Category: News

Bad:

SWAT officers expected to find a victim shot to death, drugs and a belligerent armed suspect when they surrounded the home of an unsuspecting couple, but found they were only a part of a false emergency call caused by a teenager who hacked into the county’s emergency response system, authorities said.

As officers swarmed the home with assault rifles, dogs and a helicopter, a Lake Forest couple and their two toddlers inside their home slept unsuspectingly.

On March 29 at 11:30 p.m., authorities allege, Randall Ellis, a 19-year-old from Mukilteo, Wash., hacked into the county’s 911 system from his home and placed a false emergency call, prompting a fully armed response to the home of an unsuspecting couple that could have ended tragically.

Couple that with the fact that in the next twenty years we’ll have SWAT teams with robots on them:

The National Defence Force is probing whether a software glitch led to an antiaircraft cannon malfunction that killed nine soldiers and seriously injured 14 others during a shooting exercise on Friday.

Jeez, who’s going to need Terminators when you’re going to have defective software and pinheaded hackers playing potentially deadly pranks?

In this case, one suspect lacked motive, so we could eliminate them from the whodunit:

Authorities had no motive for the shooting.

Well, we’ll have to look elsewhere for our perpetrator, then, Hercule.

Sunset Hills project wants tax break:

The Sansone Group has proposed constructing an office-retail complex to replace the 35-year-old Holiday Inn motel-Viking banquet center on the northwest corner of Lindbergh Boulevard and Watson Road in Sunset Hills.

The developer is seeking $12 million in government assistance for the $48.2 million project. The aid would be via tax increment financing and transportation development and community improvement districts. Each district would levy one-cent sales taxes.

This is already not newsworthy, ainna? As the contracts are written in English, so they come with hands extended for money from the citizens of the “growing” or “revitalizing” area.

Story: Alorton police chief grazed in shooting.

Hedge:

Police chief Robert Cummings was grazed in his arm by a bullet apparently fired by another man during a drug stop, Illinois state police said today.

The Post-Dispatch does not completely eliminate the possibility of a self-inflicted wound.

In this blog’s very first post, I warned about the provisions in rescue group contracts that you signed to take a pet from them:

When my wife and I wanted to adopt a rescue dog, we had a hound visit our house, mainly to see if it wanted to eat our cats. The rescue volunteer provided a packet of information about dogs and a contract we would have to sign to take possession of the pooch. The contract included house inspections at will of the rescue group. It could also take the dog back at any time if it found our conditions “unsuitable, which includes but not limited to…” a non-exclusive litany. If we lost the dog; we’d pay the rescue group a thousand dollars, even if we “lost” the dog ten years hence when it died and we did not notify the rescue group in 1 (one) week.

Obviously, Ellen DeGeneres is not an avid MfBJNer:

Ellen DeGeneres is in the doghouse with a pet rescue agency after giving a pooch away to her hairdresser because it didn’t get along with her cats.

The talk show hostess and her partner Portia de Rossi adopted Iggy, a Brussels Griffon mix, on Sept. 20. But when things didn’t work out, DeGeneres gave the dog to her hairdresser.

In doing so, DeGeneres violated an agreement with the Mutts and Moms dog rescue agency by not informing them of the handoff.

When the agency called DeGeneres to ask about Iggy, she said she found another home for the dog. The agency sent a representative to the hairdresser’s home Sunday and took the dog away.

The entertainment industry takes note:

DeGeneres went public about the situation Monday while taping an episode of her show to air Tuesday. She admitted she didn’t read all the paperwork involving the adoption.

Ellen DeGeneres does not read her contracts.

Stunning finding reported in Reader’s Digest:

A February report in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that taking antioxidant vitamins actually increased a person’s risk of dying by up to 16 percent.

. . . .

But in 47 randomized trials involving almost 181,000 adults, researchers found that taking vitamins A, beta carotene and E, alone or in combination, actually increased a person’s risk of dying by up to 16 percent.

Personally, I find my odds daunting, but at least they’re not 116% chance of dying.

