Category: News

You know how some of us like to make a little ad absurdum fun about the nanny state bubble-wrapping everything for the safety of its citizens adult children?

Britain is removing satire from our repertoire:

Britain’s first ‘Safe Text’ street has been created complete with padded lampposts to protect millions of mobile phone users from getting hurt in street accidents while walking and texting.

Around one in ten careless Brits has suffered a “walk ‘n text” street injury in the past year through collisions with lampposts, bins and other pedestrians.

There’s a picture at the link.

History repeats itself, the first time as satire, and the second time as just good sense according to British government officials.

Coming soon: buddy bumpers to keep you out of the street.

(Link seen on Outside the Beltway.)

Perhaps that wouldn’t be such a winning slogan, but the Boeing machinist union wants to overturn the decision making apparatus of the United States Air Force:

Furious over the potential loss of tens of thousands of American aerospace jobs, a major union representing Boeing Co. workers intends to press Congress to overturn the military’s awarding of a tanker contract to Northrop Grumman and its European partner, European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co.

Before you let those fellows go all American Pie on you, don’t forget they like to strike at inopportune times.

Be hell of a thing if our Air Force planes couldn’t reach their targets because the Air Force had tankers on back order because machinist strikes pushed their delivery dates, ainna? Guess that’s not going to happen unless our elected betters in Congress will it.

In a stunning turn of events, governments have thought to use the Kirkwood shooting as an excuse to cloak themselves in greater “security” by persecuting dissident citizens and offering a show of force to intimidate citizens. After Kirkwood shootings, gadlies [sic] under the microscope:

Dienoff, who denies he would ever hurt anyone, is among a small number of people who rarely miss the opportunity to attend local government meetings, where they raise the hackles of officials over issues from taxes to traffic tickets.

Often called gadflies, they see themselves as champions of freedom and watchdogs of local government.

But post-Kirkwood, a conflict has arisen between security and First Amendment rights. Where these critics may once have been seen as annoying, if sometimes right, some are now being looked at as possible threats.

Some cities have moved to install metal detectors and to have armed officers on hand. At least one, Pine Lawn, has voted to bar anyone it deems disruptive from public meetings.

Fortunately for those entrenched in local municipal power, the Kirkwood shootings have a ready-made racial template so that citizens and their leaders don’t have to think of it in terms of a small government throwing its weight onto a single citizen, pricking him and then silencing him until violence is his only possible expression.

No, it’s racial. Kumbaya, have some harmony-building meetings, and then take exactly the wrong steps.

Because silencing the disenfranchised faster and moving into micro-sized totalitarian city states more quickly isn’t going to ensure safety. Limiting the government’s influence and not running cities like fuedal fiefdoms might.

Once an organization finds success in its push to rule citizens’ lives (namely, through regulating corporations and the citizens they serve), that organization often likes to turn its prowess at ruling to other endeavors. Another case in point:

The Dodge pickup has rust on the tailgate and a Harley-Davidson sticker on its back windshield. Beside it sits a Honda Accord with a big, white butterfly on the windshield and American flag butterflies on each side of the trunk.

There’s the minivan sporting a tattoo parlor bumper sticker and a miniature San Francisco football jersey suctioned to a window of a red Cougar with a scuffed-up driver’s side.

They all have one thing in common: Their owners didn’t pay off a car title loan, and now they’re getting ready for auction.

For years payday lenders have been the bad guy in the predatory lending debate while their close cousin, car title lenders, have cruised along unnoticed – and perhaps more disturbing for some – unregulated in several states. Many efforts to regulate the industry have failed as the lenders pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into legislative campaigns.

Sadly, the totalitarian impulses of the news media continue to cast organizations who offer services as the bad guy, not the ill-informed or naive sheep who get into bad situations and clamor for the government to save them from their decisions.

Spring flooding possible after heavy snow in upper Midwest:

There’s a good chance of flooding on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers this spring because of soggy landscapes and a heavy snowpack in the upper Midwest, according to the National Weather Service.

