Category: News

AP ain’t rooting for the home team in this article: 2010 a record year for deadly disasters:

This was the year the Earth struck back.

Earthquakes, heat waves, floods, volcanoes, super typhoons, blizzards, landslides and droughts killed at least a quarter million people in 2010 — the deadliest year in more than a generation. More people were killed worldwide by natural disasters this year than have been killed in terrorism attacks in the past 40 years combined.

First, the Earth does not have intention, no matter how fervently its worshipers want to anthropomorphize it. Seriously, what the hell kind of “journalist” writes like that, where the planet is at odds with humans? Sorry, I lost my head there. This is an AP wire story. No news was intended nor implied.

Secondly, the deadliest year in a generation? A generation of what, exactly, that has been born in the six years since the Indonesian tsunami killed almost a quarter million people on one day alone. Given the inclinations of these writers, perhaps they’re thinking of more than a generation of Toyota Priuses.

How uncritical do you have to be to fall for this kind of “reporting”? What kind of gull do you have to be to write it?

Back in 2008, the choice of future foreign policies was clear: An old prisoner of war known to have a temper who joked about bombing regional superpowers for fun and who might actually have been just a little crazy and a professor.

Well, we know what we elected.

Our enemies might not have respected McCain, but they probably would have feared him a little bit. And let’s just cut the crap about multipartitism or international organization and treaties and soft power. At the very root level, the least lawabiding regimes in the world and those who would twist international cooperation to their own ends don’t care about the kabuki of the United Nations or the Hague or anything. They care about their well-being, and if the United States makes it perfectly clear that it’s not going to revoke diplomatic impunity, they’re going to do what they want regardless of international harrumphing.

Would North Korea still have shelled South Korea with McCain as president? Probably. The Chinese still played bumper cars with our electronic surveillance plane when Bush was President (albeit before he toppled a couple regimes).

But I would feel better if I didn’t suspect President Obama’s response to a dirty bomb in Topeka or a nuclear explosion in the port of Long Beach (or even a truck bomb at a holiday ceremony in small town Oregon) would be very similar to this dissembling response, albeit slightly less dissembling because he’d have his teleprompter contrast set as high as he could.

(Video seen at A Trainwreck in Maxwell.)

I cringe when law enforcement gets “creative“:

Creative law enforcement isn’t new to St. Clair County Sheriff Mearl Justus.

. . . .

On Tuesday, his deputies lifted a plastic tarp to unveil his newest idea: an armored truck to park in problem neighborhoods as a vandal-proof platform to transmit live pictures.

“I thought about a lot of names … I thought ‘The Cockroach’ would’ve probably been appropriate, but we settled on ‘The Exterminator,'” Justus told reporters.

The donated and rebuilt armored truck, once used to carry cash, is fitted with cameras, digital recorders and gear to stream live video. Deputies will park it in front of the “dwellings of troublemakers” — for days at a time, if necessary — to reduce nuisance crimes.

“It sends a message,” Justus said. “We will not tolerate drug trafficking, littered lawns, loud noise and other neighborhood nuisances.” He said the cameras should keep criminals on the run and give residents peace of mind.

Those budgets aren’t going to spend themselves, and the newspaper pages won’t just spontaneously print images of the Chief unless the department takes creative action.

Will it be effective? It depends upon whether you believe its goals are to fight crime or the aforementioned budget/news pictures.

Enlightened European socialism in action:

As authorities prepared for another national strike Tuesday, a larger swath of the population was already feeling the effect of nearly a week of continuous strikes by workers, especially in the energy sector, who were joined early Monday by truck drivers who blocked major roads around France, driving at a snail’s pace in “escargot operations.”

Despite government assurances, fears of gasoline shortages pushed drivers to fill up their tanks, causing more than 1,000 of France’s 12,500 gas stations to temporarily run dry.

“The most serious concern is fuel,” said Richard Laisne, 58, a Paris taxi driver. “Because if there’s a fuel problem, there’s no work for me.” He said he filled up his tank Sunday.

Government leaders continue to assure the public that there was no reason to fear a shortage, and Prime Minister Francois Fillon said Sunday, “I won’t let our country be blocked.”

A spokesman for the Energy Ministry said trucks were on their way to restock gas stations that ran out of fuel.

Flight cancellations and delays are expected Tuesday as airport and public transport workers plan to strike. The government again advised airlines to reduce the number of flights they have planned to Paris and to arrive with their fuel tanks as full as possible, despite insisting there was no risk of fuel shortages at France’s major airports.

With striking workers blocking roads, trains, gasoline depots and refineries, there could be a long delay before hard-hit gas stations are able to function normally.

Throw in some occasional riots of youths of unnamed ethnicity, and you’ve got a virtual Utopia. Why don’t we do that here?

