Category: News

I bet this made some troops’ days:

Corporals John W. Wright and Lazaro A. Castillo, intelligence specialists with Headquarters Company, 1st Marine Logistics Group (Forward), and Cpl. Romel M. Estremadura, a member of the 1st MLG Personal Security Detachment, earned these bragging rights and their present rank during a special promotion ceremony here Nov. 2.

Gen. Robert Magnus, Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps, along with action stars Marshall Teague and Chuck Norris, joined a military formation of 20 service members to promote the three Marines.

How cool would that be? I mean, I’m just a QA guy, and I guess the equivalent would be for Loki to tell me, “Nice job.”

(Link seen on Ace of Spades HQ.)

Not that you were asking, but this is no relation of mine:

A man from Illinois is accused of killing a man from Bland this week. The Phelps County Sheriff’s Department says Michael Noggle of Cahokia is charged with first-degree murder after the body of James Gaylord was found under a bridge northwest of Rolla Wednesday.

At least, I don’t think so.

Well, not exactly, but “backers” want to give police more excuses to stop people in cars: Missouri wants what Illinois has: a tougher seat belt law:

Backers of a tougher seat belt law in Missouri are holding a pep rally next week to get psyched up for the upcoming legislative battle in Jefferson City. They’re about to take another crack at a primary seat belt law.

Police in Missouri can write a ticket for not wearing a seat belt only if the motorist was pulled over for another violation. A primary seat belt law, which has failed in the legislature every year since 2000, gives police authority to pull people over solely for not buckling up.

As a former young man who rode in motor vehicles, I understand this really isn’t about giving police a pretext to stop you and check your story, since they’ll do that for license plate light infractions that aren’t, wow, look at that, infractious. This will, however, give them a reason to stop people and part them from some of their money.

To save a projected 90 lives a year. But that’s projected, whereas the loss of freedom and the loss of citizens’ money, will be real.

At least, I think that’s the point he meanders to in his column today:

Medical care is already expensive. Without health insurance, the most expensive treatments are beyond the reach of even an affluent citizen. Consider bone marrow transplants. This is the most common adult stem cell therapy, and technology-wise, it’s horse-and-buggy stuff compared with what might be coming in the not-distant future. And what does this horse-and-buggy stuff cost? Approximately $100,000.

So what would we do? If the insurance companies have to foot the bill for the new technology, rates would have to rise, and maybe rise steeply.

This would compound the problem we already can barely ignore about health insurance. Millions of Americans don’t have any. We’re able to ignore this only because most middle-class people have at least some semblance of health insurance, but if rates go up, what then? Could we become a society in which some people — the most affluent — are able to get new organs while many go without even basic treatment?

More likely, we will have to make some very difficult decisions. Who will get the cutting-edge treatment and be allowed to cheat death? I think about a spiritual man in his mid-60s, a man who used to dress as a horse for Shakespeare in the Park. Would he make the cut?

Never mind how the free market would eventually balance this out by finding more cost-effective solutions so health care providers could make money by applying the cures to new people with smaller budgets. Nah, let’s just grab that precise moment of maximum suck, where it’s no longer impossible but remains prohibitively expensive, and extrapolate to indict…. I don’t know who McClellan’s trying to indict here. Health care? Researchers? Opponents of Amendment 2? All of the above?

The evidence is clear; the Dow Jones average, widely reported in the media as a snapshot financial harbinger or at least simple box score of the nation, is trending downward the week before the election, from a high of almost 12,150 on Monday to about 12,020 at the close of business yesterday. This can mean only one thing:

Billionaire George Soros is manipulating the stock market to affect the election!

Because I understand that these days all portents and augury has something to do with stolen or rigged elections. I thought I would read some guts, too.

The problem: Overfishing and pollution are going to end seafood as we know it:

Clambakes, crabcakes, swordfish steaks and even humble fish sticks could be little more than a fond memory in a few decades. If current trends of overfishing and pollution continue, the populations of just about all seafood face collapse by 2048, a team of ecologists and economists warns in a report in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

The MfBJN solution: Raise the earth’s temperature a few degrees! The rising temperatures will melt the ice caps, providing more ocean to dilute the pollution and will submerge coastal areas, providing rich new habitats for our tasty waterbound friends.

Now, to get a government grant to turn this pithy blog post into a couple years’ worth of easy living and a couple hundred pages of obscure, hesitant prose.

Apparently, it’s getting easier to denounce things. At least in headlines: Voters denounce handling of page scandal by Shimkus, Hastert. Denounced on soapboxes, in rousing speeches, in vehement letters to the editor, or in protests? Not quite.

When asked whether they approve of how Republican leaders in general — and Hastert in particular — handled the issue, two-thirds of the poll respondents said they disapproved.

