Category: News

Instapundit links to a story about falling oil prices:

Oil prices plunged to a three-month low Monday, briefly tumbling below $120 a barrel in another huge sell-off after Tropical Storm Edouard seemed less likely to disrupt oil and natural gas output in the Gulf of Mexico.

Brothers and sisters, this is why Congress must act now! It’s not important what action they take, whether it’s foolish rule against oil speculators or more sensible plans to allow off-shore drilling or oil exploration on public lands.

What is important is that our ruling political class realize that unless it acts, citizens might get the impression that market forces alone can cause declining gas prices, and that sometimes the rain falls without the dances of the rainmakers on the floors of the House and Senate.

Wellston police scuffle; guns drawn:

A brawl between the newly chosen city police chief and his ousted predecessor resulted in guns being drawn on Friday and the mayor requiring medical attention for trying to intercede, police said.

The new police chief was named about four days ago, said Pine Lawn Police Chief Rickey Collins, whose department is investigating at the request of the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney’s office.

The two men began pushing and shoving each other about 3 p.m in a meeting room inside Wellston’s City Hall. Collins said he did not know what they argued about, though he said the former police chief recently had been demoted to assistant chief.

Guns were pulled during the scuffle, but no shots were fired, Collins said.

Respect for law and order takes another hit.

Another month, another Critical Mass event includes beating a four wheeler, this time in Seattle:

According to Jamieson, as the Critical Mass group moved down the street, blocking traffic, some riders got in the way of the Subaru and prevented it from leaving. Some bikers sat on the car and were banging on it, he said.

“The driver was pretty fearful that he was about to be assaulted by the bicyclists,” Jamieson said.

The man tried to back up, but bumped into a biker. “This enraged the group,” Jamieson said.

Several of the bikers bashed up the Subaru, shattering the windshield and rear window, Jamieson said.

The driver tried to drive away, but hit another bicyclist, Jamieson said. Still, he drove about a block, to the corner of Aloha and 15th Avenue East, before the Critical Mass riders cornered the car again and started spitting on it and banging against it.

One bicyclist punched the driver through his open window, and another used a knife to slash the Subaru’s tires, Jamieson said.

The driver got out of his car, and was hit in the back of the head, opening a large gash.

Wow, just like San Fransisco.

You know, if they keep at it and this spreads, eventually cities will ban these events. More oppression for the poor, poor bike lovers everywhere, especially the leftist thugs who like any excuse to damage the straights with “cause.”

(Link seen on Ace of Spades HQ.)

In case you didn’t know it, Missouri is almost on par with the third world, or so this dynamic and purposefully frighteningly colored map would have you think.

What is food insecurity? Probably something less than distended bellies and dead children in the streets. But it’s a interpretive metric, so those who want more government money in programs designed to combat bad feelings will always have just cause to spend more money. Except, sometimes, I suspect that it’s just ’cause that they have.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch uses the AB-InBev merger as a springboard to launch a series of “damaging” fatuous questions at John McCain, whose wife owns an AB distributorship.

The head of the Washington Bureau “asks”:

John McCain’s Straight Talk Express is far less talkative when it comes to beer.

McCain’s campaign is unwilling to directly address questions flowing from InBev’s purchase of Anheuser-Busch Cos. in light of his wife, Cindy’s, ownership of a large Anheuser-Busch distributorship in Arizona, Hensley and Co.

— For more than 20 years as a legislator, McCain has abstained from taking positions or voting on measures related to alcohol. As president, would he act on beer-related legislation — or continue to abstain, in effect casting a veto?

— InBev does business in Cuba, designated by the United States as a state sponsor of terrorism. As a candidate, McCain has been tough on the Cuban government. Will his wife now sell the products of a company that does business in Cuba — or even expand her business to include InBev’s other products?

McCain’s campaign is unusually tight-lipped on those questions, and wouldn’t say whether the candidate’s wife plans to separate herself from Hensley.

