Category: News

For those of you who don’t want to read Neil Steinberg’s columns, allow me to summarize today’s:

1. Blackberry users are rude, and the law should outlaw rudeness.

   Of course, Some of us live outside the urban media world and its satellites in Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., and California and can’t think of a single person who uses Blackberry rudely or otherwise. We can at the issue abstractly and recognize the dangers inherent in the patent process as made concrete through this case and realize that its precedent and example of government intrusion into industry and our lives far exceeds our own pet peeves.

2. Thrivent for Lutherans is whacky in conception, but cool.

   As I (your host, Brian J.) am married to a card-carrying Lutheran, I hope it’s also lucrative.

3. Illegal immigrants aren’t as bad as people who think illegal immigrants are bad.

   To quote the maestro:

   I wrote them back — every one, until I got tired of it — asking what other international laws are being broken that they are hot and excited about? Or is it just this one? See, to me, that is where the racism comes in. Nobody in the world writes TOO MANY MANGOS are ENTERING THIS COUNTRY in VIOLATION OF THE FRUIT IMPORT QUOTAS.

   It’s not international law. It’s United States law, which is more important. Also, we who oppose illegal immigration often think prevention of unchecked border crossing is more important than the legislation slathered on by protectionists who care about limiting the import of Canadian wood or the environmentalists who care to limit the import of shelled pets from Costa Rica. But some of us conservatarians are bothered by the hobgoblins of foolish, consistent prioritization.

If you, gentle reader, will read on, you’ll see I’ve posted thrice this evening; why should I not deserve a column in a daily?

Crikey, how ungrateful can one man be? After all, Steinberg once called the author of MfBJN as a “genuis”, or at least might have said something I posted was “genuis” once. Ungrateful, perhaps, but I prefer to consider myself the sole remaining paladin of Bob Greene, whom Steinberg routinely snarks in his columns.

Boys hurt on bikes sue Wal-Mart, importer: Marin trial to focus on wheel clasp used on millions of cycles:

He and eight other boys from around the nation are suing retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which sold the bikes, and a San Rafael company that imported them from China. A trial in the case begins Monday in a Marin County courtroom, and the youths are expected to testify about smashing their faces into pavement after the front wheels came loose.

The lawsuit asserts that the so-called quick-release devices on the front wheels malfunctioned when the bikes hit bumps. The clasps, used on millions of bicycles, are designed to hold the front-wheel axle to the frame and allow the wheel to be easily removed for repairs or transport.

The boys and their parents also claim that Wal-Mart conspired with Dynacraft BSC Inc. of San Rafael and Carl Warren & Co., which investigated complaints for the importer, to cover up the defects.

Nine kids fell off of their bikes, and it’s the fault of the bikes….although millions have been sold and none have been recalled or otherwise cited officially for safety concerns.

When I was a child, we used to take our old Kent bikes down the side of a freeway embankment past some electrical transmission towers at high rates of speed. I’d like to think it was skill, but it was probably also a large amount of luck that kept me from serious injury. But assuming I had come to harm, in the early 1980s and even though we were poor, we wouldn’t have sued for recompense. What a pity, as it offered such lucrative targets:

• The Federal government, for building overpasses where children had access to the steep embankments.
• Kent, for making bicycles without frictional inertial dampening systems that limited us to sissy speeds.
• The power company, for not putting bumpers on the legs of its transmission towers.
• The City of Milwaukee, for not replacing dirt and grass with a comfortable poly-foam of some sort.

The lead plantiff in this case says he cannot absorb information like he used to. Hell, I don’t absorb information like I used to, either. But, on the bright side for this young man, he’s certainly absorbing the litigious lotto lessons of his environment well enough.

How would it have benefitted the psyche of certain segments of the population if the National Weather Service had indulged Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and had hurricanes Keisha and Reanne hammered the Gulf Coast this year?

Sure, it was a deer, but it had big fangs:

A St. Louis police officer fatally shot a deer on Sunday evening after it had apparently wandered from the Mississippi River to the construction area of the new Busch Stadium, authorities said.

WHITE HOUSE PLAN IF SADDAM FOUND ‘NOT GUILTY’ (Drudge flash, so pardon me when it goes dark in the next 20 minutes):

Senior Bush administration officials have considered the unthinkable: What if Saddam Hussein is found not guilty in his trial?

“There will be more charges filed against him, and more charges after that, if needed… he has committed tremendous crimes,” a top Bush source explained last week from Washington.

We at MfBJN speculated on this possibility: What If Saddam Hussein Goes O.J.?:

At that point, Iraqi prosecutors can levy additional charges against Saddam Hussein, demonstrating that the rule of law as practiced in the West means that prosecutors can continue prosecuting and persecuting the accused with a plethora of laws and violations until such time as the target is found guilty or until the target is a broken and bankrupted person.

A fine beacon of rule of law, indeed.

What, no moonbat conspiracy theories to fit this fact?

With an improved trade environment and financing tools, Iraq has become the second largest buyer of U.S. wheat.

That, my friends, is agricultural imperialism at its worst: we’re making the Middle East a dumping ground for our cheap, efficiently produced foodstuffs. Wouldn’t it be better just to let them starve?

Coming from, of all things, the Macy’s Day Parade, we have this stunning display of unAmericanism:

During its live coverage of the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, NBC did not tell viewers that a giant balloon had caught on a street lamp and injured two sisters.

…

Sarah and Mary Chamberlain, 11 and 26, were hit by the debris. Sarah needed nine stitches to her head, and Mary, who uses a wheelchair, suffered a bump on her forehead.