When questioned specifically about Shimkus’ decision to privately tell Foley to stop e-mailing pages without taking further action, more than three-quarters of respondents said that wasn’t the correct response.

Denounced, expressed disappointment through canned answers to a survey, same difference (if you’re disapproving of Republicans).

When do you not have to comply with the law? When you are the law:

Attorney General Lisa Madigan ordered Gov. Blagojevich’s administration Thursday to release copies of all subpoenas issued by federal investigators probing corruption under the governor.

But Blagojevich’s office late Thursday indicated it would not abide by Madigan’s order, setting up a possible constitutional showdown between two of the state’s top Democratic officeholders.

“We didn’t request an opinion on this topic, but we appreciate the attorney general office’s advisory input,” Blagojevich spokeswoman Abby Ottenhoff said.

Well, at least they were polite about continuing in their coverup of potential wrongdoing.

All radio ads are beginning to sound like this to me:

Candidate A blends puppies and drinks them as a shake to benefit himself/herself.

Candidate B: He/She won’t blend your puppy.

The New York Times offers a helpful hint on protecting yourself from vapid people who would call themselves your friends:

Jim Coffman, 40, a Democrat in Chicago, said he and his wife have not pursued a friendship with another couple whose three children are the same ages as theirs after seeing photographs of President Bush on the other couple’s refrigerator. He said they have discussed with other friends “being so amazed that we could have so much in common, and yet be so diametrically opposed” when it comes to politics.

We have used this mechanism to deter people who use politics as the determining factor for populating their high-school-like clique with other “cool” people so they can look down upon the nerds together. Except in the midlife cliques, the nerds are evil.

So when people come into my home and see the collection of fundraiser photographs, only to determine they don’t want to pursue a deeper friendship because I’m obviously evil or stupid by their reckoning, they’re doing me a favor.

(Link seen on Althouse.)

SJ woman accused of house burglaries:

A 47-year-old unemployed San Jose woman allegedly has a broad definition of “open house.”

Police said today that they had arrested Susan Hjeltness on suspicion of stealing more than $200,000 worth of porcelain figurines, jewelry and other items after touring homes in the Silver Creek Valley Country Club area of San Jose during real-estate open houses and property showings.

Hjeltness, along with her 13-year-old son and an adult male companion, would pose as prospective buyers and tour homes, police said. They would steal items during the walkthrough or would unlock a door or window and return later, Detective Corey Green said.

When we were looking for our new house, we viewed one house a couple of minutes after the open house closed, and we found the back door unlocked. Was it another burglar in the same vein?

In either case, it was a realtor with a lack of attention to detail. Jeez.

Arms Without Borders.

I mean, it sounds like Doctors Without Borders or Reporters Without Borders; however, Arms Without Borders isn’t about the free exchange of small arms. Quite the opposite.

(Link seen on The Volokh Conspiracy.)

Virtual economies attract real-world tax attention:

Users of online worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft transact millions of dollars worth of virtual goods and services every day, and these virtual economies are beginning to draw the attention of real-world authorities.

“Right now we’re at the preliminary stages of looking at the issue and what kind of public policy questions virtual economies raise — taxes, barter exchanges, property and wealth,” said Dan Miller, senior economist for the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress.

“You could argue that to a certain degree the law has fallen (behind) because you can have a virtual asset and virtual capital gains, but there’s no mechanism by which you’re taxed on this stuff,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Forget what you learned about how laws are made on Schoolhouse Rock; here’s how they’re really made:

1. Some crackpotesque person or thoughtful person presents a whacked-out taxation proposal, just for discussion.
2. A loud cacophony of jeering greets the proposal, and it’s tabled.
3. A slightly less crackpot person brings it up again, perhaps in a time of fiscal crisis.
4. A smaller number of jeers greets the second person, and the proposal is tabled.
5. An almost rational person brings up the proposal again, possibly with a cool acronym and certainly some promise for funding education with the proceeds.
6. The mass of jeering crowd is silent, for it has already expressed its displeasure.
7. Legislators take the relative silence as assent and bring the bill up.
8. Suddenly startled citizens react negatively, firmly, and resolutely.
9. Legislators table the bill.
10. State legislators in California or New Jersey pass a similar bill.
11. Your state legislators bring the bill up and pass it because they want to be cool like the big states.
12. Congress determines that taxing the thing only in New Jersey, California, and your state impedes interstate commerce and attaches the bill at the last minute, in the middle of the night, to a joint house resolution honoring Mom, because who could vote against Mom?

So you better start saving up, because the IRS is going to find out you bought Illinois Avenue in 1982 without paying sales tax and is going to want interest and penalties.