But controversy has erupted because some members of the academy might have been corrupted:
They Call It The Annual Firestone
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Category: News
Framing, Dear Brian, Framing
A rapacious government doing whatever it can to extract money from its citizens to fund dubious programs? The St. Louis Post-Dispatch cannot tear itself off of the legs of the monied political class. Wait, it’s not just poor governance! It’s predatory bullying:
Some homeowners fuming over reassessment left a town hall meeting here Saturday feeling bounced around by government with no way to fight the double-digit percentage jump in home values.
“The politicians create a bureaucratic jungle,” said Bill Powers, 72, whose Ladue home’s assessed value rose 39 percent.
“The county points to the state. The state points to the county — and they all point to the computer system” that compiles the numbers, Powers said. “The system is flawed, and it’s predatory.”
Well, yeah, that’s how the governments that the Post-Dispatch continually rah-rahs work. They take more and more money from citizens to fund the development projects and other goofball projects for which the paper asks us to “Gimme a G! Gimme an O! Gimme a V! Gimme a E!” and so on.
One must wonder how much the landowners at the top of Post-Dispatch masthead got soaked to allow citizens to feel bullied in print.
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And Whosoever Shall Be Found Without The Soul For Getting Down
Must stand to face the hounds of hell and rot inside a corpsed shell:
Private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP likely will be the winning bidder to buy Chrysler Group from DaimlerChrysler AG, and an announcement could come as early as Monday, a company official said Sunday.
Jeez, what marketing genius came up with the idea to name a company after the three-headed hound who guarded the gates of Hades? How would you feel if the company you worked for was from the Greek for Hellhound? Seriously, someone either made a whacked naming decision or they’re telling us something.
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Counterpoint: Let’s Keep The Mother Fighting Tradition Alive
Some people argue that mother fighting is a brutal sport that civilized nations should prohibit, since in many mother fights, the mothers are often wounded mortally or to the point where they are euthanized. While this might be the case, mother fights are conducted in the most humane fashion possible, without the use of spurs or other sharpened implements to increase bloodiness.
While some people don’t like mother fighting, it’s important to recognize the cultural import of the sport to many nations. In some underdeveloped countries, mother fighting provides much need entertainment in relief of hardscabble lives where people lack sports teams that charge $100 a ticket, concert venues where washed-up acts charge $100 a ticket, or functioning democratically-elected legislatures whose entrances cost millions of dollars. It remains an inexpensive sport participated in village greens, small outbuildings, and wherever like minded individuals gather to gamble, drink, and enjoy the spectacle.
And what a spectacle it provides! Brilliantly-plumed hens strutting and preening as they enter the ring, only to circle on another as in a ballet and come together in a whirling, flashing dance of life and death. Tallons, teeth, and elbows fly through the air gracefully, with the sensuous motion of lovers until one triumphs over the other. The arena bursts into applause at that great cathartic moment!
Mother fighting, unlike many of the organized sports of the upper classes, does not require expensive equipment nor time and minivan commitment. All a boy needs is a mother, time to train, some grain, and a dream. And what dreams the boy has; he can feel the warmth of the lights and the lightness of head that comes when his mother enters the ring and emerges victoriously. The boy’s name will live forever, and the boy will become a proud man.
Some opponents of mother fighting think that it’s barbaric and want to institute prohibition. They seek to transmute Mother’s Day, the annual festival of mother fighting and the day of some of the largest, most festive carnivals and biggest mother fights, into a day of peace, a day set aside to preserve and honor the mother. This foolishness cuts to the very heart of tradition and seeks to impose a set of beliefs not held by the majority onto the world at large. We should not let this come to pass.
(Read the Point, Let’s reclaim Mother’s Day for peace, by Jordan’s Queen Noor.)
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iPacemaker
Apple’s iPods interfere with heart pacemakers, study shows:
A teenager’s curiosity has uncovered an unsettling side effect of wearing an iPod: It might cause heart pacemakers to malfunction.
The discovery appeared in a study announced Thursday during a research presentation in Denver. The finding, initially reported by Reuters, shows that iPods generate enough electromagnetic interference to hamper effective function of implantable pacemakers, and in some instances cause them to stop working entirely.
