Author: Brian J. Noggle

If my home state needs me, I will serve in the invasion of Illinois. That is, if Wisconsin and Chicago have a war over water, my side is clear.

And just in case you wonder, I would have had to come down on the side of Kilbourntown in Milwaukee’s Bridge War because I’m from the northwest side.

Supervisors vote to require neutering of pit bulls, mixes:

San Francisco supervisors unanimously approved a set of ordinances Tuesday requiring the neutering or spaying of an estimated 7,000 pit bull terriers and pit bull mixes in the city.

The legislation, sponsored by Supervisor Bevan Dufty, also will set new restrictions on the breeding of pit bulls, requiring breeders to obtain a permit from the city. People found violating the requirement to have their dog neutered or spayed could be fined up to $1,000.

One must wonder if this particular law means all currently endowed male dogs must be disenfrankcized. One suspects, given how much respect San Francisco has for other tenets of the United States Constitution, that legal protections like ex post facto don’t apply there either.

Maybe None: Is having a child — even one — environmentally destructive?:

Knight is the founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, an informal network of people dedicated to phasing out the human race in the interest of the health of the Earth. Knight, whose convictions led him to get a vasectomy in the 1970s, when he was 25, believes that the human race is inherently dangerous to the planet and inevitably creates an unsustainable situation.

“As long as there’s one breeding couple,” he says cheerfully, “we’re in danger of being right back here again. Wherever humans live, not much else lives. It isn’t that we’re evil and want to kill everything — it’s just how we live.”

Knight’s position might sound extreme at first blush, but there’s an undeniable logic to it: Human activities — from development to travel, from farming to just turning on the lights at night — are damaging the biosphere. More people means more damage. So if fewer people means less destruction, wouldn’t no people at all be the best solution for the planet?

One could apply Knight’s sound–but hardly valid–logic to all of life itself, since every herbivore on the planet eats weeds and damages their life cycles, and every damn weed on the plant sucks nitrogen out of the soil and changes the environment.

Why stop at living processes? Why, rain erodes landmasses! Solar flares irradiate uninhabited planets! Novae char!

The only solution is to embrace nullity!

Anything less is inconsistency.

McCain: Pentagon spending ‘unsustainable’:

Republican Sen. John McCain Tuesday said the massive Pentagon budget for the war in Iraq can’t be sustained because of the need to replace weapons.

“We have unsustainable defense spending,” said McCain, a chief proponent of military acquisition reform. “Refurbishment or replacement sooner than planned is putting further pressure on DOD’s investment accounts. We cannot sustain the number of weapons programs that are in the program of record.”

However, Medicare spending and a new drug benefit are different. Whereas each dollar spent on a bullet or a bomb gets used up when that bomb or bullet is used up, each dollar of health tax dollars extends the life of someone who will need another dollar of tax dollars tomorrow.

The more they succeed, the more they cost. Unlike wars.

Talent’s amendment could save Boeing C-17:

Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., on Wednesday introduced a $7 billion amendment to a defense spending bill, aiming to keep open the St. Louis production line for Boeing’s C-17 transport plane.

Pentagon officials recently alerted Congress of their plan to stop buying the plane.

The amendment by Talent authorizes the Air Force to buy up to 42 C-17s in the next few years. It also calls on the military to keep the line open until the need for more “lift” aircraft to deploy and sustain forces abroad is assessed.

Gee, I wish my wife would authorize me to continue spending money until we determined whether or not I really needed to.

Next time I am voting for the Libertarian.

As every other election today was some sort of referendum on how the public perceives Bush, this one must be no different:

Today is the last chance for White Settlement residents to vote on a charter change to rename the city West Settlement, a controversial proposal that has drawn nationwide attention.

How is it a referendum on the president’s aggressive strategy of fomenting regime improvement in the Middle East?

1. It takes place in Texas.
2. It’s about progressives changing a name from White something to avoid offending tender sensibilities.

If the name changes, undoubtedly it heralds a return to Democrat super-majority in Congress and the impeachment of everyone in the line of succession who is not a Democrat. Cue the happy music!