Their father, Stephen Chamberlain, called it a freak accident and said the family didn’t plan to sue. He said his daughters are looking forward to the special VIP seating Macy’s offered them for next year’s parade.

But that’s free money, and someone (else) has to pay! What is this country coming to?

The War On Animal Abuse:

U.S. troops found two cheetah cubs _ one of them blinded _ being forced to fight each other for the amusement of jeering children in this dusty, forgotten village.

The soldiers of the U.S. counterterrorism task force for the Horn of Africa were in the region carrying out humanitarian work when they came across the three-month-old cheetahs “performing” at a restaurant run by Mohamed Hudle. The Djibouti-based task force provides intelligence-gathering help to countries in the region, tries to bolster cooperation and border protection, and mounts humanitarian projects aimed at improving the U.S. military’s image among Muslims.

The troops provided medical treatment to the blinded cub, fed them both and tried to persuade Mohamed to hand them over to wildlife officials. They contacted U.S.-based cheetah experts as well as Ethiopian authorities.

Expending treasure and the blood of American troops to liberate the oppressed in the Middle East, feh. But dying to save cute widdle animals?

Bring. It. On.

Keen insight from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s Sylvester Brown:

I’m convinced there isn’t a politician around today with the chutzpah to challenge the powerful Bush machine.

There should be. Especially now that President George W. Bush’s administration is besieged with allegations and scandal. Critics claim the president manipulated evidence in a rush to war while key members of his administration are under investigations for spitefully blowing the cover of a CIA agent. Then there’s the fact that more than 2,000 soldiers have died in a war that (according to recent polls) more than 60 percent of Americans feel has been mishandled. Heck, members of his own party are even circling wagons of self-preservation.

Must be that Muthra, Reid, Pelosi, Kennedy, Kerry, Leahy, ad al and et absurdum, just lack chutzpah. No, they’ve got chutzpah. Perhaps they just lack moxie.

Or their simplistic rhetorical backfilling falls upon American ears who understand principles or lack thereof.

Ask any QA or Project Manager, and they’ll agree. So will the St. Louis region as it tries to stomach hundreds of millions of dollars in tax overruns because Metrolink light rail feature creeped and people continued to tinker with design after the development began.

But it’s public money and public/private partnership, so nobody will get fired, which is the important thing.

If my home state needs me, I will serve in the invasion of Illinois. That is, if Wisconsin and Chicago have a war over water, my side is clear.

And just in case you wonder, I would have had to come down on the side of Kilbourntown in Milwaukee’s Bridge War because I’m from the northwest side.

Supervisors vote to require neutering of pit bulls, mixes:

San Francisco supervisors unanimously approved a set of ordinances Tuesday requiring the neutering or spaying of an estimated 7,000 pit bull terriers and pit bull mixes in the city.

The legislation, sponsored by Supervisor Bevan Dufty, also will set new restrictions on the breeding of pit bulls, requiring breeders to obtain a permit from the city. People found violating the requirement to have their dog neutered or spayed could be fined up to $1,000.

One must wonder if this particular law means all currently endowed male dogs must be disenfrankcized. One suspects, given how much respect San Francisco has for other tenets of the United States Constitution, that legal protections like ex post facto don’t apply there either.

Maybe None: Is having a child — even one — environmentally destructive?:

Knight is the founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, an informal network of people dedicated to phasing out the human race in the interest of the health of the Earth. Knight, whose convictions led him to get a vasectomy in the 1970s, when he was 25, believes that the human race is inherently dangerous to the planet and inevitably creates an unsustainable situation.

“As long as there’s one breeding couple,” he says cheerfully, “we’re in danger of being right back here again. Wherever humans live, not much else lives. It isn’t that we’re evil and want to kill everything — it’s just how we live.”

Knight’s position might sound extreme at first blush, but there’s an undeniable logic to it: Human activities — from development to travel, from farming to just turning on the lights at night — are damaging the biosphere. More people means more damage. So if fewer people means less destruction, wouldn’t no people at all be the best solution for the planet?

One could apply Knight’s sound–but hardly valid–logic to all of life itself, since every herbivore on the planet eats weeds and damages their life cycles, and every damn weed on the plant sucks nitrogen out of the soil and changes the environment.

Why stop at living processes? Why, rain erodes landmasses! Solar flares irradiate uninhabited planets! Novae char!

The only solution is to embrace nullity!

Anything less is inconsistency.

McCain: Pentagon spending ‘unsustainable’:

Republican Sen. John McCain Tuesday said the massive Pentagon budget for the war in Iraq can’t be sustained because of the need to replace weapons.

“We have unsustainable defense spending,” said McCain, a chief proponent of military acquisition reform. “Refurbishment or replacement sooner than planned is putting further pressure on DOD’s investment accounts. We cannot sustain the number of weapons programs that are in the program of record.”

However, Medicare spending and a new drug benefit are different. Whereas each dollar spent on a bullet or a bomb gets used up when that bomb or bullet is used up, each dollar of health tax dollars extends the life of someone who will need another dollar of tax dollars tomorrow.

The more they succeed, the more they cost. Unlike wars.

Talent’s amendment could save Boeing C-17:

Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., on Wednesday introduced a $7 billion amendment to a defense spending bill, aiming to keep open the St. Louis production line for Boeing’s C-17 transport plane.

Pentagon officials recently alerted Congress of their plan to stop buying the plane.

The amendment by Talent authorizes the Air Force to buy up to 42 C-17s in the next few years. It also calls on the military to keep the line open until the need for more “lift” aircraft to deploy and sustain forces abroad is assessed.

Gee, I wish my wife would authorize me to continue spending money until we determined whether or not I really needed to.

Next time I am voting for the Libertarian.