To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
In a story entitled City worker surrenders to face drug charges, we have this novel means of immobilizing cars:
A veteran municipal employee, Meyer has been suspended without pay from the parking division’s boot crew, which immobilizes cars with unpaid parking tickets.
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Thieves specialized in taking change from unlocked cars, police say:
Bicycle-riding bandits rode the trails between Edwardsville and Granite City at night, hopping off their bikes to steal from hundreds of unlocked cars in subdivisions during the past six months, Granite City police allege.
They didn’t damage any vehicles, and it appears they ignored expensive stereos, preferring to steal cash and change, said Capt. Jeff Connor. “Their main goal was to gather all the change they could,” he said. And they ignored vehicles with locked doors, he said.
One would hope this crime would bring less of a sentence than, say, a football player killing someone while driving drunk, but with today’s court system, who can say?
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This story made a big splash in the conservative blog clique yesterday and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch covered it, but we can begin the countdown until it’s forgotten: Girl’s story of dad was a hoax, paper says:
For two years, Carbondale residents have been riveted by the writing of a little girl imploring her father in Iraq: “Don’t die, OK?”
Only now are they learning there was never any danger of that.
The Daily Egyptian, Southern Illinois University’s student-run newspaper, today will admit to its readers that the saga – of a little girl’s published letters to her father serving in Iraq – was apparently an elaborate hoax perpetrated by a woman who claimed to be the girl’s aunt.
In fact, the newspaper will report today, the man identified as the girl’s father was never in Iraq, and it was the woman who apparently wrote the letters and regular columns that were published under the little girl’s name – and even impersonated the girl in telephone interviews.
For starters, let’s be clear this is not a Carbondale newspaper, it’s a University newspaper. This doesn’t excuse the way it occurred, but it does explain. They weren’t professionals. They were professionals in training. As sad as that prospect is, we’re not talking reporters nor editors with decades of experience. One would expect most editors on the paper had a couple of years of experience at the most.
It also might explain how the students’ ideology could have played a greater role in their ignorance if possible: students don’t even have to temper their drive to improve the world by remaking it in their image. In real papers, editors, publishers, and the positions to whom student reporters often aspire have to at least genuflect to the concepts of circulation and shareholders, but school papers exist at the indulgence of the schools and don’t have to even consider remaining palatable to customers.
Here’s a sample of the writing that “captivated” Carbondale, or at least the university students, or perhaps no one really but the paper itself:
“I’m rily mad at you and you make my hart hurt,”‘ she purportedly wrote in one published letter to the president. “I don’t think your doing a very good job. You keep sending soldiers to Iraq and it’s not fair. Do you have a soldier of your own in Irak?”
Still, I’m probably not the only one to notice that scandals involving more populist/liberal newspapers involve making it all up, a la Michael Barnicle, Jayson Blair, the rest of the staff of the New York Times, Stephen Glass, and so on. Conservative commentators tend to get smeared not for making crap up, but for selling their writing talent for money (numerous lesser lights whose names I forget), for payola (that Armstrong guy I never heard of) or for unrelated issues (Rush Limbaugh).
So there you have my thoughts on the matter. Here are some others:
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Lawsuit calls execution method cruel:
Even as the state prepares to execute Timothy Johnston next week for killing his wife, a lawsuit questioning the method of execution remains unresolved.
The suit on behalf of Johnston, 44, claims Missouri’s three-drug method of lethal injection violates his constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment. It was filed more than a year ago in U.S. District Court in St. Louis, and the court denied the state’s motion to dismiss it as frivolous.
Being a logician who understands Boolean logic, if everyone gets the three-drug execution, it’s not cruel and unusual.
One wonders what number of injections it takes to be humane.
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Court reinstates Terminator lawsuit:
An appeals court has ruled that an Australian couple can sue director James Cameron over an effect used in the film “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.”
Filia and Constantinos Kourtis claim that they came up with the idea for a character that changes shape for a 1987 movie called “The Minotaur.”
