To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
for this story: Republicans say they have fixed economy if the legislature or government had been in the hands of Democrats?
Oh, yeah, it would be stacked with numbers and facts about how the economy had improved, instead of merely quotes from Republicans claiming the economy had improved.
But numbers are hard, and aspersively parroting is easy.
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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s headline identifies whose side it comes down on: Casino’s parking is hijacked:
How much is too much to pay to park a car in downtown St. Louis?
At the very least, it’s a bit less than $25, according to the President Casino on the Admiral.
In an apparent power play over control of the much-disputed “Cherrick” parking lot, its owner has jacked up more than tenfold the price the President pays for customers to use the lot.
So it’s the owner hijacking its own property. Well, sort of. As I read the article, the owner wants to squeeze the government-subsidized entertainment venue (the President Casino) into buying the parking garage before the new government-subsidized entertainment venue (the new casino and go-kart track) seizes the property for a “fair” price. Somewhere in there I got confused about the blighted area infighting for the same profitable resource and stopped paying attention.
Which is probably just what they wanted. All the better to rule me.
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Pete Townshend Warns IPod Users:
Guitarist Pete Townshend has warned iPod users that they could end up with hearing problems as bad as his own if they don’t turn down the volume of the music they are listening to on earphones.
Surely, it was the headphones, not playing guitar in front of large stacks of amps and monitors for decades.
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After a post last night (take that, you Johnny-come-latelies like Instapundit and Ace–what am I, chopped liver?), Jack Abramoff dresses differently.
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Rest assured: somewhere, somehow, a crack team of expert conspiracy theorists tonight are finding a way to blame Ariel Sharon’s stroke on the Jews.
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Jack Abramoff makes the black trenchcoat and fedora look bad.
Note to self: Continue belt cinched around expanding belly abstinence. Also, don’t bribe congressional representatives.
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U.S. Toll for Year in Iraq Nears ’04 Mark:
Bombings and shootings killed at least 20 people across Iraq on the final day of the year Saturday, while U.S. troops shivered in the cold during a performance by an “American Idol” singer as part of New Year’s Eve celebrations. The U.S. military also reported the death of an American soldier from wounds, bringing its death toll in Iraq for 2005 near last year’s record level.
I would say, “Give me a break,” but Associated Press is not doing us any favors. Let’s recap the timeline:
2003: The United States invades in late March and faces an enemy that largely surrenders. US faces 9 months of combat and occupancy.
2004: The first full year of occupation, and the year which the “record” was set.
2005: The second full year of occupation, and the year in which the record is almost matched.
There you have it; a record of long-standing. Well, we Americans are told that we’re always hungering for the bigger and better things all the time, with baseball players chasing home run records every year and whatnot. I guess Associated Press is just trying to feed our interest in meeting or exceeding records every year, even if it has to manufacture those records out of whole cloth.
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Researcher: iPod earbuds could damage hearing:
The ever-popular earbuds used with many iPods and other MP3 players may be more stylish than the bigger and bulkier earmuff-type headphones, but they may also be more damaging to one’s hearing, according to a Northwestern professor.
“No one really knows for sure” the levels at which iPod users listen to music, but “what we do know is that young people like their music loud and seldom worry about any decline in hearing ability,” Dean Garstecki, chairman of Northwestern’s communication sciences and disorders department, told Reuters.
We don’t know, but we know it’s bad.
If only we had some metaphor by which we could grasp the danger so we could better clamor for government regulation, such as warning labels or a mandatory cap on the volume these things could produce.
The earbuds commonly used by iPod listeners are placed directly into the ear and can boost the audio signal by as many as nine decibels — comparable to the difference in sound intensity between an alarm clock and a lawn mower, Garstecki said.
Reuters and the researcher are partying like it’s 1979, though, because we’ve heard this particular chorus since the introduction of the Walkman, which replaced the practice of carrying a portable tape deck with the speaker pressed against one’s ear.
Or we would have heard the particular chorus, if we weren’t deaf. Instead, we’ve had to read it on the Internet.
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As a QA dude who understands cookies, I officially call this a non-story: Despite federal ban, NSA Web site places ‘cookies’ on visitors’ computers to track Web surfing:
The National Security Agency’s Internet site has been placing files on visitors’ computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite strict federal rules banning most of them.