Cop who fell on the job sues family of baby who almost drowned:

In January, 1-year-old Joey Cosmillo wandered into the backyard and fell into the family pool. When his mother hauled him out, he wasn’t breathing. Rescuers were able to bring him back to life, but he suffered severe brain damage and cannot walk, talk or even swallow.

Now, his family faces another burden: One of the rescuers, Casselberry police Sgt. Andrea Eichhorn, is suing, alleging the family left a puddle of water on the floor that afternoon, causing her to slip and fall.

Twit.

Man, I love the anthropological-style essays about hipsters who move to suburbia and report their shocking findings!

The second morning after I moved into my first officially “owned” home, I woke up to find my somewhat decrepit mailbox bashed in by vandals.

I was rattled. As an Asian, I thought perhaps the bashing was meant as a kind of message to me: You are not wanted here – or something to that effect.

Home ownership was, to me, a strange thing. You’d think it would give you a sense of belonging, of security. But for me it was a foray into territory that as a woman, and half Chinese, seemed off-limits, even though I was born here.

It didn’t help that my new next-door neighbor flew the flag in his front yard well past the Fourth of July and, I would discover, straight into winter.

I live in Santa Cruz, so my initial reading on the mailbox bashing seemed improbable. Still, I was shaken. The neighborhood was suburban style, and filled with a lot of folks of retirement age who had lived in the city since before it had become “progressive” – since before anyone had heard of the word at all.

Later on that day, as I was strolling along my block, I noticed that almost every one of my neighbors also had their mailboxes bashed in – except for those who had taken time to hand paint their mailboxes with flowers or hummingbirds, or who had added accessories to make their mailboxes into caricatures of cats or frogs or sharks or what have you. I mused that at least it was nice of the (I supposed) teenagers with the baseball bat to grant some forbearance for attempts at mailbox aesthetics.

She’s lucky she moved to suburbia in California, because let me tell you, if that half-Chinese woman had moved onto my block, I would probably have not even noticed. Dramatically!

And she could have reported how the people in this tribe walk their children, fly flags with strange foreign emblems (giant green and gold Gs), and refuse to mow their lawns religiously.

Somewhere, somehow, hipsters are all caught by surprise by the revelation that people who live in homes instead of condos, lofts, or urban apartments are people, too!

Given how easily the power has gone out over the last year or so, you would think that residents would agitate for the local power company to do something. Actually, you’re right. A series of “show trials” where the power company officials had to do some ‘splainin before the elected officials and their hangers-on, the press.

And when the company, AmerenUE wants to do something, what does it get? You bet! Residents agitating that AmerenUE is doing something:

Pam Schnebelen realizes that AmerenUE officials are going to have a tough time deciding on a route to build miles of transmission lines through Jefferson County.

But, they better not come through the LaBarque Creek watershed area in northwestern Jefferson County, she said.

“They are not going to build in this watershed,” Schnebelen said. “They’ll have to take any landowner to court to get an easement, because they can’t compensate in dollars for the environmental impact involved.”

Schnebelen, 57, Judy Browne-D’Amico and Bob Coffing, 68, all members of the LaBarque Creek Watershed Landowners Committee, recently invited the Journal to see the LaBarque Creek watershed area. The area includes private property as well as public lands and is located off Route FF near the St. Louis County line. It covers about 13 square miles.

Why can’t private industry use the same magic that the government uses to be all things to all voters?

Columnist Don Corrigan in the Webster-Kirkwood Times invents “remembers” a foreign policy bullet point that none of the rest of us do:

•Failure to pay for the war with Iraqi oil profits, as was promised.

Uhm, who promised that? I seem to recall some no war for oil chanting, but that wasn’t a response to the administration’s foreign policy establishment making a promise.

Is St. Louis building blocks or back breakers?:

Fresh off cinching a blockbuster downtown deal that relies heavily on taxpayer support, developer John Steffen said he hoped there would come a time when projects like his wouldn’t need tax breaks.

As St. Augustine said, “Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.” To which John Steffen says, “Wait until it’s my competition begging for free tax dollars.” Well, that’s implied.

Searching for drunks triggers a backlash:

Orange traffic cones. Police officers with flashlights. Tow trucks idling.

The sight of a sobriety checkpoint is supposed to be — well — sobering.

