Category: News

We watched a bit of the RNC last night, hoping to catch Donald Trump’s talk, and I couldn’t help note that the entertainers who took the stage were all old. I mean, my boys didn’t even know who Hulk Hogan was (“He’s our generation’s John Cena,” I said, but he’s more likely between John Cena and The Rock. I told them I watched the cartoon in the 1980s.

And Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” is forty years old this year.

I remember seeing him perform that song at Savvis Center in the St. Louis Blues home opener in 2001, the first game since the attacks (somehow I managed to be at Busch Stadium when it reopened in 2001, but all we got was Jack Buck reading a poem). That was twenty-three years ago.

And my beautiful wife was surprised that Kid Rock was a rapper. She was not familiar with his 1990s work.

“Bawitdaba”	“Cowboy”

“You’re more familiar with ‘Picture’,” I said, knowing that his 21st century work, the hits that have crossed over onto the country charts/radio stations, are more sung songs.

“Picture” (2002)	“All Summer Long” (2008)

Sweet Christmas, “All Summer Long” was sixteen years ago.

But my wife was not actually familiar with Kid Rock’s oevre at all. Which is to say she hasn’t listened to the radio in a long, long time. “Cowboy” and “Bawitdaba” make appearances on classic rock stations, and “Picture” and “All Summer Long” were all over The Greatest Hits of the 80s, 90s, and Today stations and country stations back when they were fresh (but I don’t hear them much anywhere now).

Still, they are all old.

Jeez, did I only do it in 2004?

I’ve put a livestream of the current evening’s proceedings on because I want to see what the man wants to say, and suddenly I am taken back.

Ozark Electric Co-op members vent to state leaders about ‘demand charge’:

Some frustrated Ozark Electric Cooperative members appealed to state leaders and lawmakers on Monday. They’re upset about the “demand” charge on their bills.

The new charge affects more than 30,000 co-op members or customers.

I paid my first bill with the new charge on it, and it was an extra fifty dollars, or about an extra 13%. We run appliances all day here, and summer means the A/C is kicking on all the time and the pool filter pump is running constantly.

Not mentioned in this story are the reasons why the price of energy is skyrocketing, including man-made and government-made decisions such as Missouri Clean Energy (Proposition C) from 2008 (which you might recall, gentle reader, I opposed in 2008, and as expected, the price increases it caused are coming over a decade later when the item was on the ballot, so the public can not know (and I note that some dude is trying to get another ballot initiative to increase the percentage from 15% of power production having to come from “renewables” to 30 or 50%).

Also not depicted: EPA mandates which have caused power companies to shutter generation capacity. Although perhaps with the Chevron deference no longer operative, maybe some lawsuits will restore some sanity to power generation. Eventually. Maybe.

But it would be nice if people would recognize it’s not the electric company responsible for this. It’s motivated, uninformed voters and government lackeys forcing the prices up, often years or decades after the cause has been made.

Biden administration announces new rule to protect workers from heat-related illnesses:

Senior Biden administration officials announced a proposed rule Tuesday to prevent heat-related illness in the workplace, as climate change brings hotter temperatures around the nation.

In a call to reporters Monday, officials spoke on background about the new rule, which the administration sent to the Federal Register Tuesday for review. Depending on the heat index, the rule would require employers to monitor workers’ heat exposure, provide cool-down areas and take mandatory cool-down breaks.

This new rule comes as extreme temperatures will engulf much of the country at some point during the year. Heat waves occur more frequently now compared to the 1960s, from an average of two per year to six in the 2020s, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency. Heat waves have also increased in duration and intensity.

You would not believe this, but all of history has occurred within the living memory of young striving activists in government and in “independent” news organizations like the Missouri Independent.

You know what this will do?

Make the cost of building anything higher; make it harder to repair roads; and so on. Springfield Parks have had to establish a rolling schedule for their public pools even amidst the most frightening weather that twenty-three-year-olds from elsewhere can remember because they cannot hire enough life guards to staff the pools. Good thing that this particular initiative will help with people suffering from the heat by further limiting the pools’ hours of operation due to increased staffing requirements.

But nobody could see the downstream effects of this plan except for those who are not experts in public policy and who instead live in the real world.

(Link via the Springfield Business Journal‘s free daily newsletter.)

The Branson / Tri-Lake News has started dropping cocked ads in the middle of its news stories above the fold on the front page, which catches one’s eye, I suppose, but it can lead to some unfortunate occurrences if the paper publishes actual news on occasion.

Wherein it almost looks as though the candidate for office has been charged with murder.

I wonder if he got a freebie or two out of the situation.

Stop the presses! The St. Louis Post-Dispatch brings us this breaking news!

Ascension parishioner thought Chesterfield ‘militia’ could bring young men to Catholic Church

The man who tried to start “The Legion of the Sancta Lana” at Ascension Catholic Church said he regrets describing the group as a militia.

