Category: News

And you probably wouldn’t believe it if you did:

Police said the woman had spent Monday at the house on Mimika, and on Tuesday morning she went on her way and homeowner went to work. The woman obviously returned, and broke out a kitchen window, unlatched it and tried to crawl through, police said. But the window had a second latch that permitted it to raise up only so far, and the woman became wedged and later died, police said.

In her struggle to free herself, her pants came off, police said.

Right.

The street is, in fact, rising up and attacking popular propoganda’s convenient targets: neo-Nazis:

A crowd protesting a white supremacists’ march Saturday turned violent, throwing baseball-sized rocks at police, vandalizing vehicles and stores, and setting fire to a neighborhood bar, authorities said.

When Mayor Jack Ford and a local minister tried to calm the rioting, they were cursed for allowing the march, and Ford said a masked gang member threatened to shoot him.

At least 65 people were arrested and several police officers were injured before calm was restored about four hours later.

Ford blamed the rioting on gangs taking advantage of a volatile situation. He declared a state of emergency, set an 8 p.m. curfew through the weekend, and asked the Highway Patrol for help.

Funny, but isn’t this the reason why Hollywood changes villains in movies from actual threats in today’s world–such as radical Islamists (think The Sum of All Fears)–to Nazis? Because the better-minded amongst us don’t want hooligans and vigilantes to attack the people depicted in the movie as unrepentant evil?

Well, I guess Hollywood might be right about its impact on popular sensitivities, and it can rest assured that the themes it espouses don’t deal with contemporary evils, but instead continue to dish propoganda which demonizes a movement which has caused sporadic violence but which was last a credible global threat sixty years ago.

Another municipality says “Lights, Camera, Revenue!” Or it would, if it can only overcome a couple of obstacles:

The St. Peters project has two big obstacles – its cost and the possibility that tickets generated by the system could be thrown out of court.

Good to know law enforcement works as hard to circumvent the law as lawbreakers.

Lohr dispute heats up as strikers lose jobs:

A labor dispute at St. Louis city beer wholesaler Lohr Distributing Co. has turned uglier after Lohr told strikers that they’ve lost their jobs to permanent replacement workers.

The move complicates any settlement with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents the drivers. They’ve been on strike for nearly five months.

Maybe a couple more instances like this will help fatcat union leaders remember that their slush funds are fatter when they manage to keep their union members employed, and perhaps some concessions might be necessary in that effort. A good job is a good job, and apparently Lohr like Northwest Airlines before it, didn’t have any trouble filling those jobs for lesser terms.

It was bad enough I had to suffer through the American Airlines CEO’s column in the September in-flight house organ, but now the company has commissioned a study to indicate that if it loses its government-enforced monopoly in Dallas, everyone will pay:

A push by Southwest Airlines to increase flights from Dallas Love Field could trigger a reduction of service by American Airlines to Lambert Field and a number of smaller cities in Missouri and Illinois, according to a study made public on Monday.

The study labeled Lambert as at “moderate risk” to lose a small number of American flights.

However, Gerard Slay, deputy director at Lambert, said he doesn’t expect any impact, describing the study’s discussion of St. Louis as a “what-if scenario.”

American commissioned the study by Eclat Consulting Inc., an aviation-consulting firm in Reston, Va., in what has become a bruising battle over a federal law that limits direct flights by Southwest from Love Field to most of the country.

Here’s how American will put the hurt on our particular region:

If American’s hub at Dallas/Fort Worth were to shrink, however, there would be fewer connecting flights, resulting in reduced service to smaller communities that rely on the airline’s extensive network as their link to the world.

Such a development, the study said, would hurt towns such as Kirksville, Mo., and Quincy, Ill. These towns rely on federally subsidized service provided by American affiliates that fly under the banner of AmericanConnection, the Eclat study said.

“Hub degradation would take place, making marginal routes unprofitable,” said Eclat’s president, William S. Swelbar. “Inevitably, those routes would be eliminated.”

Of the 11 daily flights between Lambert Field and Dallas/Fort Worth, five could be lost, Swelbar said. While three of those five flights could be shifted to Love Field, travelers would see a reduction in the number of connection flights, he said.

So that’s the loss of a government-enforced monopoly, increased competition, and a reduction in government-subsidized flights? American The impartial third party Eclat presents this as a nightmare scenario, but to me it looks like a dream come true. Now if the bloated, incapable-of-adapting carrier collapses before sucking off any more government “loans” and without pushing its employee liabilities off on taxpayers, I will awaken disappointed.

UPDATE As Mr. Hill notes in the comments, the threat or promise has been heard elsewhere. Google News helps prove the “reduced flights” extortion has been targeted to:

• McAllen, Texas
• Hell, all of North Texas
• Arkansas
• Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Flood the zone, AA, flood the zone.

Jesse Jackson:

Jackson said President Bush’s chief political strategist, Karl Rove, is overseeing reconstruction of the Gulf Coast, and that he and others in the White House are using Katrina to push their political agenda. He said black, Democratic-leaning voters have been radically dislocated and are being kept in “permanent exile.”

“Karl Rove is a political reconstructionist” who wants to “change the character” of Louisiana politics from the mayor’s office to its congressional representation.

As if the Rove machine would try a simple diaspora when they could turn the dial to tsunami or earthquake and kill all Democrats in Louisiana.

Magic Marker used in commission of felony:

Students at Kirkwood High School provided information to police that helped lead to the arrests of four teenagers in the scrawlings of a racial slur and a swastika at two schools, police said Friday.

