tries a Guiliani “I need to stay in power a little longer to handle it” attempt, and suddenly….

Well, use your fetid imagination if you’ve got one.

When someone wants to offer arguments on a political subject, how does the St. Louis Post-Dispatch highlight his reasoning? Hah! Trick question. It doesn’t; it highlights how he looks! The headline: A boy-next-door is fighting affirmative action. The lead:

Tim Asher sat calmly and appeared unfazed moments before he was to address a roomful of Latino leaders, some of whom were likely to be hostile to his message — that Missouri should end affirmative action programs based on race and gender.

In the last couple of months, Asher, 45, has become accustomed to speaking before skeptical crowds like this one at Hispanic Day at the Capitol.

Asher, with his boy-next-door looks, has become the face of the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative.

Well, played, Post-Dispatch journalist and editor, well, played.

Content of his character and/or intellect? Nah, that might be too convincing; let’s diminish him by calling him a pretty boy.

An anonymous commenter proffers an informed argument that pitbulls and their owners are genetically defective and should be euthanized in a comment to this three year-old post.

You meet the nicest people as the result of Google search results, don’t you?

Another blog supports the thesis from my Suburban Journals column from yesterday: Some Things Are Still Cheap:

Once in a while at work I am taken aback at how cheap some things are. I find myself on occasion wondering how a certain item could be made in China, shipped over here, marked up, then marked up by me and still cost what is a relative pittance.

I have always been amazed at how cheaply you could eat if you needed to. I am not talking about USDA prime cuts here. If you were down and totally out and needed to resort to cheap food just to sustain, you can get by on just a few bucks a day. Mac and cheese is .59. A loaf of bread is still under a buck. Fruit and veggies are still relatively cheap compared to other foods.

(Link seen on Instapundit.)