Personal note to Aaron, of Free Will Blog: Ha, ha! Your governor sucks worse than my governor!
Love Letter to Illinois Governor Roddy Blag
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Category: News
Buzz Machine Breakdown
Jeff Jarvis characterizes tax cuts:
George Bush (following in the footsteps of Reaganomics) made a politically cynical tax cut when he came into office, cutting taxes but not cutting spending and instead borrowing so he could cut those taxes. He gave away money to voters, money he didn’t have. He borrowed money from our children to pay us to curry favor with us. That is political cynicism at its worst; it’s one of my big problems with Bush.[my emphasis]
Whereas the federal government, wherein the House of Representatives initiates all spending and tends to do so in large, unvetoable ominousbus bills, did in fact decide to cut taxes and keep spending, this does not represent giving money to voters. It represents confiscating less.
But then again, Jarvis is not a constitutional scholar or a political scientist. He’s a happening-man-about-the-country.
Of course, I am not any of the above; however, I am a tax payer, or rather, I am someone from whom taxes are taken in my bimonthly pay check.
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More Headline Abuse
Headline: Schwarzenegger Wants Strays Killed Faster:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to repeal a state law that requires animal shelters to hold stray dogs and cats for up to six days before killing them.
Instead, there would be a three-day requirement for strays. Other animals, including birds, hamsters, potbellied pigs, rabbits, snakes and turtles, could be killed immediately.
Actually, it sounds like he’s reducing a requirement, not mandating felinicide and caninicide. Perhaps Schwarzenegger alone among the ruling class understands that federal- and state-level mandates and requirements serve as Procrustean beds that bind the hands of local governments who must deal with the ultimate execution, er, implementation.
I would guess that if the three-day requirement replaces the six-day requirement that all shelters in the state of California will immediately set the red digital countdown clocks on their puppy doomsday machines to 72:00:00.
Instead, those counties running animal shelters flush with cash will continue their current policies, and those counties whose governments need to choose between hospitals and an extra three days of keeping an ill-tempered, underfed chow-rottie mix in a six by four cage except for brief exercise periods where it snaps at the shelter volunteer but doesn’t–thankfully–draw blood.
But Brian, the counties don’t have to make those sorts of choices! You’re more right than you should be, opposing viewpoint; governments will make both choices whenever possible and will flout a tax increase or ballot initiative to pay for it. But damn it, those tax dollars are the difference between canned asparagus and fresh asparagus, the difference between the pork and the steak, in some people’s diets. So you want to save the animals, you eat lesser food and donate the difference to keep Sapp, that chow-rottie mix, in his chain link for three more days, but don’t make me do it with you, and don’t you fail to do so without your precious government mandate.
UPDATE: Michael Williams gets it.
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Naughty Headline of the Day
Economy slows to a 3.9 percent pace in first quarter:
Economic growth in the first quarter was slower than first reported — at an annual rate of 3.9 percent — a pace that was solid but lacking the momentum exhibited as the calendar turned to 2004.
Economic growth was less than the preceding quarter but was growth nevertheless. AP reporters apparently have the same mentality that afflicts equities traders: that growth, not financial strength or profit, determines the state of the economy.
An unfortunate, but probably meditated, mischaracterization. Each quarter, the same amount of gain in absolute dollars represents a smaller growth in the relative percentage measurement because each quarter, the whole gets bigger. So an addition of 3 to a total of 100 is 3% growth in the first quarter, but an addition of 3 in the second quarter (where the total is 103), the economy “slows” to 2.9%, the second seal is broken, and apparently the only way to prevent the end of the world is to elect John Kerry, who will Robin Hood money from the rich and corporations to increase the economy!
Or maybe I am reading too much into it.
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A Novel Idea
Hey, Oprahzenry, E.J. Dionne mentions Barack Obama, the guy running for Senate who didn’t ask Seven of Nine to have sex in public (that we know of), and Dionne thinks this guy could be president.
Swell. Here’s Dionne’s ringing endorsement summary:
Obama is interested in people who are hurting and problems that are serious. That, even more than his biography, is why he’ll hit the big time.
We need a yet another president worried about hurting.
Personal note to Illinois voters: Please vote for Obama, elect him to the Senate, and make it near impossible for him to become president.
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Headline Inferences
Irish outlaw Muslim second wives.
What can we infer from this headline?
- Muslims’ third through sixteenth wives are okay.
- Second wives are okay if they’re Methodist.
Pah, I got nothin.
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Blast from the Past
James Lileks, as a Minnesotan, is an honorary homie. Today, he mentions Green Goddess salad dressing. That’s one of those telling details of the upper Midwest. You don’t think about it for a number of years, and then suddenly you remember salads drenched in cucumber ichor.
Green Goddess is not quite the phenomenon here in Missouri as in Wisconsin. Hence, I haven’t seen it for decades. I assume you could buy it in the grocery store, but amid the ranks of other dressings and smiling visages of Paul Newman, I’ve not seen it. Of course, I don’t use salad dressing, so I wander down that aisle typically with my eyes ahead, counting aisles until the beer aisle.