Meanwhile, ancient tribes from the British Isles have consulted their lawyers for the Kourtises’ theft of the concept of the changeling, shapeshifting “monsters” who stole children (like the young John Connor–see?!) and ancient Greeks have filed preperatory paperwork on the title, which refers to a monster first slain by Theseus, whose story was told by entertainers in Athens before even James Cameron was born.
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This distinction seems rather superfluous:
Al-Banna has been accused of carrying out one of Iraq’s deadliest suicide bombing — the February 28 attack in Hillah that killed 125 people.
But the Jordanian government and al-Banna’s family said he carried out a different suicide bombing in Iraq in which he was killed. The terrorist group al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for the Hillah bombing.
I mean, does this affect some sort of over/under betting or what?
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Someone loves them, and no surprise, it’s the unelected legislatures themselves:
Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont came together in 2003 to form a coalition, known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, in order to explore a market-driven cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide emissions in the absence of mandatory emissions reductions at the national level.
Phil Cherry, policy director at Delaware’s Department of Natural Resources said the proposal, as it is currently written, caps emissions of carbon dioxide at 150 million tons a year starting in 2009. Under the proposed guidelines, emission reductions would be required starting in 2015, which would ramp up to a 10 percent cut in 2020.
“The proposal is a draft and some of the details have yet to be worked out,” Cherry told Reuters. He said that the document will be sent to power producers who will have a chance to comment on it formally at a meeting on September 21.
Once a final agreement is reached, legislatures or regulators in the nine states will have to approve it.
Not a state legislature and not Congress, but a “regional initiative” appoints itself to make laws for the states under its jurisdiction. I fail to see how this could pass an Interstate Commerce Clause challenge, but then again, it regulates interstate commerce and not individual states’ internal legislation.
Well, what else can the rulers do when the unwashed, power-loving masses elect people of the wrong mindset?
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Samples of good governance and bureacracy, August 2005:
In a plea deal between Hood and defense attorney Clinton Wright, [Country Club Hills Mayor Felton E.] Flagg must come up with restitution at his sentencing or face at least three years in prison. If he pays back the money he stole, Flagg can expect five years of probation, and either 90 days in jail or 120 days on an electronic monitor.
Afterwards, Flagg said he intended to remain as mayor of Country Club Hills where he was re-elected in April to a two-year term. He referred all other questions to Wright, who said Flagg planned to pay back the money he took. Flagg has been mayor of the city adjacent to Norwood Hills Country Club since 1997.
Two people recently convicted in a vote-buying scheme in East St. Louis have been rehired by the city.
Sheila Thomas and Jesse Lewis were back at their jobs in the department of regulatory affairs yesterday. Thomas is a clerk and Lewis a housing inspector.
Both were fired after their June convictions and they’re due to be sentenced in October.
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New fuel economy rules unveiled:
Speaking from Atlanta, Department of Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta and Jeffrey Runge, the current administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said that under the new plan, the light truck segment will be broken into six different categories based on weight and vehicle type, with the smallest vehicles forced to get better mileage than larger ones.
Minivans, which are currently bound by federal standards to get 21 miles per gallon, will be required to have a fuel efficiency of 23.3 miles per gallon by the time the program is fully implemented in 2011.
The fuel economy of small SUVs would improve by as much as nine miles per gallon from their current standard of 19 miles per gallon, Mineta said.
“This plan is good news for American consumers because it will ensure that the vehicles that they buy will get more miles to the gallon and ultimately save them money,” said Mineta.
Personally, I await the dicta that:
Because The Government must make decisions for you, infantile citizen. Increasing costs of petroleum prices won’t cause you to alter your travel habits or inspire you to purchase more fuel-efficient vehicles. Instead, like all addictions, your dependence upon petroleum will drive you to steal, rob, and murder to support your habit.
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Thought, circa 2011, when Venezuela fields its first North Korean- or Chinese-provided medium range nuclear missiles capable of raining fire upon the entirety of the 48 contiguous states:
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The blood is running in the streets of Milwaukee: 4-homicide weekend pushes city to grim point:
Like a runaway freight train, this year’s homicide total in Milwaukee equaled the 88 recorded for all of last year as of early Sunday and gave no signs that religious, civic and governmental efforts to make this a safe summer were slowing the deadly increase.
