Category: News

that in the fountain of light in the desert of the lands beyond the sea that a great white tiger shall attack its master and yea, verily, open him like a seventh seal at an all-you-can-eat seal buffet.

Get well soon, Mr. Horn, and reconsider that retirement.

And no, honey, we don’t have room for any more stray maneaters.

(Link seen on Fark.)

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports on the hardships caused by the closings of Kohl’s Food stores (not affiliated with the expanding Kohl’s Department stores, and neither of which are affiliated with Senator Herbert Kohl, but it’s a long story):

Fifteen years ago, Mary Brown sought out a senior housing apartment in a neighborhood where she could shop, offering stores she could reach by walking.

That option disappeared in August when South Milwaukee, a community of 21,000, lost its only major grocery store – the Kohl’s Food Store on S. Chicago Ave.

It’s bad enough that the closing, one of 23 Kohl’s supermarkets that were shut down, now means a trek to another city – Cudahy’s Pick ‘n Save or Potter’s Piggly Wiggly in Oak Creek – to fulfill a basic need for food. [Emphasis mine]

Insert klaxon sound here. So closing this grocery, which could not make money, has left seniors without the means to fulfill a basic human need, soon to be a basic human right, that is, a grocery store within two blocks of your home, whether it can survive as an ongoing concern or not.

The obvious answer is Foodicare, a new program designed to keep everyone well stocked, or at least give them the ability to fulfill their basic human need without crossing municipal borders and paying sales taxes somewhere else.

I may sound a little snarky, but I empathize, I really do. I mean, to get the really cool exotic beers, I cannot go the Casinport Schnucks. As a matter of fact, I have to go all the way to Creve Couer, to the Dierberg’s, a drive of ten minutes!

Once Foodicare becomes law, and I have given up work since taxation levels will have reached such heights that I will have to pay money out of my own pocket to hold down a job, there will be booze within walking distance, and I’ll never have to be sober again! Which will qualify my to serve in government, or at least to write violinic pieces in the paper about grocery stores closing and the hardship that presents the glitzing customers.

Michael Williams provides a course on international affairs: International Affairs for Geeks 098: Neutral Good in a Lawful Evil World.

I am looking forward to the expansion of the curriculum to include economics (Platinum versus Gold versus Electrum: Inflexible Exchange Rates and You) and foreign languages (Bree Yark is Goblin for Surrender).

Not that I want to harbor grudges, but remember that Bill Clinton and Al Gore are champions of the working man and the middle class as opposed to the Republicans.

Bill “I never had a nickel until I left the White House.” Clinton, who obviously thinks that the $250,000 annual salary accruing while he lived, traveled, and ate free for eight years is a living wage.

Al “I think I will spend $70 million on a cable network” Gore.

Hell, you don’t even feel my upper middle class pain, much less the pain of my friends still working for $10 an hour in their thirties. So go smeg off, you class armchair generals.

(Gore post seen on Drudge.)

Reason magazine’s Hit and Run reports that the television news magazine 60 Minutes is going to run a piece about eminent domain abuse.

Reason also ran a story called “ Wrecking Property Rights: How cities use eminent domain to seize property for private developers“.

As some of you know, eminent domain abuse is one of the particular pet peeves of mine. So go read these pieces and arm yourselves for when your municipality comes for your house for a strip mall.

Some group called the Multistate Tax Commission has issued a report saying that Internet Service Providers should shed some of their tax burden. Hey, I’m all for lower taxes, but I’m a little worried when they start given little perks to some industries, because then the next one wants one, and suddenly my sales tax is at 20% and my property taxes are about 10% annually. Flat tax the corporations on their profits, but let’s not have our governments play favorites.

More troubling, though, is this from the mouths of the aristocracy:

“State and local governments understand that consumers need to get Internet access,” Tennessee Revenue Commissioner Loren Chumley said in a telephone news conference announcing the study. “The bill that was passed goes far beyond that. It has the potential to wipe out all telecommunications-related tax levies.” [Emphasis mine.]

