Category: News

Does anyone else find this quote (also in Mark Steyn’s column) too earnestly Orwellian?

“In a Europe grounded in peace and freedom there should be no place for Nazi symbols,” declared Markus Soeder, general secretary of the Christian Socialist Union party. “They should be banned throughout Europe, as they are with good reason in Germany.“

Prohibition=freedom, citizen.

Satellite lost over the south Pacific:

Intelsat, Ltd. announced today that its IS-804 satellite experienced a sudden and unexpected electrical power system anomaly on January 14, 2005, at approximately 5:32 p.m. EST that caused the total loss of the spacecraft. In accordance with existing satellite anomaly contingency plans, Intelsat is in the process of making alternative capacity available to its IS-804 customers. The satellite, launched in 1997, furnished telecommunications and media delivery services to customers in the South Pacific.

If this were the early chapters of a Tom Clancy novel, the Chinese would be plinking.

(Link seen on /.)

Story in Sunday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Missouri fee agents prepare to lose contracts after shift in power: Democrats call for change in system:

Maria Turner knows that any day now, she’ll lose her job.

Turner runs Department of Revenue fee offices in Chesterfield and Clayton. The offices sell license plates, issue drivers licenses, process applications for titles and collect sales taxes on new vehicles and boats.

Her shops are among the busiest in the state’s 171-office network of independent contractors, and Turner is proud of her lower-than-average error rate in processing applications. But she figures her days are numbered. The reason: sheer politics.

Fee offices are among the last vestiges of patronage politics in state government. The governor’s campaign contributors traditionally get the contracts, which in some cases can provide six-figure incomes to their operators. The offices charge a fee for each transaction. After expenses are covered, the rest is gravy.

Democratic contractors appointed by former Govs. Bob Holden and Mel Carnahan expect to be replaced soon because Matt Blunt, a Republican, took over the governor’s office last week.

I don’t weep for Maria Turner, the woman who’ll have to go from clearing six figures plus salary for a number of years as a Democrat appointee to the soup kitchen. I do gasp, almost, with surprise that Democrats want to act now when their contributors will lose the gravy train. As far as I know, Carnahan, Wilson, and Holden didn’t agitate for it when they were governors or when the Democrats controlled the legislature, so I think the Democrats in Missouri are demonstrating another disingenuous and yet transparent maneuver to not allow the incoming Republican administration the same amenities their boys have enjoyed for the last dozen years.

That said, I think it’s a capital idea, and I hope pro-business governor Matt Blunt actually goes through with it. I’d like to see a minimum of two fee agents per county to ensure that citizens have a choice in their driver’s license renewal options and perhaps see some customer service out of the functionaries behind the counter whose inner clocks move on four year cycles.

What, you think I have had one or more bad experiences in these little ill-furnished storefronts and could do nothing but bite my tongue and line the pocket of someone idealogically opposed to me? I have, and I had no choice in it.

From a CNN.com film review:

In the film “In Good Company,” Dennis Quaid’s character, ad executive Dan Foreman, lives out a fear hidden inside millions of American men and women over 50 — losing their job just when they are hitting their stride professionally.

Foreman has played by the rules all his life and is living the so-called American Dream. He’s respected by peers and clients as the head of ad sales for a weekly New York-based sports magazine. He has a loving wife, Ann, played beautifully by Marg Helgenberger (“Erin Brockovich,” TV’s “CSI”) and two daughters, the oldest of which, Alex (Scarlett Johansson), is just entering New York University.

Is that a sneer towards the values of good family, working hard, living quietly? Why, I think it is! Don’t the plebes know the American dream involves a third floor walk-up in Manhattan, foreign film festivals, and endless nights of trying to score at bars and nightclubs with anemic europhile women?

From an article entitled “Police: Coroner Confesses To Stealing From Dead – El Paso County Deputy Coroner Says He Sold Stolen Drugs“:

Deputy coroners’ jobs include removing bodies from homes, hospitals and other locations and collecting prescriptions of those who died.

Coroners use the medicine to make sure the victim was taking the prescribed dosage and didn’t die because of an overdose.

The journalist could have phrased that better, ainna?

I spend a lot of time and blog inches disagreeing with him, but Neil Steinberg’s column today contains nothing with which I disagree and several things with which I agree.

Just thought I would mention it.

Does anyone see the paradox in this? Pilot arrested in cockpit after screener smells alcohol:

The charge:

An armed AirTran Airways pilot was charged with operating an aircraft under the influence after a federal screener at McCarran International Airport smelled alcohol, authorities said Thursday.

The problem:

“The captain neither took command of the aircraft nor was the aircraft operated in any manner,” the airline said.

Authorities, operating under the assertion of the precogs, have charged this fellow with a crime he was about to commit but had not yet committed. He’s not charged with conspiracy. He is being charged with the actus reus, friends, and if it sticks, it’s precedent.

