Category: News

In the 1980s, it was global cooling.
In the 1990s, it was global warming.

With a new decade laid before us, we should expect some new blight upon us, a pox brought upon humanity by technology and the rising standard of living around the world.

Oh, but no. The best they can do for the 2000s: global cooling caused by global warming.

Yawn.

(Link seen on Drudge.)

Over at the Independent Women’s Forum, bad Charlotte takes issue with a piece in the New York Times Magazine that resins up the bow for the poor in America, particularly one woman whose tragic life story runs a gamut of poor decisions and short-sightedness. As it is in the New York Times Magazine, the author blames her miserable life on America, not on her miserable self.

As soon as Barbara “Nickel and Dime Bagged” Ehrenreich is back from her next indiscretion that could prevent her from getting a job at Wal-Mart, perhaps she could comment. Maybe we should hope she does not.

Tim Blair links to this remarkably in-depth recap retrospective on the Jennifer Lopez/Ben Affleck relationship which publicly lasted 18 months or at least two movie promo cycles.

Within it we find this job description:

One reason for the final demise of the relationship is said to be Jennifer’s desire to settle down and have a baby. Another, according to Us, was her chagrin at Ben’s partying ways.

My bachelor friends, if you would like to impregnate and perhaps share a house (and bed) for the long-term (two years? three years?) with Jennifer Lopez, send your resumes to:

Jennifer Lopez
C/O United Talent Agency
9560 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 500
Beverly Hills, CA 90212

or

Jennifer Lopez
C/O International Creative Management
8942 Wilshire Blvd
Beverly Hills CA 90211

Please include a photograph.

The other white African-American links to a cautionary tale about a family that was a little different from the rest, and the felony prison sentences that resulted.

San Mateo, California, has made private karaoke booths illegal since people can do illegal things in public places where the public cannot hear you.

I’d like to point out that opaque walls are a greater danger, since people can do things behind those walls which the public and law enforcement officials cannot see, but I would hate to give them ideas.

Professor Reynolds has the word about people who claim that Bush’s Mars program is all about sending Haliburton to Mars to look for oil.

Honey, if Haliburton finds oil on Mars, there are far greater things to worry about than the rich getting richer.

Such as:
How will the discovery of freaking life, albeit dead and decomposed, on another planet impact the Religious Right’s support of Bush?

In this FoxNews.com story, we find (under the heading of “Now, Honey, Do as I Say, Not as I Do”) another example of clever prosecutorial layering:

The 10-minute pursuit Friday morning ended outside Del Mar Pines School with the arrest of Stacy L. Taylor for investigation of evading arrest and child endangerment.

Got that? Child Endangerment. Mother runs off from a ticketing officer, and suddenly she’s under the stormcloud of a nebulous criminal charge.

Any moving violation can now become child endangerment. Speeding? Rolling through a stop? What if someone were to be coming the other way? The Children might have been endangered!

I think this post makes me guilty of conspiracy of child endangerment or perhaps incitement of child endangerment.

Kim du Toit is all over a story in the Seattle Workers’ Revolution story about Bill Gates buying properties surrounding his home and letting friends and family members live there. In some cases, the original owners are still there, living in Bill Gates’s house.

And this accumulation of property by a capitalist must be stopped, or so the story implies.

But let’s get to the point of the knife. The municipal government’s worried about its money:

If other residents follow Gates’ lead, that could present some challenges for the city of 3,000, said Medina City Manager Doug Schulze. Much of the money the city gets from the state is based on population. If people buy up surrounding houses and don’t have people living in them, the city’s share of state funding might decline, he said.

Ah, yes. Lest we forget, the government has a right to revenue from property owners. Or so it’s assuming.

That’s why your house is worth less to your local government than a dozen empty parking spaces in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and why this local government is beginning to make noise about preventing a man from acquiring property legally. For the neighborhood, and undoubtedly for the Children.

(Headline style appropriated from Charles Johnson.)

Speaking of outsourcing, Alan Lacy, CEO of Sears hits the nail on the head, and undoubtedly United States developers will shriek as though it was their collective thumbnails he hit:

But I think, beyond that, to me, a very interesting trend right now is the whole non-U.S. opportunity that’s available, and … if you think about personal intelligence and drive being randomly distributed by population — you know, there are four or five times as many smart, driven people in China than there are in the U.S. And there’s another four or five, three or four times as many people in India that are smarter or as smart or have more drive. And if technology is now going to basically reduce location as a barrier to competition, then essentially you’ve got something like whatever that was, seven or nine times, more smart, committed people that are now competing in this marketplace against certain activities.