The paper’s really making an effort here to springboard from a rather touchstone local issue into casting aspersions onto McCain’s ethics. Particularly creative is trying to cast his recusing himself from voting on things that would benefit him through his wife’s company and complaining about how a parent company would do business in Cuba. We’re really stretching here.

I mean, for crying out loud, Barack Obama drives a Chrysler 300, and DaimlerChrysler does business in Cuba. Shouldn’t Barack have rented a Ford? And what about his publisher’s parent company, guilty of using Nazi slave labor at one point? Will Barack abstain from signing legislation in favor of slavery or Nazis?

I mean, I’m just a crackpot backwater blog making sarcastic remarks about Obama here, but the story and the leading questions in the paper is from a “credible” periodical with a (declining) metropolitan audience.

Forget this story, Post-Dispatch. If you need to try to gig McCain based on a narrative of local concern, investigate why he’s tight-lipped about trading for a good middle reliever for the Cardinals. Sure, it’s not his job, but you can still blame him for with a couple of bullet points.

(Full disclosure: I am actually a citizen columnist for a sort of sister publication of the Post-Dispatch.)

When he agrees with the journalist’s point of view:

A rising number of uninsured patients are going without necessary care and are raising medical costs for those who have insurance coverage, according to a report released Tuesday by the Missouri Foundation for Health.

The report, “The Significance of Missouri’s Uninsured,” took several recent studies from health care think tanks and federal agencies, located data relevant to Missouri and added analysis. The report was prepared by the foundation’s Cover Missouri project, which began earlier this year.

“I think there is an increasing understanding among Missourians that we’re reaching crisis,” said Ryan Barker, a health policy analyst for the nonprofit foundation, which conducts health research and advocacy. “This is a problem not just of a few people but of almost 800,000 Missourians.

Spending money on health care for the poor? Not when there’s a study to conduct to bolster allocating tax money to a cause!

When it’s a special interest group that the paper likes, it’s not lobbying, it’s advocating, and the special interest group-funded study isn’t suspect, it’s news.

I know, it goes without saying. But I’ll say it anyway because it’s as important to make a mystical chant out of the truth as it is the less-than-true that you want to stick in people’s heads.

Michael Williams endorses Steelman.

No doubt he’s getting a flurry of hits from the House of Representatives since he quotes the magic Google term “Kenny Hulshof” in his post. I hope you fellows there in Kenny’s office are doing official government work on those computers and not campaign work because I’m under the impression that’s naughty.

But Washington naughty doesn’t count, right?

When Obama says fix the economy, I expect he means neuter.

PS, Time-Warner: I sort of accidentally resubscribed to Fortune, and your love of promoting service to Mother Gaia and pimping politicians in a “business” magazine reminds me that when this year-for-ten-bucks subscription ends, I ought to go with Forbes.

The Post-Dispatch headline is Steelman lags behind Hulshof. What, in votes? No. Projected votes based on a few people reached by phone? No.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Kenny Hulshof rode a wave of endorsements to fundraising success this quarter, outpacing his primary opponent, Sarah Steelman, by more than a 4-1 ratio.

That is, he’s raised more money than she has. But! Citizen, money is a corrupting influence in politics, which is why (the rationale goes) it must be limited by the government.

But the papers, who cheerlead the limitations because they like all government intervention, especially the ones that increase their influence, report on this as though it’s indicative of anything more than who’s got the friends with the deepest pockets.

We could expect it to be Hulshof, the Washington, D.C., resident running for the job. I’m for Steelman, of course, because I think going to Washington, D.C., is sort of like a British man going to WWI. Dudes, I’m Mrs. Dalloway in this scenario, and I just want to have a little party here without damaged veterans of foreign wars or DC “politics” (self- and party-enrichment) ruining it.

What’s my point, other than I saw the movie of the Woolf novel? Oh, yeah, go Steelman.

St. Charles County cuts spending:

Less-than-expected sales tax receipts spurred County Executive Steve Ehlmann today to order county agencies to reduce spending by 8 percent and to eliminate discretionary travel.