* * * *

“Seeing the closure of Catholic churches and the dwindling congregations across St. Louis, it was my intention to create an organization for young men to push themselves mentally, physically, and spiritually through the practice of discipline, study, and fitness modeled after the military,” Ray said in a statement provided to the Post-Dispatch. “The use of the term ‘militia’ is regrettable and does not accurately represent the intention of the organization. However, the current state of the Church in The West is equally regrettable and I’m sure we can all agree that we are in desperate times.”

C’mon, man, this is top news? This is a notice in a church bulletin with keywords that cause right-thinking people to clutch their pearls and to help watercolor the picture that Christian Fundamentalists Are Arming Up To From Trump’s Irregular Army or something.

I would say “do better,” but the paper can probably not.

I haven’t seen the St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently, but I did have a dental appointment this week, so I got to glance over the Springfield News-Leader these days. And I kid you not, it was six or eight sheets of newsprint, so twelve or sixteen pages. That is, about the same size as the small town weeklies I take. Which means, what, twenty stories? Fewer? (Maybe I should actually count them the next time I’m at the dentist.) I won’t say the business model is completely failing, but journalist doesn’t seem like it’s a career path to the middle class.

Republicans and conservatives should maybe consider not dwelling so much on Joe Biden’s age and infirmity like this:

• This Is Why Democrats Are Panicking About Joe Biden
• Don’t fall for Joe Biden’s nice old man act — he’s just lowering expectations
• Obama Rescues Biden After Another Embarrassing Senior Moment

And so on, and so on, ad absurdum.

Because the more the message is “We need to get this doddering old man out of the presidency,” the more easily it is defanged by the Democrats switching to another candidate at the last minute.

Policies, guys. Focus on the policies that have led us to this place. Do not confuse the policy with the policymaker, or we’ll end up with a different policymaker with the same policies.

NYC parents having meltdown over $14 ice cream cones: ‘It’s out of control’

My son started his cross country practices this week, and after picking him up from practice, we stopped at the doughnut shop in Republic (no, the other one), and the total for 6 doughnuts and a breakfast sandwich was almost $20. Which used to be what a trip to a restaurant with my beautiful wife cost. Breakfast for one in Republic is now over $30 (I eat a lot and tip well), and our anniversary dinner last month cost about $60, which used to feed the whole family at a restaurant, but that’s $100 now.

Not that we eat out much these days or even get doughnuts from a doughnut shop these days (half a dozen doughnuts at Walmart is still only five or six dollars).

Wages are going to have to go hella bunch up to make the economics of that work out again.

Biden breaks unofficial rule about headwear while hosting the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs

President Joe Biden welcomed the Kansas City Chiefs to the White House on Friday, lauding the back-to-back Super Bowl champion team for its sportsmanship on and off the field, and breaking an unofficial political rule about headwear. He tried on a Chiefs helmet the team gave him as a gift.

Conspiracy theory: The helmet was one of the ones with the radio in it to tell Biden what to say at the podium.

MUST CREDIT MfBJN FOR THIS FRESH BREAKING CONSPIRACY THEORY!

Two children found dead in Jefferson County, mother arrested:

A woman was arrested Tuesday after she showed up at the Festus police headquarters and admitted to shooting and killing one of her children and drowning another, Jefferson County Sheriff Dave Marshak said.

Both children were younger than 10. One was found shot to death inside the mother’s car, which was parked outside the police station around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday. The child had been shot elsewhere, police said.

The second child was found dead of an apparent drowning at a resort south of Festus.

That is, indeed, the resort where we stayed in 2021.

I click on links like this because I wonder if I’ll know people in the stories (which happens from time to time, gentle reader; mine was not a suburban upbringing where the worst life could be was “like high school”). Given this occurred at a resort, probably not. Unless she worked there.

Ozarks Farm and Neighbor:

WHERE ELSE ARE THEY HIDING?

The online version does not include the third area.

I fear it is my pool.

You know how I like to play these games, but, c’mon, man.

That’s Huey Lewis, and we all know it.

Well, “we” being anyone who is a longtime fan and not someone who is only familiar with his music videos from thirty-some years ago. I mean, that’s what he looks like on the cover of the band’s latest album in 2020:

Which I bought after reading about his hearing problem in 2020.

I mean, for Pete’s sake, he even sort of looked like that in his cameo in Back to the Future. The glasses, anyway.

All this kerfluffle about Kristi Noem putting a dog down.

To be honest, I have not read her book. Books by politicos are not my bag, baby. Although I bought a bunch of them early in the century, I have come to realize how much they ultimately bore me and how anachronistic each is after the election it precedes.

I am not even sure that I’ve read the section where she mentioned putting her dog down completely; now, all the Xeroxed outrage just tells us what she said.

But I do remember hearing that the dog attacked the neighbors chickens. And tried to bite its owner. And, the interpretations go, the hotheaded and packing governor of South Dakota pulled a pistol

The original Guardian story does not present the account as it appears in the book, but instead intersperses it with the easily anticipated editorial outrage.

But, you know what? The dog attacked neighbor chickens. The dog tried to bite its owner in a berzerker frenzy. I understand the decision to put the dog down. Especially as she had young children at the time who would also be vulnerable to a berzerker dog.