Right on, brother. Give the jobs to the cheapest and smartest people you can find.

Don’t like it, fellow IT professional? Get smarter, get faster, get cheaper, or get out of the way.

Never mind. Seething and whining plays better to the id and on the network news.

When a “sexual predator” escaped a Missouri Sexually Violent Predator Unit, he didn’t break a law. According to a story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

It’s a crime in Missouri to escape from a jail or prison, and it’s a crime to escape from a mental health facility if the escapee was sent there in a criminal process, such as found not guilty but insane.

But the state of Missouri, in its hurry to follow other states’ lead into indefinitely extending the finished sentences of certain classes of offenders, managed to create a means of continued incarceration for violent sexual predators, but didn’t make leaving those means of continued, un-sentenced incarceration periods against the law.

Never fear, though. Prosecutors have a myriad of laws available for any occasion.

In fact, the interview is somewhat limited that he could give the Post-Dispatch because:

He said talking about that now could hurt his chances with his current criminal case, a charge of felony property damage for cutting the fence.

What? He must not have dropped the portion of the fence he cut away in his escape or else he would also face a charge of felony littering.

Meanwhile, after releasing himself from indefinite incarceration and a probable unsentenced life term, this guy goes to Florida, gets married, and apparently doesn’t commit another sex crime, or any crime for that matter:

Neither Florida authorities nor investigators here have been able to link Ingrassia to any new sex crimes.

Instead, he’s gone south, gotten a job, and gotten married. Granted, it was his wife who got suspicious of his past and led to his return to Missouri. Hey, I’m not some multiple-degreed, highly-paid state consultant, but that sounds almost reformed to me.

But he’s cheesed off some officials who feel that their power derives from the respect they feel should be paid to them, so they’re going to get him. Instead of a warehouse for undesirables, they’ll throw him back in prison, and when his sentence for vandalism is over, they’ll return him to his indefinite warehouse.

Don’t worry, citizen. It hasn’t happened to you. Yet.

Not only does it offer a taxpayer “bill of rights,” but it might also implement controls on eminent domain.

Boulder and Denver and all of that property-rights-infringing, cougar-loving nutbarism doesn’t cover the whole state, wot? In some places, Jeremiah Johnson could live with his guns and his fit wife, right?

Sounds as good as Texas to me.

New York Post headline: “MAN CLUBS WIFE TO DEATH WITH DUMBBELL“

Apparently, a man beat his estranged wife to death with a five pound dumbbell.

A five pound dumbell? We’ve got dumbbells six times as deadly here in la casa de Heather, but I didn’t want to call the perp nor the victim a wuss. Instead, I wanted to point out the New York angle. The husband tried to kill himself after the murder, and failed.

Did his neighbors characterize him as a quiet man, the last sort of fellow who would do this sort of thing? Not in New York:

“He tried to kill himself, but he didn’t try hard enough,” said neighbor Ralph Watson. “He was a punk son of a gun for hitting her in the head like that, and if he really wanted to kill himself, he should have jumped in front of a train.”

Neil Steinberg, of the Chicago Sun-Times, on Mars:

Myself, I’d ask, “How come nobody applies the same logic to Kennedy? Nobody says, ‘Oh sure, Kennedy committed us to go to the moon and then he up and died and left the hard work to others.”’

He also manages to spank NPR, too. Read it. You will like it.

Spoons links to this column by Radley “The Agitator” Balko. It’s about the deficit and the mighty vote-pandering going on, wherein our current politicians pass out entitlements like Tic Tacs to woo aging voters. As a member of the Libertarian wing of the Republican party, or perhaps the sane fringe of the Libertarian Party, I agreed with the sentiment until I hit this point, buried in the lead of Balko’s column:

A few of us had our taxes cut, but that hardly matters when government keeps spending the way it is. Sooner or later, the waiter will come by with the check, and it’s those of us under 30 who will be reaching for our wallets.

Under 30? You mean, I, being of the distinguished and learned age of 31 and 10.75/12, won’t be on the hook?

Heck’s pecs, politicos, pander to me, too. I want guaranteed Federally-subsidized Guinness, and a pizza a week, and could do with a couple of new t-shirts. What, do you want the poor elderly IT professionals to freeze? You heartless kids are ungrateful for all that Generation X has given you.

Don’t trust anyone over 30.