To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
Dangerrrr: cats could alter your personality:
THEY may look like lovable pets but Britain’s estimated 9m domestic cats are being blamed by scientists for infecting up to half the population with a parasite that can alter people’s personalities.
British scientists think it’s a parasite changing people’s behaviors? You know, if our housecats were 9m tall (that’s 29.5275591 feet American), they’d affect my behavior, parasite or not.
More chicken, sir?
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From Neil Steinberg’s Chicago Sun-Times column today:
Daley isn’t the only public servant receiving scrutiny. Our embattled governor, Rod Blagojevich, is on everybody’s minds and lips. His name came up in three very different conversations I had with three very different people one day this week. Since I am known as being a negative sort, I will present the bare facts behind the trio of comments without any kind of embroidery:
Time: 12 noon. Place: Back room at Gene & Georgetti’s. Speaker: a well-respected, longtime Chicago editor:
“I’ve been watching politics for 40 years, and he’s the worst governor we’ve ever had, bar none.”
Time: 2:30 p.m. Place: Editorial board room of the Sun-Times. Speaker: a longtime state officeholder:
“He’s missing in action and not paying attention.”
Time: 5:30 p.m. Place: the Metra Milwaukee North Line. Speaker: a lady on a train:
“He’s in over his head. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. I kinda feel sorry for him.”
When Neil Steinberg turns on a Democrat, it’s obvious the only principle the Democrat has espoused is Peter.
But you know, gentle reader, how I feel about my governor. I want to draft Matt Blunt 2008.
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Joggers are today being warned about violent crows in London parks after an attack left a man bloodied and needing hospital treatment.
If only New York had issued such a warning earlier this week.
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State seizes cancer-stricken girl:
Child welfare officials seized a 12-year-old cancer patient from her parents, saying they were blocking radiation treatment that doctors say she needs.
State officials even issued an Amber Alert for a the child, who was in the custody of her parents:
Last week, authorities issued an Amber Alert to gain temporary custody of Katie after receiving an anonymous tip about possible neglect. She was found with her mother at a family ranch, about 80 miles west of Corpus Christi near Freer, on Saturday.
Certainly, the mother must face some charges:
Michele Wernecke was arrested on charges of interfering with child custody and was released Monday after posting $50,000 bond.
Intefering with the state that wants to take custody of your child.
Illinois? Massachusetts? No. Texas.
Friends, I am not for denying treatment of cancer-stricken kids, but I do fear allowing states to seize children from their parents when experts think the children are not being raised healthy. Because it’s a matter of degree and not kind that prevents Departments of Protecting The CHILDREN from seizing children from homes that serve too much soda, and government departments always turn up the heat.
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Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times, today:
So please stop bull——– us.
He’s so authentic and emphatic when he puts faux swearing into his columns.
Once suspects his shift key was broken, or else he would have deployed the @$%#&*# bomb.
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Error nets Bush 100 extra votes: Town of Herman’s 366 votes for president should have been 266.
Republicans had to replicate this plot in only 34,613 towns nationwide to steal the election for Bush!
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Experts have determined the macho man is dead. Of course, it’s not a relevant set of experts:
“The masculine ideal is being completely modified. All the traditional male values of authority, infallibility, virility and strength are being completely overturned,” said Pierre Francois Le Louet, the agency’s managing director.
Instead today’s males are turning more towards “creativity, sensitivity and multiplicity,” as seen already in recent seasons on the catwalks of Paris and Milan.
When you want to study a man in his natural environment, you shouldn’t go to the catwalks of Paris and Milan. The cathouses, maybe, but never the catwalks.
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Radley Balko says:
Pass enough laws, and a pissed-off cop can find something you’ve done wrong.
Well, you know, gentle reader, how I concur. Balko’s piece has another acute example.
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Wait, I have a great nickname idea for Marquette University:
Because I think it would be an apt metaphor for a bloated, overpriced re-evaluation and update.
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Within the tale of passive/aggressive neighbor conflict entitled “Feud escalates between neighbors in Eureka“, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch captures this fallacious theorem:
According to Virginia-based Community Associations Institute, one in six Americans live in communities governed by indentures, in part because the added layer of governance can assure harmony and stable property values. [Emphasis added.]
Each additional layer of governance provides an extra set of cudgels with which people can bash each other and new arbitrary rules with which to punish the undesirable guilty. But those who trade liberty for property-price security deserve neither, and really deserve a couple of correctional knocks to the side of the head like an old television slightly resistant to an Atari 2600 signal. The same amount of cursing, too.
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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch runs this story in the Sunday paper: Radioactive waste will roll through area. They include a map with the exact route the trucks carrying radioactive waste will use when driving through the St. Louis metropolitan area.
The free press, to gin up outrage, provides almost all the details the terrorists would need to implement the worst case scenario about which the free press foments its outrage.
I am not advocating censorship, but perhaps a sense of our free press that perhaps it’s unseemly to shout “There could be a fire!” in a crowded theater.
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That must be the reason that supporters of Michael Jackson had a number of anti-Bush signs outside the courtroom in California where Michael Jackson’s trial is occurring.
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Wow, this makes West Virginia sound small:
An RMS Strategies Poll released today reports that 46 percent of 401 registered voters in West Virginia would vote for Byrd if the election were held now.