Keep that in mind the next time you’ve had a couple of beers and go to get something out of the cabin of your car.

Since I don’t have a Masters in Urban Planning and Policy, of course it strikes me as senseless and tragically humorous that portions of St. Louis County are using eminent domain to turn residential area into retail area, and that portions of the City of St. Louis are turning retail area into residential area.

I will think it equally amusing in twenty or thirty years when the roles reverse, because St. Louis County municipalities’ sales tax diminishes because there are no citizens left to shop in the retail areas and the city determines it can get more in sales tax revenue than in income tax and other revenues from actual citizens.

Had I that precious degree, I would think it very serious indeed.

Oh, boy, here comes trouble: Homeless no more: Plan seeks to end chronic homelessness in 10 years:

If you can imagine Downtown without any homeless, you can imagine success for a regional plan to end chronic homelessness within 10 years.

I cannot imagine, but then again, I am a taxpayer, not a tax spender. Apparently, their imaginations are better.

The 10-year plan for the city and county will identify the needs and then say what services and housing facilities will be used to end chronic homelessness.

I just bet I can guess what sorts of programs those will include, and how effective the plan will turn out.

In my last post yesterday, I made fun of baby boomers who didn’t care about Social Security because they’ll die while it’s solvent. I mocked, but a Congressman says:

“Why stir up a political hornet’s nest …. when there is no urgency?” said Rep. Rob Simmons (Conn.), who represents a competitive district. “When does the program go belly up? 2042. I will be dead by then.”

Your candor impresses me, you confiscatory eater of the young. Unfortunately, the candor from a politician indicates that he thinks it’s a safe sentiment to express, like cursing Bosnians in south St. Louis. You’re among friends and you all think the same way, ainna?

Another ad in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from yesterday, with my markup in red for your approval:

Social Security

If we feel like gambling,
WE’LL PLAY THE SLOTS
AND WE CAN, BECAUSE WE HAVE

THIS FREE GOVERNMENT MONEY WE CAN PISS AWAY.

Let’s not turn Social Security into Social Insecurity. While the program needs to be strengthened eradicated, private accounts that take money out of Social Security are not the answer on Jeopardy! since you have to answer with a question and will hurt all our generations, the only one with any real hope of dying while Social Security is solvent. There are places in your retirement planning for risk, but Social Security isn’t one of them, and you can take our word for it since we’re wise enough to rely on continued government largesse and taxpayer benevolence for our retirement instead of, you know, intelligence of any sort. Call your legislators at 1-800-307-8525 and urge them to oppose private accounts that put Social Security at risk.

AARP The power to make it better ourselves richer at the expense of those damn kids, many of whom are in their thirties by now.

I would tell you what I think about the AARP, but the language might get me banned by some filters, and I wouldn’t even know about it to cash in on the persecutional publicity. Let me say that I respect my elders and I respect any other human until such time as he, she, or it tries to violate me, my family, or my property. Which is really what the AARP wants, my earnings to fund its members’ continuing and unplanned for existence.

Advertisement, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sunday, January 9, 2005:

January, 2005

Dear Missouri Legislators and Honorable Governor Blunt,

We send our best wishes as you prepare for the upcoming legislative session. We look forward to opening a dialogue that will build consensus about the direction in which our state is moving.

Many of our coalition members have been involved in the creation and support of state programs that help children, the elderly, people with disabilities, and working people of Missouri. We want to join in your efforts to improve state services and inform the public about the vital role of the state in promoting a healthy, productive workforce and strong families.

Our government has the capacity and the ability to serve Missouri residents efficiently and fairly. The foundation of a responsible, compassionate society is that all citizens have access to basic human services such as education and health care.

Our goal is to work with you on proposed changes to state programs and to ensure that government delivers the high standards of service you have promised Missouri residents.

Governor Blunt, the coalition especially appreciates the commitment you have made to keep Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program intact and to fully fund education. On behalf of those who need health care and cannot afford it–and on behalf of our children who deserve quality public schools–we promise to work with you to uphold your commitment to the well-being of all Missourians.

Missouri Budget Program (www.mobudget.org)
Missouri Coalition for Budget & Policy Priorities

Scrawled on the bottom, in crayon, the Noggle addendum:

And get me a jelly sandwich ’cause I’m hungry, and it’s your duty to ensure continuous homeostasis for all beings, whether human or otherwise (except for some flora). And you, productive members of society, business owners, and corporations: put on the fezzes and dance for me! Dance while I chew the lotus blossoms provided by Mother Socialism until I giggle myself to contented sleep and stupidity. Because I wanna, and there’s a lot of coalitions who want me to!

In his column today, Richard Roeper responds to respondents:

Apparently, Republicans aren’t the most introspective people in the world. In a column earlier this week, I asked them not to contact me — but to ask themselves if they would have criticized Bill Clinton if he had been as indecisive as President Bush was last week in reacting to the tsunami.