But frequent roadblocks on a short stretch of Natural Bridge Road and at least one of its major cross streets this summer have triggered complaints that police are more interested in writing tickets than catching drunks in that part of north St. Louis County. During one Pine Lawn checkpoint in August, for instance, officers wrote 133 tickets — none for drunken driving.

Coming soon: Armed home inspections looking for building violations. In the interest of public safety!

Here’s a nice, friendly fluff piece on tonight’s Critical Mass bike ride in San Francisco: Critical Mass celebrating 15 years of free-form bicycle advocacy:

Tonight’s Critical Mass in San Francisco marks the 15th anniversary of the rebellious rolling ride that locally has propelled the bicycle movement into the political mainstream and globally has been copied by hundreds of cities.

I guess that means the regularly-scheduled automobile driver story will be tomorrow, then.

And “free-form” activism means “violence,” kinda like “activism” does nowadays. Check.

Notice the difference between the headline and the actual story: Last of roaming bulls found dead:

The bull was initially spotted in the 3800 block of Gasconade Street in St. Louis. People who spotted the bull called 911 and dispatchers alerted animal rescue workers.

The bull nearly ran onto busy Interstate 55, but crews were able to coax it away from the highway. The bull then took off and ran for about two miles south along railroad tracks. Crews pursued but the bull eventually stumbled down the steep embankment.

Crews tried to free the bull which had its legs twisted and wedged between boulders but the animal quickly went into shock and died.

“It’s very disappointing,” said Roger Vincent of the Missouri Emergency Response Service. “We were hoping to save him and send him on his happy way.”

Oh, you sent him to a better place all right. These Animal Welfare Experts chased this livestock down a hill to its death.

If they were not Animal Welfare Expert Crews and were just normal people, do you think they’d be charged with animal cruelty?

I’m not saying they should be; I’m just saying that they probably could, unfortunately for those of us who are not experts.

In the worst calming commentary I’ve ever seen, some computer person comments that the theft of computer backup tapes is really only an issue when the person who steals the tapes knows how to get the information from the tapes.

Which means you’re okay if the thief mistakenly thought the backup tapes were DVD players or something else you can sell for easy cash to any fence in the city.

Okay, then.

The danger in stolen computer tapes only happens when the burglar knowingly steals computer tapes.

All clear.

And I feel better.

That’s not a duck hunt. This is a duck hunt.

In Britain, the land of the night of 1000 eyes, 80% of crime goes unsolved. Apparently, the police over there don’t use them to dispatch actual officers to dangerous situations, either:

A SCHOOLBOY has been caught on CCTV brandishing what appears to be an AK47 machine gun on a railway station platform.

The youngster, aged about 15, and a friend got the gun out of a bag and then allegedly aimed the weapon at a terrified crane driver working on the opposite side of the tracks at Newton Station in Hyde, Greater Manchester.

Driver David Wood rang his boss who filmed the incident on CCTV cameras and called police.

But after officers failed to turn up promptly, the youngsters disappeared.

So what are the cameras there for, if not to help solve crimes or to allow the police to dispatch officers to trouble spots immediately?

It’s all about budgets and shiny things for government bureaucracies.

(Link seen on The Other Side of Kim.)

Alien foe imperils KC conventions:

When the mayor named a 73-year-old grandmother to the city’s park board — which considers issues like off-leash dog areas and outdoor party permits — the move might have gone largely unnoticed.

But Frances B. Semler’s appointment could now cost the city millions of dollars because she is a member of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a group that advocates vigilante patrolling of the Mexican border and reports illegal immigrants to authorities.

Her membership has drawn sharp criticism from the National Council of La Raza, the nation’s largest Hispanic advocacy group, and the NAACP. Both groups are threatening to show their displeasure by canceling conventions scheduled to be held in Kansas City.

Well, that’s disappointing; instead of a real alien foe, we’ve got the normal victim groups threatening Armageddon over a secure borders advocate, both of which call her a racist no doubt with no self-consciousness that their very groups work to isolate and elevate particular races by name (Colored People and The Race).

I almost wish it were the Skrulls, because at least they shape shift instead of forcing everything else to change shape to accommodate them.