Category: News

The hospital where I was born is closing:

St. Michael Hospital, which is losing millions of dollars annually, will close its emergency room and most other departments starting June 5 – greatly scaling back a major health care provider for a large number of poor people.

St. Michael, 2400 W. Villard Ave., is closing its emergency room and inpatient services because the hospital’s non-profit corporate parent, Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare, can no longer afford them, John Oliverio, Wheaton Franciscan president and chief executive officer, said Monday.

I guess this might have been foreshadowing:

Glendale-based Wheaton Franciscan, which recently changed it name from Covenant Healthcare System, “doesn’t have the ability to fund indefinitely the types of losses we’ve incurred at St. Michael’s,” Oliverio said.

Convenant, as you know, means a sacred contract or an agreement. I guess were it Covenant, the company would be bound to providing care to those with whom it has made the compact. Wheaton Franciscan, on the other hand, is just a health care system.

Writing in today’s Wall Street Journal, Samuel R. Berger opines upon what the United States should do vis-à-vis Iran and says:

….

Aw, what does it matter what Mr. Berger says? His mucketymuckability went out the door with the documents from the National Archive in his socks.

Still, the introduction of the hallowed and revered former something-or-other with in the Pax Clintona does lend itself to an obvious solution to the Iran question. Picture: A world-reknowned figure and statesman travels on a diplomatic mission to Iran to review their plans and blueprints under heavy security. Diplomatic mission succeeds, in that Iran thinks it has bought more time from the west, but when they look back in their files for the blueprints for centrifuges and nuclear devices are mysteriously gone!

A new view for tattoos: Ultraviolet ink conceals body art for day jobs but comes alive under black lights:

In just about any professional setting, it would be almost impossible to notice anything different about Caitlin Sabel’s wrists. They might appear a tad scarred, but nothing too out of the ordinary.

Look at them under a black light, though, and the words glow. Then, in an old-English font, her left wrist reads “regret” and her right “nothing.”

Ah, the innovative ways of parting money from fools.

New Storm on Jupiter Hints at Climate Change:

The latest images could provide evidence that Jupiter is in the midst of a global change that can modify temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit on different parts of the globe.

Almost as though climate change happened cylically, naturally, and without the intervention of a sentient species.

But in the good news within this bad news for environmentalists:

• It will be overlooked by the tinny orchestra of the media and public consciousness.
• Al Gore has an opportunity to his ultimate action film, this time set in space and maybe starring Vin Diesel.

Just because the number 8 Edmonton Oilers eliminated the Detroit Red Wings in the first round of the playoffs is a little early to start stocking up the celebratory fireworks:

On Friday cops found a 1-Teck 9 fully automatic nine-millimetre handgun, an SKS assault rifle and a rocket launcher.

On Sunday, they also seized two handguns, a shotgun, 1.4 kg of cocaine, six vials of steroids, four grams of marijuana with a street value of $60, a samurai sword and one bulletproof vest.

A collector deliberately placed three valuable U.S. coins into circulation in New York in April 2006:

To help introduce more people to “the magic of coin collecting,” Scott A. Travers, a 44-year-old former vice president of the American Numismatic Association and author of The Coin Collector’s Survival Manual, decided to mark National Coin Week in mid-April 2006 by deliberately spending three valuable old pennies as he made routine purchases around Manhattan. “I’m planting a seed, and I hope that a new generation of people will come to appreciate the history that coins represent,” he
said.

The three coins Scott Travers planned to spend were all relatively low-mintage U.S. one-cent pieces nearly one hundred years old: a 1908-S Indian Head cent, and 1909-S VDB and 1914-D Lincoln cents.

Hey, it’s less than the Powerball but since I’m too stingy to drop change in the jar at Starbucks, I have a better chance at winning.

I don’t know about you, but I am having difficulty solving the following word problem, found in this article:

As recently as 1994, more than half of newspaper carriers 57 percent were under 18, often neighborhood kids, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

I blame my own English-degree-fueled mathematical incompetence.

Pennsylvania girl, 10, charged with tossing crack during drug raid:

A 10-year-old girl has been charged with evidence tampering after authorities say she tossed small bags of crack cocaine out of a window during a drug raid.

Kudos to the appropriate authorities for bringing this outlaw to justice! She was a dangerous villain, no doubt:

District Attorney Andy Jarbola said the girl had a “bad attitude” during police questioning.

“What’s so amazing about this investigation is how street-smart this 10-year-old child was,” he said. “She knew what she was doing.”

If she was a public school student, which might not be an easy assumption given the circumstances, I would have to commend her civics teacher for instilling the subtleties of evidence tampering and probably conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and false statements criminal charges to the child.

However, I think this is just a district attorney out for prosecutions for their own sake or worse, for the sake of furthering his career. Because from what I remember of my fifth grade year, my parents were paramount to my moral upbringing, and although they instilled me with a solid enough foundation of if the police can prosecute you for it, don’t do it, other children within the projects probably missed that. Without some other a priori religious or philosophical framework in place, perhaps this child thought that keeping mommy out of jail was a value worth preserving and that she had a moral imperative to defend her family life against arbitrary outsiders.