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Crony Capitalists Giveth
And crony capitalists taketh away:
The Washington County Board has refused to pay a $4 million subsidy to Cabela’s Inc., the world’s largest direct marketer of outdoor gear, for construction of a store that opened in Richfield in September.
A slim majority of supervisors Tuesday voted against borrowing the funds that the board had pledged to Cabela’s in September 2005 as an incentive for building the store in the county.
I know, I rail on crony capitalism in the form of governments giving incentives to certain developers or corporations for selection of one municipality over another, but I’m even more disturbed that governments are becoming brazen in not holding to their words, resolutions, promises, writs, and whatnot.
Pardon me while I synchronize my watch with the continuing countdown to the end of our Western civilization.
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Mass Murder of One
The layering of charges to get around that nasty prohibition against double jeopardy continues unabated. Within this terrible story, note how a death through negligence becomes mass murder:
The couple were found guilty May 2 of malice murder, felony murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty to children. A jury deliberated about seven hours before returning the guilty verdicts.
That’s three charges for the death of one individual.
Recognizing the possibility of prosecutorial overreach might have been the only thing preventing additional charges of child abuse, battery, and assault with intent to kill negligently.
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That’s a Bold Marketing Tagline
Seen in the current issue of Leatherneck:
Click for full size
“No other aircraft gets Marines into and out of danger like the V-22.”
That’s just climbing into the aircraft.
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Celebrate Brutality with the New York Daily News
So apparently Paris Hilton is going to jail, and here’s the New York Daily News reveling in the brutality behind bars:
Hotel heiress Paris Hilton better watch her back in the Century Regional Detention Facility, visitors who were at the jail yesterday warned.
“If you act like you’re all high-class and uppity,” Denise Chavis said, “you’re done.”
The paper goes on to describe the deplorable nature of life in jail. With glee and a slight taunt. Finally, we’ve brought her down low.
How pathetic. However Paris Hilton emerges from prison, she’ll still be Paris Hilton, and the mean-spirited Daily News West Coast Bureau Chief will still be only that.
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Cop Killer, 25 Years Later, Full of Wrong Adjectives
Convicted killer fears his last moments:
Workman said he doesn’t feel much like a person anymore. He has become a pile of legal briefs, appeals, depositions.
And he is angry, sorry, scared and depressed.
Of the officer who was killed, Workman says: “Any loss of life is a tragedy.”
No, sir; the loss of the officer was tragic, but the result of another man’s actions. When that life is lost, it will be justice, not tragedy.
The dead cop didn’t get 25 years to build up a good set of anger, fear, or depression. He doesn’t feel like a person any more, either, because Workman killed him in a Wendy’s parking lot. Poor bastard is nothing but a footnote in a CNN cause célèbre.
Meanwhile, pliable proletariat reader, feel sympathy for some poor soul who’s had 25 years to reflect on what he’s done, and the best he can do is a sideways sorry amid his own turmoil for his punishment.
I’d say shame on CNN and shame on Workman, but there’s no shame any more. Some people have moved beyond it.
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Why Does Jim Doyle Hate Real Estate Investors?
Maybe he doesn’t hate them; maybe they’re just dogs whose blood he wants to suck:
Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle’s plan to double the fee paid by sellers of homes and other property – a fee increase that would cost sellers of property $142 million over the next two years – survived the first attempt by Republicans to kill it Thursday.
No doubt, Jim Doyle’s blue-ribbon BOHICA commission assume that this will not impede real estate investment and rehabbing, particularly in blighted areas in the throes of gentrification. No doubt the crony capitalists in charge of Wisconsin government will redistribute some wealth to favored developers to offset the new fee increases they’re saddling the honest men with.
But cause and effect aren’t tied together when effects are bad and the cause is “more taxes” or “more government.”
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A Tale Of Two Commencement Speakers
One routinely says things that don’t make sense, and the other is Yogi Berra.
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New Democrat Voter Outreach
Not really, but come on, we all know who this object will vote for, don’t we?
In some ways, Hiasl is like any other Viennese: He indulges a weakness for pastry, likes to paint and enjoys chilling out watching TV.
But he doesn’t care for coffee, and he isn’t actually a person—at least not yet.