So I guess that means I’d better plan on having my tax dollars spent to fix the leaky basements of recent development on flood plains, eh?

Which is worse, the fool who builds multi-million dollar mixed use developments on land that gets submerged, or the fools who suffer a government that feels compelled to bail that fellow out with buckets of cash?

Two things from the SunCrest Call, a local free paper I pick up whenever the OB pats my beautiful wife on the belly and says, “Good job.” The first, an insert by the mayor of Sunset Hills:

Click for full size

The mayor took office in Sunset Hills after the previous administration approved a redevelopment proposal that would have depopulated a subdivision. Many of the residents bought new houses before the actual buyout occurred, and when the funding for the project collapsed, ended up with double mortgages. They were not pleased and threw that bunch out, but now the new bunch wants to redevelop a different area using all of its coercive government powers, and the mayor wants to let you know he’s a better big Keynesian wheel than the last guy.

Meanwhile, a columnist in the paper lauds another mayor for using coercive government power–the power to tax some, but to not tax others–on something the columnist likes:

“There comes a time when you have to back off on your principles and do what’s best for this community.”

We commend Crestwood Mayor Roy Robinson for putting aside his former blind hatred of TIF and trying to ensure that the city has all of its economic-development tools available.

When Crestwood Mayor Roy Robinson made this statement in January 2006, some of us held back laughter, wondering how this was possible.

But two years later, Robinson has shockingly lived up to this creed.

On Feb. 12, the mayor who once ran for office opposing tax-increment financing broke a tie vote among aldermen to protect the use of TIF and, in our opinion, also protect the city’s best interests.

That is, the government can give unfair advantage to new businesses in the region and can soak existing, loyal businesses who have been part of the community for years. And principles get in the way of doing what a select set of businessmen and newspapermen want.

Because those new businesses would buy ads in that same paper, don’t you know? Well, hopefully, anyway.

Lazy fare capitalism, it’s called. And it’s close enough for the Call Newspapers.

See also Krauthammer’s bit on rent seeking at the Federal level.

Not jumping to what would probably be good suspicions, police again prefer to calm the sheep instead of alerting the citizens (Police: Deadly toxin found at Las Vegas hotel):

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said Friday there does not appear to be a link to terrorists.

(Link seen on Instapundit.)

Buried in this story, an often overlooked nugget about Barack Obama:

is delivery is interesting and pleasantly cadenced, and his cigarette habit helps keep his vocal register commandingly, almost seductively, low.

Oh, yeah, Barack Obama smokes!

How do you like him now, granola munchers?

(Link seen on Instapundit.)

A photographer or editor with an apparent lack of astronomy experience titles a photo of last night’s eclipse The Moon In An Otherworldly Moment.

Good job, fellows. Good job.

Come on, who are they trying to fool with this gambit?

A quarter-cent sales tax that would provide $40 million a year for children’s crisis and wellness programs will probably make the county ballot next fall.

A regional consortium of 20 providers of mental health and other support services for children says St. Louis County children are suffering because they lack critical funding for services geared toward mental illness, physical abuse, substance abuse, pregnancy and homelessness.

The county, despite having more than three times the youth population of any other county in the state, is lagging behind its smaller neighbors, including the city of St. Louis and St. Charles, Lincoln and Jefferson counties, say members of the group called Putting Kids First. All of those counties have established a sales tax to fund mental health services, substance abuse and child abuse prevention programs. The most recent was Lincoln County, which approved a quarter-cent sales tax in November 2006.

The money raised by the sales tax is going to get spent with the very people pushing it, hey? So aren’t they a special interest group doing a little rent-seeking? Oh, I forget, they’re doing it for the children, for whose benefit everyone should bleed and sacrifice, except of course those who Serve them. They should get tax money.

And phooey, again, on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for supporting it and continuing to identify sales tax rates in the terms of a horse race or the arms race. What, are we in the county afraid that the city will break the beautiful, wonderful, happy 10% sales tax barrier first?