Jarbola said, “She knew what she was doing.” Indeed, it’s hard not to know what one’s doing when one is undertaking an action. This ten-year-old child was apparently throwing crack out of the window. The thing mommy stored or sold. Because the police were coming. I am sure that this was all within the child’s mind unless the mother was also a hypnotist. However, whether the child knew this was wrong is another matter. But not to Jarbola. Jarbola has actus reus, which is all The Man needs these days.

Frankly, I would like Jarbola to explain to the child why it’s wrong that Mommy is selling a product that alters the brain chemistry to willing consumers. That it’s illegal because it’s bad, and it’s bad because it’s illegal, or whatever simplicities and banalities Jarbola would use to back it up. Does Jarbola have an ethical idea for what, exactly, the ten-year-old child was doing so that he could explain it to her, or is it enough that what she was doing was illegal and she knew she was at a window, tossing baggies out?

Because frankly, I couldn’t explain it to her without resorting to the simple if the police can prosecute you for it, don’t do it dictum that I’ve outgrown as far as moral precepts go. As a practical guide, it’s handy, but if a child doesn’t adhere to it and cannot understand why drugs are evil and drug sellers, especially Mommy, are evil, it’s hard to convince me that the child knew what she was doing.

Perhaps we should count our blessings that Jarbola isn’t trowelling on additional charges like he would were she an adult: armed criminal evidence tampering if they found a gun on the premises, corrupting a minor (herself), and so on.

Regardless, I think Jarbola’s decision to charge the child and his facile summation discredit him as a prosecutor and, ultimately, as a man.

When a drunk man is in a woman’s home uninvited and is killed, is it acceptable or bad?

Man, that’s tricky. I mean, when the woman does it, it seems acceptable:

“She felt threatened,” says Lt. Lane Byers, Pickens County Sheriff’s Office. “She felt she could not leave the home to get away from him. And she felt she had to defend herself. She used a firearm to do so.”

But when cops do it, it doesn’t seem right:

City police officers shot a man twice with Tasers, then scuffled with him, a friend who witnessed the incident said Monday.

Hours after that Saturday scuffle, Nick Mamino Jr., 41, was dead.

When I read that last story, I reacted immediately with my standard, cops-misusing-tasers outrage, but seeing the first story so soon after has put the incidents into stark relief. In Collinsville, Illinois, the police came to a woman’s home where an unarmed man (with a history of armed criminal action) refuses to leave and runs back into the house. To lock himself into the bathroom and sob? To plead with the woman he loves who has just called the cops on him? Or to get a gun?

Given that and given the subtleties of the home-invader versus home-wouldn’t-leaver storylines that are only available the next day in the paper, I conclude the police were correct in trying to subdue him with less than lethal means which, unfortunately and accidentally, proved fatal to Mamino.

The woman who killed her home intruder will receive her recognition in Kim du Toit’s Department of Righteous Shootings. Meanwhile, the police in Collinsville will get pilloried for the crime of enforcing the law while law enforcement officials and for the ultimate results of Mamino’s suspect actions.

The British medical establishment has determined: Too Many ‘Self-Medicate’:

Dr Andrew McCulloch, chief executive of the foundation, said: “The research confirms our worries that people are drinking to cope with emotions and situations they can’t otherwise manage.

“Drinking alcohol is a very common and accepted way of coping – our culture allows us to use alcohol for ‘medicinal purposes’ or ‘dutch courage’ from an early age.

“But using alcohol to deal with anxiety and depression doesn’t work.”

No doubt the good doctor would prefer you try any of the handful of colorful brain chemistry-altering alternatives offered by prescription only. Using Prozac, Paxil, and so on to deal with anxiety or depression might work, might not work, or might make you suicidal. Kinda like whiskey, but more expensive and not available without a doctor’s visit.

Powerball jackpot: 1 ticket. 13 people.:

They used to chase dead-beat dads. Now they’re chasing dreams.

On Thursday, the Missouri Lottery announced the winners of the state’s largest Powerball jackpot ever, $224.2 million. The big winners, dubbed the Lucky 13, are employees with the Missouri Department of Social Services.

When interviewed, the winners said they wouldn’t work another day and that the lottery wouldn’t change them. Given their employer, this is probably not a contradiction.

These distinguished senators want to raise the cost of low-priced goods by imposing an additional 30% tax on them that people who buy low-priced goods will have to pay (plus, no doubt, an additional sales tax at their local sales tax rates on that 30% tax):

The U.S. Congress is in no mood to put up with further delays by China on relaxing its currency controls, three U.S. senators visiting Beijing said Tuesday.

The bipartisan delegation said the Senate is on the cusp of taking up a long-postponed bill that would slap a 27.5 percent tariff on all Chinese products to compensate for China’s pegged exchange rate. Debate could begin as soon as the end of next week.