Any time our Illuminated Leaders start babbling on about what luxuries consumers need, I tremble, for I see the future growth of the Great Society, paid for by….the taxed consumers!

Let no Child be without Broadband!

Rubbish! Now get back to work.

I have received mail about my post yesterday about the high school sophomores in St. Peters who got busted for do-it-yourself porn. As of this posting, three boys have been charged with felonies; the girls, of course, get none.

Let me point out, hopefully more succinctly, the absurdity of the charges. Follow me here:

1. Child porn laws touted as necessary protections for The Children who are not Smart Enough Or Responsible Enough (SEORE) to make their own decisions regarding sex and posing for photography therein. Never mind that The Children in this case are fifteen years old, three years short of the sudden burst from the maturity gland which will make them eligible to pose naked for anything they want.
2. Although these “children” cannot make their own reasoned decisions about posing naked and being photographed, the law will now prosecute them as though they are smart enough and responsible enough to make their own decisions regarding sex and posing for photography therein.

!SEORE = SEORE

Do you have that moebius strip of logic firmly grasped yet? They are being prosecuted as adults for doing something from which they are being being protected from doing something they cannot decide to do because they’re not adults.

It’s all a part of the ride on the official United States Eight Ten Year Adolescence. Face it, between the years of 13 and 21 23, children begin to phase into adulthood, and society and its occasional-lackey-and-sometimes-master government are pretty slow to dole out the adult privileges and responsibilities, and when they do, they stagger the ages and make it as drawn out as possible.

Consider:

• At 14 years old, if you shoot a person, you’re tried as an adult
• At 18 years old, if you get shot, you’re statistically “A Child” for those who collect statistics to promote gun control.
• Before you’re 16 years old, you can get a job and start paying your taxes to support The Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers in their pursuit of pharmaceutical immortality.
• However, you have to wait until you’re 18 years old to enter contracts.
• At 16 years old, you’re responsible enough to get a driver’s license and should know enough not to pile a bunch of your friends into your dad’s car, and go roaring around the streets until you collide with a retired schoolteacher on her way from the grocery and kill her and her nephew.
• Glass of wine at dinner? Not for 5 more years, you irresponsible welp.
• At 18 years old, you’re responsible enough to handle explosives and automatic weapons.
• However, concealed weapons will have to wait if you’re from Missouri until the Eddie Eagle Epihany hits you on your 23rd birthday and you can then safely carry concealed weapons.

What’s my proposed solution? At the 13th birthday, send each child into the Cave of the Mother Snake, where it must spend the night alone, without a Gameboy. In the morning, when the child emerges, it is an Adult. Drink responsibly, young man or young woman, and remember to use the booster seat when you’re driving.

Also, vote for me.

Thank you.

In a story certain to not shock anyone with the faintest memory of being young and hormonal and not suffering from the slightest repressed-guilt-turned-into-outrage, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:

A group of 15-year-olds from a St. Peters high school who made a video showing two girls kissing and a naked girl being touched by two boys are facing child pornography charges.

All consensual among the fifteen year olds, but guess what? They’re facing child pornography charges! Of course. They’d be safe from statutatory rape charges if they’d limited themselves to copulation, but record it and wham! It’s a crime.

So they’re doing what curious and, let’s face it, unconstrained (whether by parents or morals) digital kids do, which is namely a little I’ll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours, with the optional “see-like-a-blind-person” rule in effect.

Three have been referrred to juvenile court on charges of promoting child pornography, furnishing pornographic materials to a minor and promoting a sexual performance by a child. The other four are still underinvestigation and may be charged, police say.

“They did the act, they knew what they were doing, and they knew it was wrong,” said St. Peters Sgt. David Kuppler. “You can’t film a 15-year-old child nude no matter what age you are. It’s the same standard we would hold an adult to, it’s just the juvenile justice standard.”

Now the system’s going to brand them as sexual offenders, put their names on the Internet for the rest of their lives, and some suburban prosecutor will be one heroic step closer to governorship. That will protect and serve no one but… well, the government and its bit players hoping for named roles (instead of Municipal Assistant District Attorney #2, I will be David Justice, Avenger of the Oppressed!).