But it’s run up to election season, so cry “Havoc!” and let slip the stories of Republicans being unkind to dogs somewhere, sometime.

Full disclosure: When my boys were young, neighbors in the new house across the neighbor’s meadow let their pit bulls roam free, and on a couple of occasions they wandered into the back half of Nogglestead. If those dogs had ever, ever posed a threat to my young children at the time, they would have been buried in the copse amongst the cat graves. In the rural areas, they have an abbreviation: SSS. Shoot, shovel, shut up.

So I don’t fault Noem her actions, but she might have been better served remembering the last. Because no matter how authentic and real she might want to be to rural voters, she could certainly not avoid the, erm, dogpile in the media that should have been expected.

Column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Missouri lawmakers try to take over St. Louis police … and defund them, too.

Now, gentle reader, the state of Missouri did resume its control of the city of St. Louis’s police department–St. Louis politicos only got control of the police department in 2013 after state control for a long time, and let’s be honest, it’s not gotten better in St. Louis in that time.

But Messenger’s column is really about the state legislature taking a different action vis-à-vis the city of St. Louis. Apparently, the city of St. Louis stopped refunding income tax money that it should have:

So how is the Legislature trying to save me money? During the pandemic, St. Louis’ collector of revenue, Gregory F.X. Daly, stopped issuing refunds, figuring the world had changed. With most companies forced by the government into remote work, it didn’t seem reasonable to flush away the city’s revenue from refunds.

Legally, it was probably a specious argument. Six plaintiffs filed a lawsuit seeking refunds. A judge ruled in their favor. One of their attorneys was Bevis Schock, a libertarian who is pretty smart about constitutional issues. He’s the reason the city doesn’t have red-light cameras anymore. I wouldn’t bet against him. The city has appealed the lawsuit, but while that appeal is pending, the Republicans who run the Legislature figured why not pass a law making refunds for remote work more explicit in the law?

So, again, we have a city official unilaterally deciding to steal money from people who are not residents of St. Louis and losing in court, and we have the elected legislature passing a law to make this clearer in the future, and we have Tony Messenger working hard to rationalize theft (well, it’s Democrats doing the thieving, so of course it’s okay) and working very, very hard to somehow make this into a Republicans defunding the police story.

And we have a “journalist” conflating two stories to try to attack Republicans. Because that’s what his analysis is: How can I attack Republicans with this?

I suppose the dwindling readership of the Post-Dispatch nod their heads along anyway.

Full disclosure: When I was a shipping/receiving clerk at the art supply store in 1995, they withheld the city income tax even though the store was not in the city and I did not live in the city, and I never got that refunded to me. So maybe I’m just bitter.

Louis Gossett Jr., 1st Black man to win supporting actor Oscar, dies at 87

I just watched him in Enemy Mine.

Gentle reader, as a reminder, a mention of an old actor or author on MfBJN is often the kiss of death.

Fortunately, I guess, I mostly read books by people who are already dead and watch a lot of old movies.

Link via Friar on Facebook.

Remember when I said about a ruling protecting the names of citizens who write legislators:

Although if one were not eager to bash the Republicans in the Missouri state legislature (and Republicans generally) with any cudgel at hand, one might say Legislature/Judge Protects Privacy of Private Citizens Who Want To Write To Their Representatives Without Getting Doxxed By Activists and Newspapermen Who Disagree With Them.

Case in point (that case being “journalists” identifying and targeting a citizen for wrongthink), the Springfield News-Leader has a photo and long story on a man who has given money to Springfield School Board candidates.

The wrong ones, of course, or you wouldn’t be seeing his picture and this treatise.

Don’t worry, gentle reader, the journalists and anyone who might be inspired by them are only out to get you if you’re bad.

(Full disclosure: My beautiful wife has served on a board with this fellow, so she knows him sort of.)

The top story this morning at the Springfield News-Leader Web site: White nationalist stickers appear again in Springfield. Here’s what to know

Stickers and posters printed in the patriotic colors of red, white and blue have appeared around Springfield in recent days. While they may appear harmless, the stickers are promotional material for a white supremacist hate group.

The stickers have been spotted at local parks, on lamp and signposts, bus stops, gas station pumps and even by the World’s Largest Fork. Some who came across the stickers took to social media to share their findings and urge people to remove the promotional material. The stickers included slogans like “not stolen conquered,” “free occupied America,” “for a new American nation state,” “American spirit European blood” and others pushing for a revamp of the current political system.

The posters and stickers direct people to visit a website of “Patriot Front.” The News-Leader was unable to reach any representatives from the group as of Tuesday morning. The contact form on the website notes that “The organization does not participate in interviews with journalists.”

Some reports on social media, some stickers placed by someone, and hundreds of words ginning up “awareness” of the threat of white nationalism. Even here in bucolic Springfield!

I take the “threat” less seriously than a 2023 journalism school graduate, whose research involves going to the Southern Poverty Law Center Web site and somehow did not stumble across the some who say or suspect the Patriot Front is a government group of some sort, perhaps to designed to make the problem of white nationalism look worse than it is in an election year. But that’s an icky conspiracy theory, and these stickers are real, you guys.