Fortunately for the senators, this tax increase won’t affect the cost of high-priced goods that adorn their homes and offices nor the expensive suits they wear. People who improve their domiciles and wardrobes by buying low-priced import goods? Let them eat cake, provided it was baked stateside.

Crocodile kills humanitarian professor:

A professor at the University of Washington Medical School who moved to Botswana to help alleviate a shortage of doctors there, was killed when a crocodile dragged him from a dugout canoe, his family and colleagues said.

As long as American imperialists continue invading foreign lands to expand the HIV and AIDS free hegemony, brave freedom crocodiles will continue dragging the “private contractors” from their dugout canoes and eating them.

We must learn to accept the crocodile’s culture, and leave them to their crocodilicity that celebrates brutality and lowest common denominature. Indeed, the “death roll” can be quite liberating, in an asphyxiation/drowning high sort of way.

After a great outpouring of pageantristic public outcry board of alderman meeting, including the wailing of small business owners, the beating of union breasts, and the normal overreactions and activist theatricism that ensues whenever a certain discount department store tries to serve the public, Wal-Mart can build a super center in Wentzville, Missouri:

Construction will begin within 30 days to expand a Wal-Mart store to include full-service grocery shopping, a move opposed by union officials and a group critical of the giant retailer.

After the Board of Aldermen approved the project’s site plan Monday night, Phil Fanara, the store’s manager, said work will begin as soon as possible.

Fortunately, Wentzville obeyed the letter of the law and allow construction to begin apace, but the mayor captures the real consideration in a nutshell:

Mayor Paul Lambi said Wal-Mart’s site plan conforms to the city’s planning and zoning ordinances and that turning it down could have placed the city in legal jeopardy.

This doesn’t represent quite the victory for capitalism, growth, private property, or offering consumer/citizens more choices for their retail dollar; no, it’s only a recognition by city officials that if they don’t follow their own laws, they might get in trouble.

A sad testament that we must see this as one of the few victories against the expanding powers of the State in all its minor fiefdom incarnations.

Subdivision’s 17 mph speed limit marks life in slow lane:

Road signs in Heritage of Hawk Ridge make some drivers in the subdivision do a double take, and that’s just what developers wanted.

The posted speed limit in the retirement development is 17 mph.

It’s so novel that it warrants a story in the paper even though it’s not a legally-enforceable limit. It’s as much a novelty sign as the Trumpet Parking Only sign my wife hangs in her office–but the Post-Dispatch writes the story anyway, trying to convey that it’s a neat idea and an attention-getter, and the Post-Dispatch has by now gotten the attention of innumerable aldermen, councilmen, and perhaps even a selectman or two.

And why the hell not change the speed limits to some fool off-five number to get attention of motorists, most of whom will continue to drive at speeds on the five s because that’s where the line on the speedometer is. Ah, hell, laws and rules of the road are enacted catch as catch can to bolster revenues and to respond to infrequent accidents anyway.

I just wish the Post-Dispatch would be more consistent in lauding creativity in law enforcement that accosts and captures actual felons if they’re going to be so happy about things that ensnare normal people.

In Illinois, they’re going to make it illegal to embellish your past:

People who pretend to have earned some of the nation’s most prestigious military medals, including the Purple Heart, the Medal of Honor and others, could pay a fine of up to $200 under a bill being considered today by the state Senate.

Jumping merry jesophat, I think it’s odious, but criminal?

Sure it starts with pretending about having served with distinction in the military, but there’s nothing different, really, about lying about military service, lying about playing sports in high school, or lying about your sexual conquests.

“For one in our society to falsely represent themselves as having received that very, very important recognition, I think is a serious offense not only in law but to our morality,” said Rep. Dan Burke, D-Chicago, the bill’s sponsor.

I tell you what, Representative, let’s expand that bill a bit more to extend to embellishments or insincere promises made by politicians because I think that’s a series offense not only in law but to our morality.

The solution:

Federal prosecutors say the use and manufacture of methamphetamine by a Jefferson County man contributed to the death of his infant daughter in 2003. If a judge agrees, 28-year-old James G. Hayes could spend 30 years behind bars.

The problem?

The death of 4-week-old Jersie N. Hayes was reported to authorities on Jan. 21, 2003 by Hayes’ girlfriend, Kristy Toczylowski, who is the mother of four children with Hayes. The child was found in bed at the couple’s home on Treeview Lane, south of Fenton.

[redacted by blogger] even though an autopsy on the child proved inconclusive.

The missing ingredient, the magical summation that this blogger withheld to demonstrate the absurdity of the charge?

Prosecutors believe the dangerous chemicals use to make meth contributed to Jersie’s death, even though an autopsy on the child proved inconclusive.

Holy crimoly, I hope that the freaking toxicology and pathology classes that they teach in law school to students with political science undergraduate degrees include actual autopsies so that the ADAs can get diggin’ in the morgue to overcome what the actual coroner says.

Because I’d hate to think our legal system relies upon creative higher-office seekers and the various incarnations of television’s CSI for this illumination.