Whoa. Must be a stop gap measure until they can figure out how to raise taxes, but still. It’s the sound of fiscal responsibility, if not the practice (but possibly the beginning of the practice).

Cruising bill hits a brick wall:

“I am all too aware of the problems facing the areas targeted by cruising. The cruisers, many of whom are not from St. Louis, are terrorizing our neighborhoods,” Reed said in a statement. “Something needs to be done, but pushing through flawed legislation, which in this bill only continues to erode civil liberties, is not the answer.”

Not passing a poor law just because they can? What sanity-flavored Kool Aid are those alderman drinking? I’d think $4 a gallon gas will curb cruising better than making it illegal, but I’m just thinking back to my young cruising days and shuddering at the thought of putting the whole week’s pay into the gas tank on Friday and Saturday nights, before the Kalt’s burgers and Jolt Cola.

Maybe there is room for some slight optimism in the country and its governance today.

By today, I mean “this morning.” Give me a couple hours and I’ll work myself out of it.

Well, now that many municipalities have eliminated the pit bull and rottweiler threats, perhaps they need to turn their attention to another nemesis of mankind, the miniature dachshund:

A dog chewed off an Alton woman’s big toe while she napped earlier this week.

How many innocent toes have to die before we remove the scourge of this dog breed from our cities? If it saves one toe, it’s worth any cost.

They were bred to bite toes and feet; look at them! They serve no other purpose. City fathers, I demand you round them up and gas them.

Some people think the power of licensing can prevent the deaths of children or tragedies of all sorts. What sort of license could have prevented this?

Adin was already dead, beaten by the defendant at a Motel 6 near the airport because he had wet his pants and was crying, Gabler admitted the next day to police and in court Wednesday.

Gabler wrapped the body in sheets, stuffed the corpse into a suitcase, and drove to Clyde Hamrick Elementary School, just west of Highway 21, near House Springs, where Gabler grew up.

Adin was the son of Min Choi of Maryland Heights. She was visiting relatives in New York and left Adin in Gabler’s care. The couple had been going together for about two years.

Larner said Gabler went on a heroin binge that week and took the drug both before and after Adin’s death.

• A license before dating a heroin user.
• A license before traveling to New York without your children.
• A license for dumping bodies.

Add your own tasteless comments if you need to. Point is, though, that people lie at the heart of many tragedies, whether accidental or willful, and any license regime will not prevent them.

It’s not often you see redevelopment plans like this in the 21st century:

The Stevens family, owners of Sterling Pen Company based in Webster Groves, plan a major renovation to the 1936 “Quonset hut” building that has been unoccupied for more than 15 years. The building would be turned into office space.

The exterior of the former brick warehouse, 8193 Big Bend, was modernized by the Stevens in the early 1990s, but the interior was never completed. The two-story building also has a basement.

The development proposal does not call for any new construction, but would create parking for the newly-renovated building by demolishing the building currently occupied by Earth Designs. That property is also owned by the Stevens family, as is the building and property leased by the adjoining Roger’s Produce, 625 E. Lockwood.

Jeff De Pew, owner of Earth Designs, said he has been working with the Stevens family who has “made sure I have a viable and comfortable option” for relocation of his business.

De Pew said he will move Earth Designs into a residential property at 624 Fair Oaks Ave., located directly behind his current location. The house is owned by the Stevens family, who plan a major renovation to the structure for use as a business. The home’s backyard will be converted into additional parking. All access to the new development will be off of Big Bend, and not the residential neighborhood to the north.

What, the development company owns all the properties itself and doesn’t need tax money to do the work?

Kudos to the Stevens family and Sterling Pen. I hope the city of Webster Groves doesn’t veto the plan simply because it doesn’t call for the government to exert undue influence.

Clayton company says it has built a better grill:

A Clayton entrepreneur is offering a solution for cooks who love to barbecue but find charcoal grills physically or environmentally distasteful.