But during my boyhood in Wisconsin, every family gathering proffered Green Goddess. Right next to the cannibal sandwiches.
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Depends What the Meaning of “Break It Off” Is
Drudge links to a Yahoo! photo of Bill Clinton with the headline CLINTON SPORTS MYSTERY BRACELET….
Mystery? Come on, we’re on the Internet.
We know what the bracelets mean.
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John Kass is the Best Columnist in Chicago
There, I have said it. Read his column today, entitled Terrorists take us to the real ring of hell (worth the registration required). Real meat:
Avoiding the Berg video, or the pictures of what happened to Johnson, or the images of the next American they grab, won’t dull the knives of those who want us all dead. They want to drive Americans from where we want to stand in the world and send us quivering home.
Avoiding won’t make us safer here, either. It actually may do us all a disservice, since it allows us to keep an emotional distance.
The flat of the killing knives is only an inch or two wide. It is much shorter than the distance between today and Sept. 11, 2001. We’ve achieved separation from each, and that is dangerous.
I don’t know why Kass isn’t a blogosphere superstar like Lileks, Appelbaum, or Steyn.
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Query
Does Cuba have enough land for an “all-out ground war“?
(Link seen on Fark.)
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Joke of the Day
UN slams US over spending Iraq funds. It goes like this:
United Nations-mandated auditors have sharply criticised the US occupation authority for the way it has spent more than $11bn in Iraqi oil revenues and say they have faced “resistance” from coalition officials.
In an interim report, obtained by the Financial Times, KPMG says the Development Fund for Iraq, which is managed by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority and channels oil revenue into reconstruction projects, is “open to fraudulent acts”.
Ha ha ha ha! Hooo. And then the UN says, “the CPA is open to fraudulent acts.” Ha ha ha ha haa!
Sorry, it’s hard to type with the tears from the laughter in my eyes. That Matt Drudge, who told me this one, is a stitch, ainna?
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Is That All?
For months, people watching the Illinois Senate race have wondered what was sealed in Jack Ryan’s divorce papers. Opponents sniffed at the locked documents and speculated that they contained something dark and evil, such as the mark of the beast on Jack Ryan’s, um, well, something, anyway. Now, the papers are a-coming out, and they contain some dudshells:
Republican Senate candidate Jack Ryan pressured his wife, actress Jeri Lynn Ryan, to have sex in clubs while others watched, she charged in divorce documents released Monday.
The “Boston Public” and “Star Trek: Voyager” actress said she angered Ryan by refusing. She did acknowledge infidelity on her part, which she said took place after their marriage was irretrievably broken.
See the difference? Sex in public with your spouse, bad. Adulterous sex in private, okay. Well, I am not here to cast aspersions on either, hem, alternate lifestyle (although I will acknowledge that one is immoral and the other inaesthetic), I will ask:
Is that it?
Perhaps I am just a product of Generation X, who grew up with Kevin Smith films and with vampire movies mainstreaming the S&M club into tomorrow’s kitsch. I’m not shocked, and I’m not sure how his particular pecadillos would impact his governing ability. He’s not violated any law, and as far as I know, he would not want to have sex with her in the Senate (although it would certainly boost CSPAN ratings). Heck, it just might be the crossover appeal needed to get Democrats to vote for him.
(Link seen on Drudge.)
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Perspective
Sure, it won’t make you feel superior to your workplace like Dilbert does, but Mrs. du Toit offers some reminders about what it means to be a worker bee.
The working world: like it, or vote Democrat.
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Dearth
You know, on weekends and, well, weekdays, I don’t catch much television coverage of the news and I dodge radio coverage when I can.
That must explain why I haven’t heard the stories covering declining gas prices. You know, the video that depicts the jubilant American street dancing under the gas station canopy, with gushing men and women on the street thanking government inappropriately for the partially-free market working and explaining that since gas prices have fallen thirty cents, they can afford to feed their children (expensive preprocessed food) and can once again afford to commute ninety minutes to work.
Because undoubtedly the media covered the what comes down portion of the cycle with the same alack!rity that they covered the what goes up story.
I just must have missed it.
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That’s Just Precious
Instapundit links to an AP story about John Kerry’s campaign receiving a bothersome campaign contribution:
John Kerry’s campaign collected a maximum $2,000 check from the recently arrested son of South Korea’s disgraced former president, and some of its fund-raisers met several times with a South Korean government official who was trying to organize a Korean-American political group.
Kerry’s going to give it back, of course, since it’s now public.
But the ad dished up with the story is amusing:
Click for full size
Click to send your own questionable campaign contribution.
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Lose/Lose
Hey, everyone’s a loser in this story:
Attorney General Jay Nixon said Friday that Schnucks and Dierbergs stores had been adding a surcharge onto video rental bills that looked like a sales tax but wasn’t. He said the companies had kept some of the money.
Nixon said the two supermarket chains had agreed to stop the practice and pay $110,000 each in penalties to the state.