Kirkwood Police Chief Jack Plummer said officers picked up the teenagers, one of whom is a juvenile, on Thursday and Friday on suspicion of vandalism and a hate crime, a felony. Plummer said officers sought one more suspect.

The slurs were discovered Aug. 29 near the south entrance of Kirkwood High and at St. Paul’s Lutheran School in Des Peres. Officers said the scrawlings, made in permanent marker, were a curse word, a racial slur and a swastika at Kirkwood, and a swastika at St. Paul’s. The scrawlings included the phrase “the kings,” a reference to a band the suspects like.

Well, then, it was permanent marker, so lock them all up for five years!

The magic hate crime designation multiplies every crime, no matter how trivial, into a felony. Say nigger, and it’s free speech. Say kike while throwing a gum wrapper on the ground as you pass a synagogue, and you’re penitentiary-eligible.

Owen at Boots and Sabers has the story of an Appleton judge who assigns custody of a minor to an inappropriate institution.

Manchester mayor expects retail center will happen:

In a tie vote, the Manchester Tax Increment Financing Commission declined Tuesday to recommend that the city approve the Manchester Highlands shopping center project – and the tax increment financing plan that would go with it.

The six members of the commission appointed by city officials favored the Pace Properties Inc. project. The six members appointed by other jurisdictions, mainly St. Louis County and the Parkway School District, opposed the proposal.

Aldermen are expected to consider the commission’s action at a meeting Nov. 7. Mayor Larry Miles said he expected the project to move forward anyway.

This isn’t taxation without representation at all. It’s reduction of taxation without representation, and although it does place a larger tax burden on the non-Elect amongst us who don’t have the juice to impress municipal officials, it completely adheres to the founding philosophy of our nation. Also:

Some city-appointed commission members urged Pace to avoid using eminent domain to get land for Manchester Highlands. Doug Huff, vice president of Pace, said his company generally avoided its use.

As a mere citizen of a former representative democracy, where governments exercised emininent domain and other rights ceded to governments by its citizens, I supplicantly plead that Pace also not raise an army and compel me to shop at its little principalities scattered among the formerly free city-states that comprise what was the United States of America.

Columnist charged with domestic battery:

Chicago Sun-Times columnist and editorial board member Neil Steinberg was arrested at his home late Wednesday and charged with striking his wife during an argument.

Steinberg was charged with domestic battery and interfering with the reporting of domestic battery, both misdemeanors, Northbrook Police Sgt. Tony Matheny said.

I’ve enjoyed Steinberg’s column for years, but one thing I’ve disliked is when he’s made cheap shots on Bob Greene, former columnist for the Chicago Tribune for a slightly sordid but legal adulterous dalliance with a teenager. Now he’s got his own troubles and material for cheap shots from people who disagree with him.

There’s a lesson to be learned from this, gentle reader. Unfortunately, it kinda eludes me, and I expect I, too, will continue to be snarky until my own wife beating comes to light.

Please, gentle reader, send me flowers when my beautiful wife puts me in the hospital.

1. Declare something a fundamental right:
   

   San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who became internationally known for his campaign a year ago to legalize gay marriage, said on Monday he considered wireless Internet access a fundamental right of all citizens.

   Newsom told a news conference that he was bracing for a battle with telephone and cable interests, along with state and U.S. regulators, whom he said were looking to derail a campaign by cities to offer free or low-cost municipal Wi-Fi services.

   Wi-Fi is a short-range wireless technology that is now built into most laptop computers and is increasingly offered on handheld computers and certain mobile phones. Local officials are mulling plans to blanket every nook and cranny of this hilly city of 750,000 residents with Wi-Fi access.

   “This is inevitable — Wi-Fi. It is long overdue,” Newsom told a news conference at San Francisco’s City Hall. “It is to me a fundamental right to have access universally to information,” he said.

2. Fund it with tax dollars–or do you want to roll back all civil rights and repeal the right to vote for blacks???!

Lindenwood wants city to use eminent domain

Lindenwood University officials want the city to use the controversial power of eminent domain to force out a heating and air conditioning business to make way for a new fine and performing arts center.

Lindenwood President Dennis Spellmann asked city officials Tuesday night to consider using such authority to allow a redevelopment corporation, headed by Spellmann and two other university officials, to purchase a 4-acre site along West Clay Street near the northwest corner of West Clay and First Capitol Drive. The private university has already acquired about 20 acres for the project.

The 138,000-square-foot, $32 million complex would feature a 1,375-seat auditorium for live performances as well as classrooms, rehearsal studios and office space. University officials hope to begin construction before the end of the year.

Local universities seem to have some sort of phallic competition regarding these venuews; UMSL has opened one which continues to struggle with low attendance and debt, but the president of Lindenwood wants the city of St. Charles to steal some land to give his university land to build another. Well, not the university, per se, but a redevelopment corporation run by him and a couple of other officials.

But he’s been pushed to the end of the rope:

Spellmann said he’s avoided using eminent domain to acquire property in the past but thinks the university has exhausted its options in this case.

Spellman’s damn benevolent to avoid using his power of stealing private property, but he’s almost exhausted all options.

But Spellman fails to, purposefully I would suspect, to take the remaining legitimate option available to the university: Build his boondoggle somewhere else. Or don’t bother. Two options Spellman doesn’t include in his list of options for confiscating someone else’s land for his own ends.