Bryce Rutter, founder and chief executive of Metaphase Design Group Inc., set up a company to produce a novel grill — one that takes up less space and uses up to 75 percent fewer charcoal briquettes than traditional models.

Then Rutter went an environmental step further last month by acquiring the exclusive North American rights to import an all-natural charcoal made in the Philippines from coconut shells.

Guys, there’s this thing called knowing your target audience, and the people who worry about charcoal grills being environmentally distasteful don’t, you know, eat meat much less cook it over a flame. Their total food preparation experience involves leaving their lofts to go for sushi or Thai or Indian food.

But know that you’ve designed it, you’ll discover the flawed business premise.

Some big news here in St. Louis this weekend: Archbishop Burke, the recent and short-term leader of the Catholic church in St. Louis, was told to take a new position in Rome. The paper and pseudo-Catholics in the region rejoiced, calmly, and the paper helpfully illustrated the things it ran full color spreads on during Burke’s tenure in the story Burke’s tenure here was never dull:

• Archbishop Burke excommunicated a couple of women who started calling themselves Catholic priests and offering mass in a synagogue where they could get space. The paper runs their picture with the story about Burke to give a human face to his totalitarian enforcement of actual, you know, Catholic teaching and doctrine.
• Archbishop Burke reallocated assets of the church, including a Polish parish named for St. Stanislaus. The lay board of the church said no thanks and brought in a rogue priest to run the church. The lay board was shocked to then discover that a priest who would defy the archbishop would also start doing other non-Catholic things, such as recognizing women priests.
• Burke took actions in support of Catholic anti-abortion, anti-embryonic stem cell research teachings, shocking the “enlightened” society of St. Louis.

In other words, he followed the theological mandates of his church and its hierarchy.

However, some “Catholics” and the anti-churching amongst the journalistic set like to run pieces on the authoritarianism and the non-do-your-own-thing vibe of the Catholic church. They want to pick their beliefs and their attitudes from the salad bar of modern day life and still call themselves members of the group, no matter how few characteristics they share with the group. Or, I suppose, they want to tear down something greater than themselves to prove their own power.

You want the mass without the international heirarchy? Become a Lutheran. You want to control your own church and its funds? Join or start a storefront Baptist church. You want women ministers? Become a Unitarian or a Methodist or any of the other sects that have them. You want to worship by having sex with a priestess of Mother Gaia on Tuesday afternoons? Become governor of New York (or some other political office holder) and pay full price same as in town. But do not think that your inclinations are just as Catholic as John Paul II.

I’m not even Catholic, and the media stories offend me.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch performs its simple hard-hitting journalism in sounding an unnecessary klaxon calling for more government oversight and regulation. This time, again, a tragic accidental death of a child should lead (in a perfect Post-Dispatch world) to more government regulation and intrusion. The accident:

A year ago last Thursday the Blechas’ second son, Nathan, died at age 4 months in a portable crib in Lutz’s home, after being placed on his abdomen for a nap. The St. Louis County Medical Examiner’s office ruled the cause of death “re-breath,” the breathing in of carbon dioxide exhaled by the baby, who was too young to turn his head away from a wrinkle in the mattress.

The next day, Lutz shut the day care for good.

Here’s what we glean from the bits:

• The death was an accident.
• The caregiver, riven by guilt, left the profession the next day.
• The paper is not reporting on an accident; instead, one year later, it’s reporting on the parents of the dead child and their crusade to Make Sure Their Child’s Death Was Not In Vain.

The call to government control:

According to state records, Lutz had obtained a license to cut hair and one to practice massage, but when it came to child care, she never applied to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services’ Child Care Regulation section. That’s the unit that inspects day cares and issues licenses for people routinely caring for more than four unrelated children.

Nathan’s parents say they have been waiting “for the system to kick in.” But nothing has happened: no criminal charges, no fines, no outrage and no reform of a child-care oversight system that the Blechas feel did little to prevent or recognize Nathan’s death.