The kids all need a good swatting, without the cameras rolling, thank you. A good talking to, and a maybe bit of “Hold on for three years and you’ll be a Vivid superstar, but from here out, you’re wearing burlap.” But jail time (reform school time, I mean, not as bad as jail except it is)?

It’s a continuing shame that parents cannot discipline and their children and hence cannot trust other parents to discipline or train their own children. As part of this abdictation, the only alternative lazy or immoral parents can turn to is the heavy hand of Government, whose spanking hand is numb and unfeeling from overuse and whom the punishment is not hurting as much as it is hurting us.

Go read this post at Samizdata: A law-abiding person has nothing to hide?

I was just thinking up a few scenarios in answer to the assertion that “a law abiding person has nothing to fear from ID cards, in-car tracking systems or surveillance cameras”. These are some wholly or mostly law-abiding persons who do have something to fear:

You’ll have to go to the source for the list.

The wise Tim Blair says:

Kangaroos are friendly. Not like wombats; a wombat will leave you for dead every time.

Of course, he’s linking to a story about a kangaroo tugging the Lassie grift and drawing attention to a farmer who’d been knocked senseless. The kangaroo might just have saved the farmer’s life.

However, we here at RooWatch Central have covered this ground already. Beware the kangaroos.

Obviously, this Lulu character is up to something. Now Lulu is being lauded by Australians. Suddenly, she starts amassing wealth and then uses her popularity as a springboard for replacing John Howard, and suddenly, it’s just like On The Beach (well, in that it’s the end of the world, and it’s set in Australia).

Someone better take care of Lulu before she gets access to Australia’s nuclear arsenal or the Collingwood Magpies is all I am saying. Once she has the Bomb or a standing army, there will be no stopping her.

John Kass of the Chicago Tribune knows the difference (but he’ll only share it with you if you register, which you should):

So the best thing the president could have done, politically, would have been to leave it all to the United Nations, to walk away while loudly declaring victory. That would have been the shrewd move.

You, Heather, and El Guapo, Cagey, and the Meatriarchy guy, go read the whole thing.

Show the Chicago Tribune Web servers what a musingtrickle feels like!

MSNBC is running a story entitled “What $87 Billion Buys: Instead of a war in Iraq, here’s what America could be getting for its money”. In this remarkable (as I am remarking on’t, werd) piece (of something), the author puts together a list of bullet points that describe things the government could do with $87 billion dollars instead of spending it rebuilding Iraq. In between lists, he inserts some snarky quotes by grabby people who haven’t quite gotten their hands full of your money on their pet projects yet.

Basically, Jonathan Darman, author of this Web Exclusive! says the United States Government could, and should, take that $87 billion dollars and:

• Hire millions more bureaucrats which would then need $87 billion dollars plus cost of living adjustments every
  year from this day forward, or

• Pour millions into the budgets of petty bureaucracies, who know they have to spend the money if they want to get
  it next year, which again means $87 billion dollars a year plus 8- or 10-percent annual increases forever.

The author of the piece obviously attended the remedial mathematical classes required to get a Poli-Sci degree along with our distinguished Congresspeople who have the motto if we have a dollar, we should rent something that costs a dollar a month forever.

(Link seen on Little Green Footballs.)

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is so excited that it’s left a puddle on the floor as it reports that:

“No Firearms” signs at many workplaces and businesses open to the public may be the first outward indication that Missouri has joined the states that allow residents to carry concealed weapons.

Gramercy, that will comfort the goblins. Businesses to rob and assurances of safety to ensure that if you’re a nutbar with a grudge, you can splatter as many co-workers as you want before the police arrive. You know, the guys with guns to stop you.

Time quotes “Mad” Albright:

Frankly, if there was a President Gore, we wouldn’t be in this particular mess.

What mess would we be in? Anyone think it would be less?

(Link seen on Drudge.)