Snark as follows:
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Police chief sues maker of Taser gun:
A police chief in Boone County has filed suit against Taser International and two police equipment supply companies, saying he was severely injured when shocked with a Taser weapon during training.
The suit by Jacob “Pete” Herring joins more than 30 others from around the country that claim Tasers caused or contributed to injuries or deaths. More than 7,000 law enforcement agencies worldwide use the devices as a nonlethal alternative to firearms, according to company numbers.
The suit by Herring, chief of police in Hallsville, Mo., says he suffered at least two strokes, loss and impairment of his vision and hearing, neurological damage, a head injury and “significant cardiac damage” after being shocked by a Taser M26 during a class on April 20, 2004. He seeks unspecified financial damages.
Nonlethal, perhaps. But they’re overused in the field, resulting in a number of deaths that could be avoided.
And shocking each other in training, what the heck? Do cops hit each other with batons just so they know how it feels?
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Schools spend big on recreation centers:
Bob Lyons remembers – not fondly – the old gym at the University of Missouri at Columbia: It was cramped, had the odor of smelly socks and could get so hot in summer that “you just wanted to die,” said Lyons, a recent graduate.
Contrast that with the new $50 million, jungle-themed recreation center that is nearly twice the size and virtually finished.
“It’s just awe-inspiring,” said Lyons, who helps oversee the center’s 42-foot climbing tower.
Eleven large plasma screens line the wall of the “jungle gym.” The gym features about 100 pieces of cardio equipment, some of which have individual DVD players.
In the “tiger grotto,” there is a swirling vortex, lazy river with waterfall, whirlpool and dry sauna. Towering above it all is a jumbo, Vegas-style display board that blasts music videos on “ZouTv,” an internal station that plays music selections based on weekly Internet polls.
I would dare Mizzou to find a single freaking student that chose the University of Missouri of Columbia over another college because of its swank recreational facilities, but someone at Mizzou could probably trot out some stooge as though a single student or small cadre would justify spending fifty million dollars on such an endeavor.
It’s one thing if an alumnus donates a pile of cash for the privilige of diverting students from their studies, but students, and that’s all students, not just the “health-conscious” students who want “a gathering place to see and be seen,” will have to cough up $150 a year to subsidize a meat market for college students who don’t suffer from a dearth of gathering places to find the next one night stand or starter marriage.
No, friends, this is what happens when our localish government agencies become high school cliques, and when expenditures are driven by the all-the-cool-people-have-them mentality. Suddenly, we’re shelling out money for bike trails, rec plexes, and whatnot because all the other schools/counties/municipalities/states have them.
Not because they’re necessary government services, but because they’re cool.
I wish our leaders would grow up.
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Work-zone safety blitz still limited: Drivers say that new laws haven’t reduced number of violations:
Motorists complain that speeding, tailgating and aggressive driving are still all the rage in Illinois construction zones, despite tough laws the state passed last year to reduce violations.
A camera-enforcement program to deploy Illinois State Police troopers in vans was supposed to have started this month, but officials are still finalizing contracts with equipment suppliers, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation. The program may begin in September, officials said.
The plan for the pilot project involves taking photographs from inside just two roving vans to capture the faces and license plates of drivers, along with the speed of their vehicles, in work areas on hundreds of miles of Chicago-area expressways and on the Illinois Tollway system. Tickets carrying minimum fines of $375 will be mailed to vehicle owners.
An impersonal ticket arriving in infractors’ mail boxes a week in the future will not make the drivers slow down or behave. Nor will signs indicating that this might happen. Troopers pulling over drivers would make them slow down for a couple days and would make other drivers who see the troopers slow down.
Hidden cameras capturing drivers’ infractions but distancing the infraction from the sanction? Give me a break.
This is a revenue-enhancement program, not a safety program. And this is the reason why I’m going to fly to Milwaukee or travel through scenic Iowa on my way home in the future. Because I fear speeding through more than one of the Illinois “Construction Zones” (that is, the barrel storage technique that intersperses a couple barrels miles apart between construction zone signs) at a time and coming home to a mailbox full of budget-gap-closers from Rod Blagojevich.