Steve Blecha said he called the Jefferson County sheriff’s office early this year and was told the death had been ruled accidental.

He also learned that the most Lutz could be fined for operating without a license was $200 — a fine so small that Blecha said it didn’t matter that prosecutors didn’t pursue it.

Of course, the article goes into detail about how the government can only fine unlicensed day care facilities and cannot bring down the wrath of the gods upon them. I suppose the “journalists” and certainly the tragically affected parents would like MURDER ONE charges or something to make the people who’ve thought twice THINK TWICE about having accidents, but jeez.

A license probably won’t prevent every accident. It will, however, raise the cost of doing business as a baby sitter/day care, which in turn will drive out conscientious people who won’t pay the money. Then, when the people who cannot afford au pairs need to drop their kids off while they work, they will turn to less conscientious family members, and further accidents will occur.

I hate it when children die, but I also hate it when their deaths lead to knee-jerk statist action that will have unintended consequences worse than the initial accident precipitating the knee-jerk reaction.

But the papers? Man, they love standing up for the outlier since the little guys have already been accommodated.

Fla. vandals tag 60 cars with anti-Obama messages:

Police on Sunday were investigating vandals’ spray-painting of dozens of city vehicles here, some with disparaging messages about the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

Sounds like those racist Republicans, probably on purpose. But:

They even left business cards on the vehicles that disparage both the Illinois senator and his rival, Republican John McCain. The cards voice support for Sen. Hillary Clinton, Obama’s former opponent.

Fortunately, AP had one of its mysteriously present stringers on the scene:

Mike Lowe, a videographer working for The Associated Press, first told police about the damage. He saw three cars with anti-Obama messages, while the others were just heavily painted.

Wait, I thought the headline said sixty cars were tagged with anti-Obamaisms. Truth is, it’s only 3?

Can’t anyone report the events without “hedging” the language into utter falsehood?

A small newspaper’s editor comes out in favor of nationalizing the oil industry:

Here is one question: If the free market is the answer, how come gas at the pump is far, far cheaper in countries where governments run the oil business – Russia, Venezuela, Indonesia. Please, I am just asking a question. I am not a commie.

Just asking a question facilely; I thought journalists wanted answers, but not when the answers undermine their glib socialism. Since he’s not bothering to discuss the lifespan or quality of life of regular citizens in those countries, he’s really just pushing a commie viewpoint.

Perhaps Corrigan would like to talk about how cheap microwave dinners are in Cuba, since that worker’s paradise is only now giving its citizens conveniences we’ve taken for granted for decades. I would guess the same sort of dynamic holds true for cars; only a small percentage of people have cars, and even those who do tend to use them to try to escape to America and its high gas prices.

On the other hand, perhaps Corrigan hopes nationalization will save his industry, as newspapers are in precipitous decline as a business model (link via Instapundit).

Previously on State Run Health Care Lost:

State-run health care in Wisconsin begins denying coverage to the most vulnerable, i.e., expensive, “clients”.

Now, another state with universal health care begins its rationing:

Treatment of advanced cancer meant to prolong life, or change the course of this disease, is not covered by the Oregon Health Plan, said the unsigned letter Wagner received from LIPA, the Eugene company that administers the plan in Lane County.

….
“We can’t cover everything for everyone,” said Dr. Walter Shaffer, medical director of the state Division of Medical Assistance Programs, which administers the Oregon Health Plan.

“Taxpayer dollars are limited for publicly funded programs. We try to come up with polices that provide the most good for the most people. Most cancer treatments are high priority on the list,” Shaffer said.

But the intent of the list was to exclude coverage of treatments that are futile, or where potential benefit is minimal in relation to expense.

That sounds kinda like the insurance industry, except without choice and responsibility-proof government bureacratic effort.

Note to the Kansas City Star: I am against government health care, not for more expensive programs throwing greater amounts of confiscated citizen money after diminishing returns. Thank you, that is all.
(Link seen on Dustbury.)