In a case that could set a global legal precedent for granting basic rights to apes, animal rights advocates are seeking to get the 26- year-old male chimpanzee legally declared a “person.”
Remarkable. Even better, look at this splitting of hairs:
“Our main argument is that Hiasl is a person and has basic legal rights,” said Eberhart Theuer, a lawyer leading the challenge on behalf of the Association Against Animal Factories, a Vienna animal rights group.
“We mean the right to life, the right to not be tortured, the right to freedom under certain conditions,” Theuer said.
“We’re not talking about the right to vote here.”
Where have I seen that before? Oh, yes: All animals are equal. But some are more equal than others.
(Another link seen on Boots and Sabers.)
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May The Biggest Kickback Win
City officials in Milwaukee have a dilemma:
Developers want free money:
More than three years after the Park East Freeway spur was torn down, 16 acres of prime downtown land remain barren – and developers say it’s time for city officials to help make something happen there.
“There’s gridlock right now, and I’m concerned this thing is going to blow up,” said Gary Grunau, who is building the new Manpower Inc. headquarters, just north of the Park East area. “Somebody’s got to show some leadership.”
“Leadership,” of course, is a euphemism for “government giveaways to private business” in forms of tax abatement, zoning variations, and loan co-signing. Of course, this would be a no-brainer, as government officials tend to want to hump the legs of all developers they can.
But:
Concerns about city financing for hotel projects have been raised by Greg Marcus, executive vice president of Marcus Corp., which operates three downtown hotels: InterContinental Milwaukee Hotel, Hilton Milwaukee City Center and the Pfister Hotel.
Marcus, in a March 6 letter to Mayor Tom Barrett, said efforts to “subsidize construction of hotel rooms without first stimulating demand for those rooms” will “simply siphon off demand from existing (privately financed) hotel rooms.”
It sounds like there’s trouble in paradise, right? Heavy hitters in the local industry making noises like this, sounding almost laissez-faire.
Aw, if I believed that, I wouldn’t be a good cynic. The government has enough favors for all fat cats. I expect the city of Milwaukee will cosign the loans for the speculative development and will throw sops to existing businesses, maybe even before they’re failing on account of the city’s meddling in a market economy. After all, there can never be too many cronies in crony capitalism.
Ah, Milwaukee. Briefly, you were more than St. Louis, but you’re in a hurry to sink to its post-industrial, post-unsupported business level.
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The View of the Vox Populi on the Op-Ed Pages
Apparently, some guy in Arkansas wrote a letter that got printed in the local paper:
You may have noticed that March of this year was particularly hot. As a matter of fact, I understand that it was the hottest March since the beginning of the last century….
This should come as no surprise to any reasonable person. As you know, Daylight Saving time started almost a month early this year. You would think that members of Congress would ave considered the warming effect that an extra hour of daylight would have on our climate. Or did they?
Perhaps this is another plot by a liberal Congress to make us believe that global warming is a real threat. Perhaps the next time there should be serious tudies before Congress passes laws with such far-reaching effects.
CONNIE M. MESKIMEN
Hot Springs
Ace of Ace of Spades HQ says:
How could someone be this dumb, and how could a letters-page editor then be dumb enough on top of that to publish it? The hoax warning bells are sounding.
Are the letters page editors dumb? I don’t think so. However, if you read many of them, you’ll notice that they often contain poorly-reasoned flights of fancy that doesn’t elevate the discourse about the subject. As a matter of fact, some papers were apparently not satisfied with the depths of idiocy letter writers could produce and actually started publishing phoned-in comments to up the inanity.
I have to wonder why smaller local newspapers include these little tirades in their pages. After all, printing the paper is expensive and they are supposed to keep the gates to ensure quality or something. Instead, we’re treated to idiocy (and the occasional satire masked as idiocy, as this letter was).
Something in me whispers that papers publish this sort of thing because it reflects what the acolytes of the Fourth Estate Church believe of the unwashed masses who read instead of writing the paper. Because they can crack up about the simpletons who believe what they print when standing over the coffeepot in the kitchenette of the paper. Because journalists are different from and better than the common man whose voice they’ve made heard.
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As A Famous QA Virtuoso, I Expect The Same At My Funeral
Cellist Rostropovich Buried to Applause:
Mstislav Rostropovich, the celebrated cellist and champion of human rights, was buried Sunday to the applause of hundreds of mourners, an echo of the ovations he received during his life.