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An author insults one of his readers:
[Mark] Kurlansky said he was surprised to hear that Bush had taken his book to the ranch: “My first reaction was, ‘Oh, he reads books?’ “
The author said he was a “virulent Bush opponent” who had given speeches denouncing the war in Iraq.
“What I find fascinating, and it’s probably a positive thing about the White House, is they don’t seem to do any research about the writers when they pick the books,” Kurlansky said.
But now that you’re on record, sir; prepare for the firing squad.
What a humpwit. Not only has he insulted the president based on common, cliché groupthink from the virulent Bush opponents, but he’s risked angering whatever readers and potential book buyers exist in the majority that elected Bush.
A pretty poor marketing decision, but perhaps he’s just standing for his principles, which would seem to include not much beyond mauvais mots.
(Link seen on Ann Althouse.)
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Insurer wants woman’s crash settlement:
Debbie Shank stocked shelves at a Wal-Mart store in Cape Girardeau, Mo., until five years ago, when her minivan was hit by a tractor-trailer. Her Wal-Mart health insurance paid the medical bills. Proceeds from a lawsuit helped finance her care in a nursing home.
Brain damage forces her to use a wheelchair and limits her upper body movement to one arm and two fingers. It stole her memory and her ability to talk to her husband and three sons.
“She’ll ask about the boys, she’ll ask about the cat,” said her husband, Jim Shank. “Whenever I’m there, she thinks it must be a mealtime. We don’t really hold a conversation.”
Now the Shanks face a new obstacle. Her Wal-Mart health insurance plan wants the lawsuit money to repay its costs.
Unfortunately, some insurance company functionaries lack the imagination for how the general public will perceive a lawsuit against a disabled woman, and how anti-Wal-Mart fanatics will use the incident against Wal-Mart. If those opponents could have their way, they’d make sure that Wal-Mart lived down to their rhetoric and did not provide insurance for its employees (the fact that Wal-Mart medical insurance exists and paid out half a million dollars for this catastrophe, but that Wal-Mart is evil because it doesn’t provide insurance for its employees–the paradox in their rhetoric will never surface).
The paper throws in an obligatory response from a spokesperson:
A Wal-Mart spokesman said the health plan has made no decision on whether to pursue this case; the suit puts a legal foot in the door before the deadline to file it passes. “This is kind of a standard procedure, and it just preserves our options,” Marty Hires said.
The SOPs of the byzantine and, let’s face it, often-suspect insurance and legal industry don’t improve the image of insurance, lawyers, or their clients. I’m sure someone with Wal-Mart could have come up with a better response, but who knows if the papers would publish them, because the current storyline casts Wal-Mart as the villain.
Now that the broken story’s broken, any doing-of-the-right-thing by Wal-Mart–such as not actually pursuing the suit or apologizing, will be reported as cynical damage control. If the papers follow up at all.
Yeah, I’m so cynical, I sometimes don’t even trust my own blog.
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When the free market cannot profitably develop a site, the governments step in:
Plans to turn a troubled site in Overland into a shopping center have been revived after failing for the second time earlier this year.
Two local developers – Sansone Group and G.J. Grewe Inc. – at separate times tried to build major retail centers on the Page Avenue property. Working with the city, they hoped to draw retailers such as Target Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. But both developers pulled the plug when they failed to recruit tenants.
Two businesses who are in designed to make money couldn’t, even with the city’s help.
Time to call in reinforcements.
Now, St. Louis County is taking up the effort. The site, county officials say, is more desirable with the addition of a nearby Home Depot store and other recent construction.
“That area’s gotten a real boost recently and it’s becoming a premier location,” said Denny Coleman, president of the St. Louis County Economic Council. “We know several developers who’ve said they’d bid on it.”
“they’d” being the operative tense. They would bid on the land if the government would make the conditions right. That is, the deal itself will not be profitable in and of itself in a free market economy, but if the county would sweeten the deal, its preferred developers would happily bid on it. Once the taxpayers guaranteed a profit.