Oh, yeah, we are.

News story covering events:

A Chicago man has been charged with plotting to bomb a strip of crowded night spots around the time people were leaving a Dave Matthews concert at Wrigley Field over the weekend.

Sami Samir Hassoun, 22, was arrested as he placed a backpack containing what he thought were high-explosives in a trash can in front of Sluggers, about a block south of Wrigley Field, according to the FBI.

Houssoun had also discussed other violent plots in Chicago, including a biological attack on the city, poisoning Lake Michigan, attacking police officers, bombing the Willis Tower and assassinating Mayor Richard Daley, the FBI said.

Thoughtful analysis from the left, in this case, Eugene Robinson:

When did the American right become such a bunch of fraidy-cats and professional victims? Or is it all just an act?

Of course, he was not analyzing the related story. He was casting aspersions on the right, moored only in his preconceived notions.

On the plus side, when you stick your head that far into the sand, you can actually hear the earth’s core bubbling.

So, how many people like this who’ve got their knickers in a twist about a proposed bicycle ban on public roads:

Today the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on the ongoing efforts of St. Charles County Councilman Joe Brazil (R-Defiance) to get bikes banned from rural Southwestern St. Charles country roads – seems he listens closely to those folks who resent having to share the road with bicyclists. As a person who frequently commuted to work by bicycle when I lived in the San Francisco Bay area – where, incidentally, droves of bicycles regularly share narrow, curving mountain roads with cars with few accidents – I could easily visualize the type of folks who might complain.

I have vivid memories of elderly people on deserted streets who, despite having acres of space in which to pass me as I hugged the side of the street, instead reduced their speed to a crawl and made exasperated faces and gestures as they followed me slowly along the street. Or the teen-age girls who yelled obscenities at me as I followed prescribed procedure for making a left-hand turn in traffic. This didn’t happen too often in Palo Alto, and the perpetrators were not people whom one would accord much credibility. In retrospect, however, their rather irrational sense of entitlement suggests that they might have been just the type of folks who would be at home at a Tea Party – which could explain our Republican pol’s concern for their druthers rather than those of bike riders.

are the same sorts of people who are all a-flutter to tell other people who own businesses that they cannot allow smoking on their private property?

Yeah, I’m going with 89% myself.

You could even make the same sorts of public health trumps private property rights arguments. Bikers hit by cars cost the public money! Emergency services aren’t cheap!

Ah, well, as some might very well misquote, “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

Just for the record, I favor the rights of the property holder in both cases. However, the urbane busybodies of the world who want to dictate what you can do with your property want unfettered access to their property to make you do it.

You know what would make a realistic plot these days for a heist movie? Industrial warehouse theft, where the bad guys back trucks up to the dock and make off with nonglittery stuff from the warehouse.

Examples include pharmaceuticals:

Thieves staged a Hollywood-style heist at a pharmaceutical warehouse over the weekend and made off with about $70 million in antidepressants and other prescription drugs, authorities said Tuesday.

Thieves cut a hole in the ceiling of an Eli Lilly and Co. warehouse in Enfield, a northern Connecticut city that borders Massachusetts, before dawn Sunday and rappelled inside, where they disabled an alarm and apparently loaded pallets of drugs into a waiting vehicle, police said. The thieves made off with enough drugs to fill at least one tractor-trailer, police said.

And metals:

Thieves swiped hundreds of tons of nickel and copper from a Liverpool warehouse in May, the latest in a rash of commodities heists spurred by high prices.

The material was stolen May 31 from a shed in Liverpool’s docklands area that was owned by warehousing company Henry Bath & Son, a unit of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. According to police in Merseyside County, which includes Liverpool, the metal sheets were worth “several million pounds.”

The heist was the second in less than a year from a U.K. warehouse owned by Henry Bath. Last September, 209 tons of aluminum ingots valued at £360,000, or about $545,900, were stolen from a Henry Bath facility in Liverpool. Police estimated that it would have taken up to eight trucks to remove that amount of aluminum.

Jumping jiminy, those are plots that are not overused.

A child abductor who killed himself was apparently quite the one man crime wave:

Jeffrey “Smitty” Smith, 49, of Hawk Point, died of a single gunshot wound to the head. He was found outside his shop on July 3.

Residents of Hawk Point, in Lincoln County, had speculated for days about a link between the homicide and Paul Smith, who abducted 4-year-old Alisa Maier from her Louisiana, Mo., home earlier in the week. Paul Smith, who is not related to Jeffery, lived in a cabin in Hawk Point.