The government apparently bans permanent cookies, but allows session cookies. The NSA explains the brief presence of permanent cookies this way:
Don Weber, an NSA spokesman, said in a statement Wednesday that the cookie use resulted from a recent software upgrade. Normally, the site uses temporary, permissible cookies that are automatically deleted when users close their Web browsers, he said, but the software in use shipped with persistent cookies already on.
“After being tipped to the issue, we immediately disabled the cookies,” he said.
Completely believeable, especially if the NSA site uses third party components which probably use cookies independently of the official site policy. Granted, a little QA probably would have caught this, but who can afford the time or money for testing and adherence to standards?
So I agree with Jeff Jarvis that anyone trying to make hay out of this is simply happy to continue yipping the letters NSA. Kevin Aylward notes that the DNC Web site uses cookies set to expire in 28 years (the expiration date of the cookie served as “evidence” of the insidious nature of the plot).
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Anti-Christian Jeans Are a Trend in Sweden:
Cheap Monday jeans are a hot commodity among young Swedes thanks to their trendy tight fit and low price, even if a few buyers are turned off by the logo: a skull with a cross turned upside down on its forehead.
Logo designer Bjorn Atldax says he’s not just trying for an antiestablishment vibe.
“It is an active statement against Christianity,” Atldax told The Associated Press. “I’m not a Satanist myself, but I have a great dislike for organized religion.”
Active statements against religions whose adherents regularly stab those who make active statements against it or whose adherents routinely blow up innocent commuters remain strangely absent.
(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)
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In Clayton, it’s:
“We remain convinced that the project to keep Centene’s headquarters in Clayton and generate 800 new jobs is in the best interests of the people of Clayton and the entire region,” [Clayton Mayor Mike] Schoedel said.
You, citizen, might see successful businesses in attractive locations in downtown Clayton, but that’s why you’re not a visionary civic leader ready to strip that land from its owner and award it to a more powerful local corporation. So shut up, and suffer your betters’ whims.
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Pope Benedict says:
“The loving eyes of God look on the human being, considered full and complete at its beginning,” Benedict said in his weekly address to the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square.
Ergo, who are we to oppress those little complete human beings and deny them all the rights of full and complete human beings, including the right to vote and to hold drivers’ licenses?
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Well, that’s what I take away from this story, with the following quote from Toronto mayor David Miller:
“The U.S. is exporting its problem of violence to the streets of Toronto,” he said.
Well, you export what’s in demand, don’t you?
(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)
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The helpful city of St. Louis wants to relocate a corporate citizen:
After a raging fire destroyed the Praxair Inc. plant on Chouteau Avenue in June, St. Louis officials pledged to help the firm find a new location.
Pledge to help, of course, is a synonym for not renewing permits and, through regulatory rigamarole, preventing the corporation from repairing and reopening the facility in its present location. Because of an industrial accident that scared people, but ultimately didn’t hurt or kill anyone.
Fortunately, though, the city had some choice property on its hands that it could unload offer to the ungrateful company:
On Wednesday, the company said thanks, but no thanks. It said the site proposed is contaminated by remnants of the Manhattan Project.
“Praxair is not interested in building a new facility on a floodplain within a Superfund site where, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has indicated, there may be risks of radiological exposure,” Praxair Distribution President Wayne Yakich said in a statement.
So, as a result of this helpful assistance from the city of St. Louis, it will drive a private business from its municipality along with the employment and tax revenue that come from private businesses employing people. As a result, the city of St. Louis will break ground on another entertainment destination with a half life of 18 months to provide, briefly, low-paying service jobs or the city of St. Louis will offer tax breaks, incentives, and other regulatory foolery to draw some other business which has not caught fire recently to the city.
All in a day’s work for your city officials, who get a headline two-fer for driving out the evil, stand-alone corporations and bringing in the parasitic crony capitalist corporations.
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Kudos to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and its investigative journalists for finding the Jews in the woodpile:
One of the hottest musical offerings of this holiday season may be a catchy radio jingle for a New Jersey-based vehicle donation program:
“1-877-KARS4KIDS. . . K-A-R-S, cars for kids . . . 1-877-KARS4KIDS. . . Donate your car today.”
The advertising spots, which have been airing on KMOX since before Thanksgiving, offer few details on the vehicle donation program. They tell listeners the program is a “recognized charity” and donors will receive a “maximum deduction” from the Internal Revenue Service for their vehicles. The ad also says donors will receive a “free vacation voucher” good for a three-day, two-night stay.