But that’s contingent upon….
The county also is coupling the retail project with a plan to prevent the closing of a nearby military facility. The county hopes the retail center will help persuade the military to stay. Or, if the military leaves, its property could be redeveloped, possibly into office space.
Because the federal government should make its decisions based upon convenient shopping for its employees and visiting dignitaries? WTF? The county is swinging for the fences on this one. Why not couple it with curing schnucking cancer while you’re at it?
It’s a trifecta of government intervention into the free market at the expense of some:
The 40-acre retail project would rise on land that’s now a hodgepodge of houses, small businesses and vacant factories. In 2001, Overland – without county help – launched redevelopment efforts there.
Friends, that means eminent domain. Remember that nasty thing which the Supreme Court just okayed? Greenlit governments to seize livelihoods from citizens to the benefit of developers and, of course, the agnostic and disinterested governments:
“It’s a depressed area that was blighted years ago,” said Robert Dody, Overland’s mayor. “It’s an ideal area to redevelop. … The city and the county would both like to get more tax revenue from it.”
I know the area they’re talking about. It’s five minutes up I-170, a short spur of the Interstate system, from Clayton, one of the hottest areas in the county. Left to the free market, this area would redevelop on its own as its relatively cheap land would grow into suburbs of Clayton. But that’s not good enough for our elected officials, who could not take immediate credit for future growth based on their hands off governance today.
Instead, they spend tax money and tax-salaried time playing businessmen. Meanwhile, look at the land for sale listings on Hilliker Corporation’s Web site. See all of those properties on Woodson Road? Those are about 1/2 mile from the area in question (Google map; note the pin related to the intersection of Page and Woodson, the redevelopment site in question). The land prices and parcels are ripe for an entry-level developer wanna-be to get in and buy one or more for redevelopment or investment. I’ve had my eyes on the area since I lived nearby, for the reasons I’ve listed above. As I reach a time where I have some money for extraneous business ventures, I hoped to invest properties in this area, to help organically elevate Overland.
But forget it. Bob Dody, Mayor, via signage, welcomes me to Overland every time I pass through. But his eagerness to team the government of Overland with large developers certainly doesn’t welcome smaller outside concerns to invest in real estate (that he might later have to reallocate to THF, so sorry, here’s a couple bucks) in his community nor does he welcome small businesses nor certain home owners to remain in their property in his community (although they’re welcome to spend their just compensation on other property elsewhere in Overland, natch, until he or Sansone needs that, too).
I’d like to wrap this up with a snappy, pithy conclusion, but I’m too disgusted.
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Carl Icahn, in 1985, takes over Trans World Airlines….
Carl Icahn, in 2005, makes his move on AOL Time Warner….
Query: What does this fellow have against the letters A, T, and W?
(Story seen on Professor Bainbridge.)
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Sources: CIA finds Iranian president likely not hostage-taker:
A CIA report has determined with “relative certainty” that Iran’s new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was not involved in the taking of U.S. hostages 26 years ago, three government officials told CNN on Friday.
The officials insisted on anonymity, saying they did not want to speak for the CIA about its report.
Another U.S. official said the tone of the report is that there is no evidence to date that the new Iranian president was among those who held U.S. diplomats hostage.
The officials cautioned that the analysis is not final.
Meanwhile, the officials also report that the Soviet Union’s industrial output will increase again this year and that its current premier has secured a grip on his position and has met with other Warsaw Pact leaders secretly to get their fealty and promise the support of the mighty Red Army in quelling internal dissent.
Also, the next paragraph of the CNN report:
Two former hostages told CNN they remain certain Ahmadinejad was involved in plotting the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, in which 52 hostages were held for 444 days.
The two also said they saw the man they identify as Ahmadinejad many times while they were held, and that he appeared to be in a supervisory role.
Loosely translated, that’s the or your damn lying eyes part of the punchline.
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Compare and Contrast:
Mr. Green: “We’ve Got To Stop Killing People, Matt.”
Iraqi war protestor: Mother begs for end to killing.
(Second link seen courtesy McGehee.)
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