The Major Case Squad ended the speculation at a late afternoon press conference Friday, saying a search of Paul Smith’s home had uncovered a pistol and ammunition hidden in a black vinyl case under the porch. Ballistics tests showed the weapon was used to kill Jeffrey Smith, said Deputy Cmdr. Mark Schimweg of the Major Case Squad.

Detectives said the pistol used in the homicide was not the same one Paul Smith used to kill himself on Wednesday, after police confronted him about Alisa’s abduction. The caliber of the murder weapon was not released.

Lincoln County Prosecutor John Richards said the gun was stolen in a burglary in Pike County last month. He said his office has no information that would lead to charges against anyone else for the murder or the burglary.

Police believe Paul Smith, 38, may also have been responsible for dozens of burglaries in the Hawk Point and Bowling Green areas in recent weeks.

Maybe I read too many detective books, but I hope the cops have something more to go on than a gun found outside the man’s residence after he was already dead of a gunshot wound.

You know, I ought to get back to thinking I am going to write detective books. Because that would be a good way to dispose of a gun.

Paul Krugman is crude.

(Link seen on Financial Times.)

Instapundit links to this bit about an MSNBC personality advocating the draft, again:

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, WE’D BE TALKING ABOUT RESTORING THE DRAFT. And they were right!

I’m reminded of this MoveOn ad denying John McCain’s use of Alex:

I wonder if MoveOn would be okay with Mr. Obama having Alex, but that’s idle speculation on my part. It’s two years later, after all. Even Alex’s mother might be looking to send her toddler in his terrible threes to military boarding preschool.

The left always wants to frighten young men and women with the fears of a draft, but I think this will lose efficacy as the draft recedes in living memory and the horrors of Vietnam fade.

A draft compelling young people to serve together would probably act against the left’s divide-and-rule strategy of segregating citizens into aggrieved interest groups. When all 25-year-olds have served in the military, they might have a better shared American experience and perspective. I don’t think that would serve the left very well at all.

Don’t worry about a double-dip recession. Hope for a double-dip recession, at least the W-shaped recession that looks like this:

Because at the end of both dips, it goes back up.

There’s no reason you can’t have a recession that looks like this:

Kinda like hoping that Obama is only is bad as Jimmy Carter.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers. Thanks for the link, Professor. Hey, if you’re in the IT industry, don’t forget to check out my Software Quality Assurance blog, QA Hates You.

Do not fear, citizen: it was not a rational response to the unsustainable government spending and underfunded pensions in Greece and throughout the world, including the United States and its component state and municipal governments, that triggered the Dow Jones’ plunge yesterday.

Instead, it was a computer glitch or typographical error that, for a time being, looked as though it was going to bring economic collapse upon us. That is, it was something completely accidental, random, and out of your control which wreaked havoc with investor confidence and, potentially, your life’s savings.

Carry on as you were.

Suspect in slays fan of ‘Dungeons’:

Accused campus killer Amy Bishop was a devotee of Dungeons & Dragons – just like Michael “Mucko” McDermott, the lone gunman behind the devastating workplace killings at Edgewater Technology in Wakefield in 2000.

Bishop, now a University of Alabama professor, and her husband James Anderson met and fell in love in a Dungeons & Dragons club while biology students at Northeastern University in the early 1980s, and were heavily into the fantasy role-playing board game, a source told the Herald.

“They even acted this crap out,” the source said.

Guns don’t kill people. Graph paper and strange dice kill people.

How big of a fan was the other guy?

Police seized two Dungeons & Dragons books from McDermott’s Haverhill apartment after he shot seven co-workers to death on Dec. 26, 2000.

That’s not a whole lot of fan.

(Link seen on Ace of Spades HQ.)

The family of a slain family sues the murderer’s employer for not preventing the murders:

The Joyce Meyer Ministries did too little to prevent its security manager, Christopher Coleman, from alledgedly murdering his wife and two sons, according to an addition filed Monday to a wrongful-death lawsuit.

The suit, filed here on behalf of Sheri Coleman’s family, now seeks damages “in excess of $50,000” from the international television ministry as well as Coleman.

It suggests the killings might not have occurred if the ministry had followed its own guidelines and better investigated anonymous threats against Coleman and his family.

How does that make you feel, employers? You’re now responsible for preventing murders.

Also, how do you think this will impact hiring of ex-convicts?

1 suspect in custody following Dem HQ vandalism in Denver:

A 24-year-old arrested this morning on suspicion of smashing 11 windows at Colorado Democratic Party headquarters tried to conceal his identity while allegedly committing the crime, according to police descriptions.
. . . .

he other storefronts surrounding the building on West Eighth Avenue and Santa Fe Drive in downtown Denver’s art district were untouched. But the Democratic posters are scuffed from hammer blows, Waak said.

No doubt if he had gone into the building, he would have damaged the upholstery with a sickle.