Author: Brian J. Noggle

Andrew Sullivan psychoanalyzes voters in the middle of the country:

My own hunch is that these voters do not like a massive increase in government spending, a huge jump in public debt, and a post-war policy in Iraq that seemed blindsided by reality. But here’s my other belief, and it’s about Abu Ghraib. The images from that prison shamed America in deep and inchoate ways. Traditional conservative patriots in particular were appalled. The awful truth is that this president presided over one of the most damaging blows to American prestige and self-understanding in recent history. He may not have been directly responsible; but it was on his watch. And he ensured that no one high up in his administration took the fall for the horror. I think traditional patriots were saddened, shocked and horrified by the abuse and, to a lesser extent, the Bush administration’s self-protective response to it.

How can you doubt this man? His last hunch was that these very same people are over-represented in government and undertaxed.

In today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch, David Nicklaus defends Wal-Mart. Good to see someone with a proper capitalist attitude writing on the business page.

Sample:

Wal-Mart may be a danger to competitors or even to retail clerks’ unions. But it’s hard to imagine the retailer damaging an entire state.

Yet that’s the claim of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which last week listed Vermont among the nation’s 11 most endangered historic places. The threat, the National Trust’s news release said, is “an invasion of behemoth stores that could destroy much of what makes Vermont Vermont.”

Preservationists should stick to saving historic buildings and neighborhoods from the bulldozer and wrecking ball. When they try to keep one company out of an entire state, they’re really fomenting class warfare.

Not class warfare. They’re trying to foment a Marxist revolution.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports on a new initiative to curb cruisers: advertisements on the back of city buses which are meant to be seen by people driving in cars. That’s the kind of innovative thinking that would put abstinence-education information on condom wrappers, which someone somewhere surely thinks the government is not funding enough.

But speaking of cruising, a resident intones:

The common notion of cruising is “totally inconsistent,” with what really occurs, he said.

McNeely said the cruising he sees goes far beyond high school kids heading up and down Highway 100 on a Saturday night.

“You have the loud, loud music going. People getting in and out of cars. People riding down the street hanging out of the sunroofs, hanging out the windows,” McNeely said.

And it’s often lewd, he said, with cruisers stopping to urinate in yards, and young women flashing their breasts from passing cars.

“It’s likely they’ll be topless as well as bottomless with a thong on,” McNeely said.

What, loud music, obnoxiousness, and chasing members of the opposite/preferred sex? What is McNeely’s idea of cruising, riding along in a calaboose?

Kudos to KMOX radio for an on the scene report of a possible sighting of a potential person of alleged Middle Eastern complection today. I think it was Kevin Killeen, reporting live from Illinois, who filed this report, transcribed from memory and appropriately snarked-up:

I’m reporting live from <highway> and <highway> where several acres’ of petroleum storage facilities sit unguarded behind a chain link fence. This morning, witnesses saw an SUV parked by the side of the road taking pictures. Inside the SUV, a dark-complected man with dark hair and a woman sped off at a suspiciously high rate of speed when approached. Authorities are investigating.

That’s it, fellows. You get the gist of the report there. Something suspicious was reported, but nothing is known yet, but we’re going to broadcast it live to prove we have a news team here comprised of three people and a van. Also, we’re going to identify in great detail the location and how soft the target is. Back to you, Carole.

:: snort ::

Mark Steyn, from his Chicago Sun-Times column today:

But that’s the difference between then and now: the loss of proportion. They had victims galore back in 1863, but they weren’t a victim culture. They had a lot of crummy decisions and bureaucratic screwups worth re-examining, but they weren’t a nation that prioritized retroactive pseudo-legalistic self-flagellating vaudeville over all else. They had hellish setbacks but they didn’t lose sight of the forest in order to obsess week after week on one tiny twig of one weedy little tree.

What he said.