Within hours of the column appearing, at least 200 Bush-backers e-mailed or called me to react (often with obscenities and name-calling) to an item in which I specifically requested that they not contact me.

Hilarious.

I mentioned this story before, and let’s recap Roeper’s exact words on this matter:

To my Republicans friends:

So the people he wrote him are Republicans, but not his friends. Although I can’t imagine he has many Republican friends, I’ll bet it’s a fairly exclusive group, and they probably didn’t say a word.

In a shotgun blast of a column today, Richard Roeper pulls together a series of musings on the tsunami in Southeast Asia (mostly potshots at the West, its citizens, or the current administration) and poses this question:

To my Republicans friends: Be honest now. If Bill Clinton had waited three days to make a public statement about the worst natural disaster in a generation, how would you have reacted? If Clinton initially pledged $35 million in relief even as we were hearing that his inauguration parties were going to cost $40 million, would you have slammed him for that?

Don’t contact me; I’m just asking you to be honest with yourselves. If you’d find fault with Clinton for such behavior, why didn’t you criticize Bush for his slow and uninspired response?

Roeper doesn’t quite understand the way our Republican hearts work. If Bill Clinton had offered any relief at all, we would have accused him of trying to distract the media from his latest scandal.

The question elevates a trivial topic to a completely new level of trivial trivialism. The whole “Bush waited three days” nonsense would grate on me if I took it seriously, as seriously as some people (including, apparently, Richard Roeper) do. Who cares what Bush did? He’s the President of the United States, for crying out loud, not the Great All Father from whom all teachings and wisdom is derived. He could have said less, or nothing, and my wife and I would have contributed what we contributed. But we’re independent people who don’t need direction from Annan or Bush.

But to continue dragging Clinton and Clinton bashing into any backlash against left-of-the-aisle trivial carping? Bill Clinton’s presidency ended five years ago. To ask what we would have done in 1998, during an unprecedented economic expansion, if a tsunami had hit and had Bill Clinton somehow not managed to publicly bite his lip for three days? What’s the point of the exercise?

Other than justification for inane commentary about the three day period in which the president might have, you know, been educating himself to the scope of the disaster, deliberating about the proper response, and perhaps even calculating how much of the United States government’s deficit should be spent on non-citizens and its relation to the incredible sums voluntarily given by American citizens to private relief efforts.

What would Clinton have done, and how would his critics responded? Who cares? Unlike some people, I have matured and have moved on.

A BBC piece entitled “Tribe shoots arrows at aid flight” features a number of illustrations about how pronoun abuse hurts everyone:

Officials believe they survived the devastation by using age-old early warning systems.

No, I think that the officials survived the devestation by being elsewhere when the devestation occured.

Scientists are examining the possibility to see whether it can be used to predict earth tremors in future.

The last sentence represents the worst sentence I have seen in a long, long time. “The possibility” doesn’t really have an antecedent in the preceding paragraphs; I think the author meant that scientists were going to examine the actual actions of the tribes to determine if, possibly, they have a line on predicting tsunamis that won’t cost money.

But the idea of using a possibility kinda scrums me. It sounds kinda Star Trek, ainna? But Captain, we can use the Solar Possibility to metaphase the Enterprise back in time four days….

On a side note to the natives who tried to shoot the planes with bows and arrows: although you, too, have watched the computer players’ spearmen hold off your tanks in Civilization III, it’s not that easy in real life.

This certainly didn’t happen in Florida after the hurricanes:

The main airport at Indonesia’s Sumatra island has reopened after an accident that dealt a severe blow to efforts to deliver aid to the region worst affected by the tsunami disaster.

The crucial airstrip in Banda Aceh — the province’s only runway — was closed for much of Tuesday after an aircraft carrying relief supplies hit a water buffalo on the runway.

The Humane Society of the United States called the other day to drum up some extra cash in light of the tsunami in southeast Asia as part of the Relief Efforts for Animals Difficult after Catastrophic Tsunami campaign.

Compounding the human tragedy unfolding in South Asia after a massive tsunami swept across the Indian Ocean, animal victims are now beginning to emerge as well. While the impact of this natural disaster on animal populations is currently very difficult to assess, Humane Society International (HSI) and its partners in the region are working to support disaster relief efforts in the affected countries.

Undoubtedly, countless animals died and were washed out to sea by the initial tidal waves, while the bodies of thousands of others litter the beaches and fields of devastated areas, complicating the disaster relief process. The necessity of disposing of both human and animal remains to contain the spread of diseases like cholera and typhoid is still critical.

And while the relief efforts of animal welfare workers in Asia understandably remain focused on human victims of the disaster, many are preparing to spend the coming days and weeks fighting disease and helping as many victims as possible—both human and animal.

It’s not a joke. To some people whose livelihoods depend upon raising funds for animal welfare, I guess this represents a reasonable opportunity to show animal compassion.

In light of the unimaginable human suffering, though, I find it crass.