What is left unsaid, and what also is conspicuously absent from the charity’s Web site, is that almost all money raised through the Kars4Kids charity goes to a Lakewood, N. J.-based program set up to pay for private schooling and other educational programs. It aims to bring Jewish schoolchildren and adults closer to their heritage.
Curse those Hebes and their desire to teach Jewish children about Jewish culture!
How very investigatory of the Post-Dispatch to wade through a world full of Muslim charities collecting money to blow up innocents, Irish charities collecting money to fund the IRA, and Chinese Taoist charities collecting American defense secrets to sniff out the Zionists.
(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)
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It’s supposed to be an op-ed about gender feminism run amok, but Lionel Tiger (seriously) proffers the following metaphor which reflects ill on its creator:
Into this acrimonious climate has whispered a breath of spring air in winter–an extraordinary document that may have surprising impact because of its severe countercultural implications and its almost sweet innocence of purpose. In early November, the New Hampshire Commission on the Status of Men issued its first report (www.nh.gov/csm). The commission was proposed in a 1999 bill by state Rep. David Bickford. The House passed the bill, awarding a budget of $69,561. But months later, the state Senate stripped away funding. The commission was finally established in 2002. According to its report, the Senate’s effort to defund it reflects “the inaction of good people who apparently have been led to believe that legislative activity designed to primarily benefit men is somehow not appropriate politically, financially, or otherwise.”
To the contrary, the commission’s report frontally accepts that there are intrinsic differences in how men and women cope with health, education, responsibility and violence. It concludes that social policies must not begin by denying differences. If you’re running a zoo, know the real nature of your guests. This applies nationally, not only in New Hampshire.
Social policymakers, probably the government and its intelligentsia friends, are running the zoo. That makes you, gentle citizen, an animal for them to cage in Byzantine programs and Gordian knots of regulation.
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My Republican Senator, Jim Talent, thinks the Patriot Act requires fighting meth:
A conference report by Senate and House negotiators to extend for four years provisions of the USA Patriot Act includes a comprehensive anti-methamphetamine package restricting the sale of products containing ingredients needed to cook the drug and providing new tools to police and prosecutors to combat dealers.
Sens. Jim Talent, Missouri Republican, and Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, said the Combat Meth Act — together with anti-meth measures championed in the House — were included in the Reauthorization Conference Report filed Thursday.
Yea, verily, I shall not vote for Jim Talent in his re-election bid. And if that elevates the latest incarnation of Carnahanism (Russ, no doubt) to the Senate, who is to blame?
No doubt the Missouri Republicans would put me on that cross.
(Link seen on Instapundit. Click there, little brother; that poor Tennessee law professor needs the traffic.)
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Neil Steinberg has the right perspective on the current municipal fad of banning individual breeds of dogs:
After a safety study found that most railway accidents involve the last car of the train, railroads started getting rid of the caboose.
An old joke. But a form of illogic still too often used. Eliminate the thing that seems to cause the problem. Consider the severe, burdensome restrictions — basically a ban — proposed in the City Council against pit bulls. Pit bulls often maul people because pit bulls are a popular, powerful dog that people train to be aggressive. Should they be banned, certain Chicagoans won’t stop wanting mean dogs — they will only shift to another breed that is also powerful and can be trained the same way. Lose the caboose, and the next car in line becomes the last car on the train. Rottweilers will be next, then bull terriers. Soon only pugs will be legal.
Steinberg is an optimist, of course; given how the mandatory non-smoking section in restaurants went to all restaurants and then all municipalities once the anti-smoking agitators got to legislating, why would anti-dog biting agitators leave pugs to kill and maim one person every millenia?
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Some people think John Kerry called American soldiers terrorists, but that’s a stretch. He did, however, say that Iraqi troops should be terrorizing the Iraqi people. Here’s one of the only transcriptions of the comments from last week’s Face the Nation that I could find:
There is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the — of — of — of — historical customs, religious customs, whether you like it or not. Iraqis should be doing that.
Let’s replace the relative pronound that with its antecedent, and Kerry says:
Iraqis should be oing into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the — of — of — of — historical customs, religious customs, whether you like it or not.
Perhaps in Kerry’s world, Iraq was better off with Saddam, since under his rule, Iraqis were doing just that.
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So is this Alito guy confirmed yet, or what?
No? How come criminals have the right to a speedy trial, but nominees to the freaking courts don’t have the right to a speedy confirmation vote?
(Professor Bainbridge has more on the latest ginned-up controversy from Alito’s past.)
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