From The American Thinker:

What do I accept? That the U.S. is just another European country now. We are all welfare states if not outright socialist ones and our political choices are between center-left and left-left. Time to get used to it. Moving to France won’t make much difference, whether you are Alec Baldwin or Chuck Norris.

Sadly, I agree. Things will probably get worse before they get better. However, two things might come into play to stem the tide:

• More children to conservative families than non-conservative ones.
• Home schooling and more attention to education by conservative families balances the unchecked education indoctrination in schools and universities.
• Migrations of the population out of the cities and to less populated areas, leading to a decentralization of governments in the best case scenario.

Because without hope, I got nothing.

Robbers steal $163m in art from Zurich:

Three armed men in ski masks stole four paintings by Cezanne, Degas, van Gogh and Monet worth $163.2 million from a Zurich museum in one of Europe’s largest ever art heists, police said Monday.

What did they get?

A reward of about $90,000 was offered for information leading to the recovery of the paintings – Claude Monet’s “Poppy field at Vetheuil,” Edgar Degas’ “Ludovic Lepic and his Daughter,” Vincent van Gogh’s “Blooming Chestnut Branches,” and Paul Cezanne’s “Boy in the Red Waistcoat.”

What didn’t they get?

The museum also owns Auguste Renoir’s “Little Irene” and Edgar Degas’ “Little Dancer.”

You know, I have a print of “Little Irene” in my house. How they passed up Renoir for Monet and van Gogh, I cannot understand.

The article claims the following regularly scheduled “Don’t try this at home even though the news article has a big dollar amount in its headline” warning:

The FBI estimates the market for stolen art at $6 billion annually, and Interpol has about 30,000 pieces of stolen art in its database. While only a fraction of the stolen art is ever found, the theft of iconic objects, especially by force, is rarer because of the intense police work that follows and because the works are so difficult to sell.

If I were a novelist, or if I were a practicing novelist, this is how I’d plot it out: Russian millionaire who’s a big fan of Monet or wants the Monet to impress his hot young figure skater chickling hires the job out at $2 million a man. It’s costing him $8 million, but far less than he’d have to pay to buy it at auction or on the black market. The other guys snatch and grab a couple extra for their bonus. They wrap the Monet up and ship it to a dead box in Finland, just standard freight, and keep or sell the remainders. After their $2 million payoff.

But I’d save the real plot twist for what comes next.

AP overstates its poll results when it says Bush, Congress hit bottom in AP poll:

It’s almost as if people can barely stand the thought of President Bush and Congress anymore. Bush reached his lowest approval rating in The Associated Press-Ipsos poll on Friday as only 30 percent said they like the job he is doing, including an all-time low in his support by Republicans. Congress’ approval fell to just 22 percent, equaling its poorest grade in the survey. Both marks dropped by 4 percentage points since early January.

Actually, I would expect the absolute bottom to be armed insurrection or at least some sort of lynching. Disgust with one’s government and party, pithy remarks made amongst the like minded, and/or staying home on election day after filing one’s taxes in a timely fashion but answering negatively to a pollster doesn’t strike me as the bottom.

(Link seen on Instapundit.)

From the story Fake FedEx Trucks; When the Drugs Absolutely Have to Get There:

A fake U.S. Border Patrol van was found to be carrying 31 illegal aliens in Casa Grande, Ariz.

An alert agent recognized that the “H” in the van’s serial number is a letter used only on U.S. Border Patrol Jeep Wranglers. It should have been a “P.”

One suspects that the story would have been almost as informative without the clarity that’s only useful to smugglers.

Now, how about some Pantone colors for the fake logos, ABC? What, are you holding something back because the Bush administration censored you?

(Link seen on Instapundit.)

Total Missouri vote count for Fred Thompson: 3106.

That might include me, but on further reflection, I somehow was filling out a St. Louis City paper ballot; I know because I voted against its half cent tax increase for practice.