Except that those clappers at my interment will be hundreds of developers and project managers happy that their timelines can get back on track.
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Layering and Order Marches On
Great moments in charge-layering, where prosecutors can add extra crimes for the same action:
- A criminal in New York is charged with hate crimes because some of his victims were over 60 years old. That’s right, boys and girls, if you’re going to commit crimes, make sure you select a diverse set of victims, because if they’re of the same protected class, you must hate them.
- Some former American Idol contestant is arrested, and she’s hit with an extra charge of introduction of contraband into a correctional facility. Because she was carrying some coke and the authorities uncovered it while searching her before they actually put her in jail.
Double jeopardy is against the law; however, making the same action or procedures for processing people who committed a crime into other crimes, our system gets to subvert the intent of the Constitution. For law and order and higher personal conviction rates or easier plea bargains.
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AP Uncovers The Facts
A closed society that enslaves women deserves an AP investigation. If it can smear the American military.
Japan’s abhorrent practice of enslaving women to provide sex for its troops in World War II has a little-known sequel: After its surrender — with tacit approval from the U.S. occupation authorities — Japan set up a similar “comfort women” system for American GIs.
An Associated Press review of historical documents and records — some never before translated into English — shows American authorities permitted the official brothel system to operate despite internal reports that women were being coerced into prostitution. The Americans also had full knowledge by then of Japan’s atrocious treatment of women in countries across Asia that it conquered during the war.
Tens of thousands of women were employed to provide cheap sex to U.S. troops until the spring of 1946, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur shut the brothels down.
The documents show the brothels were rushed into operation as American forces poured into Japan beginning in August 1945.
“Sadly, we police had to set up sexual comfort stations for the occupation troops,” recounts the official history of the Ibaraki Prefectural Police Department, whose jurisdiction is just northeast of Tokyo. “The strategy was, through the special work of experienced women, to create a breakwater to protect regular women and girls.”
The orders from the Ministry of the Interior came on August 18, 1945, one day before a Japanese delegation flew to the Philippines to negotiate the terms of their country’s surrender and occupation.
To make a short story long, the Japanese government set up these stations in August 1945 and the American military shut them down in Spring of 1946. They ran for under a year, a chaotic period wherein the occupation began. Some of the women were probably indentured or enslaved. But thanks to the AP for capturing it as:
AMERICAN MILITARY ENSLAVES FOREIGN WOMEN IN OCCUPIED COUNTRIES FOR SEX!
Twits.
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Quick, Give Him Another Medal
George Tenet doesn’t go quietly into deserved obscurity:
A former U.S. spy chief accused President Bush’s administration of ruining his reputation by misusing a “slam dunk” comment he made during a White House meeting ahead of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Former CIA Director George Tenet told CBS Television’s “60 Minutes” that the administration leaked his comment as opposition to the war grew when no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.
“You don’t do this. You don’t throw somebody overboard just because it’s a deflection. Is that honorable? It’s not honorable to me,” Tenet said in an interview to be broadcast Sunday.
Tenet said his comment did not refer to whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but related to what information could be used to make a public case for the war.
The “slam-dunk” comment first surfaced in journalist Bob Woodward’s 2004 book, “Plan of Attack,” which portrayed Tenet as assuring Bush that finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq would be a virtual certainty.
“We can put a better case together for a public case. That’s what I meant,” Tenet told “60 Minutes.” [Emphasis added.]
So his comment wasn’t about facts, it was about spin. Come on, Tenet, you’re not exactly burnishing your what-you-would-call-honorable legacy by implying that your agency was all about building a case instead of uncovering the facts.
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I Don’t Think That Economic Indicator Means What I Think It Means
Kudos to the AP reporter Madlen Read who spun this story according to her own pecadillos: Dow crosses 13,000 for first time ever:
The Dow Jones industrial average shot past 13,000 for the first time Wednesday as stronger-than-expected earnings reports streamed in, suggesting to investors that corporate America is successfully weathering the cooling economy. [Emphasis added.]
The earnings rising, new homes sales and manufactured goods sales rising, job-creating, cooling economy.
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