Or apathetic. But I guess they mean a sample of registered voters, not that there are only 401 actual registered voters in the entire state.
(Link seen on Captain’s Quarters.)
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Seat Belt Violators Caught By Cops Wearing Night Vision Goggles:
Maryland State Police say they issued 111 tickets last night in a seat belt enforcement operation in Rockville.
111 x
The fine for not wearing a seat belt in Maryland is 25 dollars.
111 x 25 = 2775!
Three thousand bucks per night in a small enforcement operation in a single town. Those night vision goggles not only pay for themselves, but they pay for the cops who wear them, and probably a couple days of meals on wheels to boot.
Thank you for making seatbelt offenses a primary offense, giving incentive to law enforcement to pull over people who aren’t wearing their seatbelts after dark instead of chasing hardened criminals who might shoot back.
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Now that Wisconsin taxpayers, through a special “district,” have built a new theatre, an existing theatre group is closing up shop:
A representative of New Riverside said last month that the arrival of the new Milwaukee Theatre, the taxpayer-supported venue under the control of the Wisconsin Center District, was “driving us out of business.” The Milwaukee Theatre opened in November 2003.
The managers of both venues generally compete for the same artists. In one case, comedian Jerry Seinfeld opted to go with the new Milwaukee Theatre instead of the Riverside. New Riverside officials said last month that Seinfeld rejected the Riverside even though the rental fee was waived.
I hate to see government-benefitted enterprises drive out private enterprises, as they will eventually lead to dependence on the government to provide those services.
Yes, this is contrary to what I wrote in November 2003, when I mocked the Riverside for predicting its own demise because of the competition. But you, gentle reader, understand that I am a finger-in-the-wind sort of guy and not the sort who can find fault in government funding of this sort and in entrepreneurs who claim that competition (government funded or not) will drive them out of business.
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I spent a half hour on the phone with a research firm last night, hopefully helping to squelch a bad idea. The research firm wanted to gauge my support for a tax increase in St. Louis City and St. Louis County to fund Forest Park.
Hey, the questions really offered me all the options: A sales tax increase or a property tax increase; controlled by St. Louis City, one of the existing tax-spending unelected district bodies, or a new independent body designed to suck tax money; used specifically to improve Forest Park, used for Forest Park and St. Louis City parks, or used for Forest Park and parks in your neighborhood.
Of course, I said I would not approve any increase in taxes. I recognize that any increase in taxes earmarked for some specific project means that the government will spend the savings on other continuing, expanding programs that could, sometime in the future, exceed current revenue, requiring the government to float the idea of a targeted tax that sits atop all other general taxes.
Plus, it gives visionary leaders like Rod Blagojevich funds to raid for ongoing expenses. (h/t Free Will.)
The very nature of the questioning on the survey indicates that the very best bureaucratic minds are working and spending money they cannot allocate to actually improving Forest Park on getting some sort of tax increase on the ballot. Hey, it’s only one fifth of one percent, is that too much?
It’s not a lot in its own, but each ballot initiative accumulates, and each one represents a double tax increase: not only are we paying for whatever the tax targets, but the money left over in the general funds will instead purchase a new program with ongoing and growing expenses.
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It sounds like another sequel is needed:
More than a fifth of the planet’s bird species face extinction as humans venture further into their habitats and introduce alien predators, an environmental group said on Wednesday. [Emphasis added]
Slather on some mud, Mr. Governor. Aliens threaten our birds.
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Ralph Nader (or is it Nadir? I forget) and a henchman looking for fundraising want to impeach Bush and Cheney:
THE IMPEACHMENT of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, should be part of mainstream political discourse.
Minutes from a summer 2002 meeting involving British Prime Minister Tony Blair reveal that the Bush administration was “fixing” the intelligence to justify invading Iraq. US intelligence used to justify the war demonstrates repeatedly the truth of the meeting minutes — evidence was thin and needed fixing.
President Clinton was impeached for perjury about his sexual relationships. Comparing Clinton’s misbehavior to a destructive and costly war occupation launched in March 2003 under false pretenses in violation of domestic and international law certainly merits introduction of an impeachment resolution.
Oh, boy. I don’t know how far down the line of succession one must impeach to make a distant presidential candidate president, but we’ll never get to the nadir.
Leaving aside Clinton’s military actions which coincided an awful lot with disclosures and revelations in the Whitewater investigation, we’ve got some meeting minutes which offer a secretary’s interpretations of a meeting. That, with exit polls showing a different results from the election tallies, is what the left has lef, er, remaining. Perhaps we should call them the left behind.
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So let me get out my conceptual transmogrifier:
Mandy and Kevin Kozminske wrote out a hefty check recently as a down payment on a loft condominium in downtown St. Louis. But her employer covered their closing costs – $5,000.
Mandy Kozminske, an assistant vice president for U.S. Bank, qualified for the money through the bank’s employer-assisted housing program. The $5,000 is a loan; it’s forgivable as long as she stays on the job – and in the home – for five years.
Hey, U.S. Bank can do what it wants to retain its employees; however, I hope it offers $5,000 in free cash to every teller, janitor, and maintenance man in its direct employ. Otherwise, the Post-Dispatch displays that its commitment to the Little Man ends where its commitment to championing the movers and shakers in the city of St. Louis government/developer cabal begins.
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