Salient points:
- Business, since Dierberg’s and Schnucks saw fit to levy a 7% surcharge on video rentals and labeling it a “tax/surcharge” even though the State of Missouri does not levy a sales tax in these situations. By breaking out the extra portion of the price, these supermarket chains do the same thing telephone companies, utilities, and mechanics do: they hide, deceive, and trick customers with extra line items on the invoice to generate extra revenue. Listen, you damn creative business types: mark one price that includes all of your costs of business and tell me up front.
P.S. Thanks for the statements that you didn’t do anything wrong here. Smeg off, you stooges. Even the laissez-faire amongst us recognize you’re not victims here.
- The consumers, who have paid extra seven cents per $1.00 rental for who knows how long. $1.07 isn’t so bad for a video rental, but getting institutionally suckered is.
- The attorney general, who had to conduct a year-long investigation to net $220,000 in fines. Certainly not cost effective, and certainly not where I would allocate assets, but unquestionably, the wrong doers were doing wrong.
- The taxpayers, who had to underwrite an investigation costing more than $220,000.
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Marquette Doesn’t Try to Panhandle From Me
It’s true, but I don’t get pleas for money from the university from which I graduated. Why is that? Because I think stories like this represent the mindset of most universities, whose staffs only want development (more money) at the expense of tradition and respect?
Any true fan of the University of Missouri would not be surprised to hear this tale of how the University of Kansas treats its fans.
Max and Jackie Kennedy had front row seats in Allen Fieldhouse from the day it opened in 1955. Jackie kept the tickets even after Max died last year. “The hardest thing I had to do was walk in that field house without him,” she said.
But the school told Jackie, 74, that if she doesn’t donate $58,500, the seats will be sold to someone else.
Kansas isn’t entirely heartless. They offered her another set of seats. Near the top row. “But it’s not like we’re tossing her out of the place,” said an associate athletic director, Jim Marchiony.
Kennedy is outraged. “I’m not sitting anywhere else,” she said. “I think it’s blackmail. It’s just unbelievable to me that this is happening.”
Of course, fans who have to sit in bad seats have a different take. “We have probably some of the worst seats in the house,” said Janis Holiwell, of Topeka. “We’ve been making donations every year, and they’re not small donations. … I know they’ve sat there a long time. But we pay the same amount of money and we sit in very poor seats.”
Mizzou wouldn’t treat such loyal fans so shabbily. Why, all Mizzou is charging is a one-time donation of $25,000 for up to eight seats and an annual donation of $5,000 a seat.
Oh, you also have to buy a season ticket. That’s about $816.
Shut your traps, Bobos, and respect your elders. It pains me to have to say it.
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Transitional Equivalence
Hooray for this bit of moral equivalence:
ABC News reports investigators have tied the man to a terrorist cell set to carry out a series of bombings and assassinations in London.
The man, a naturalized citizen from Pakistan, was secretly taken into custody in April.
He is being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan and is said to be cooperating offering investigators significant information about Al Qaeda’s plans.
He is being held as a material witness and his family is now under federal protection.
The man has told investigators that Al Qaeda is planning more attacks in the United States. He has also revealed a scheme to smuggle terrorists across the Mexican border.
The suspect’s assertions were part of the intelligence that led to recent warnings about a summer threat from Al Qaeda.
Another man being held today is kidnapped American Paul Johnson.
Got that? A material witness in the custody of the United States is the same as Paul Johnson.
Rage, rage against the dying of the schnucking moral insight that would tell ABC News or its affiliate’s writers that these things are not the same, and Paul Johnson is not another man being held in the same way as a material witness.
Link seen on Hugh Hewitt, who doesn’t comment on this blatant idiocy.)
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Meanwhile, Somewhere Else, Police Join Firefight and Firemen Watch Conflagration
What should we make of this headline from CNN? Jenna Bush Agents Join Fistfight. Pic:
(Click for full size.)
Article text:
Bodyguards for President Bush’s daughter Jenna Bush were entangled in a fistfight with two men trying to steal a cell phone in southern Spain, a U.S. Embassy official said Tuesday.
So a couple of Secret Service agents prevent a couple of hoodlums from stealing something, and CNN casts it as bodyguards of Jenna Bush joining a fistfight?
That’s some damn deep, invasive bias that prevents a journalist from writing facts and where every single news story predigested interpretation. Just open up your maws, little cheepies, and mama CNN will regurgitate its truth down your gullet for your own good.
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Social Engineering Sampler
- Frank W. Abagnale identifies 10 ways to stop identity theft cold. Slow down, Iceman. It won’t make you a superhero capable of stopping any or all identity theft in the world, but it will remind you ways to make it harder for the badmen to get your identity. Best line:
Only amateurs hack into computers; pros hack into people.
For you damn kids out there, Frank Abagnale is the guy depicted in Catch Me If You Can. He makes Mitnick look like a script kiddie in meatspace.
- Challenged by a department store honcho, this guy goes into a store and walks out with $3500 in computers without paying.
(Link seen on IMAO.)
Be careful out there, my students, and remember to trust no one, especially your shidoshi of paranoia.
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