Category: News

Picture this text scrolling up the screen before Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith:

Lucas, speaking to reporters, emphasised that the original “Star Wars” was written at the end of the Vietnam war, when Richard Nixon was U.S. president, but that the issue being explored was still very much alive today.

“The issue was, how does a democracy turn itself into a dictatorship?” he said.

“When I wrote it, Iraq (the U.S.-led war) didn’t exist… but the parallels of what we did in Vietnam and Iraq are unbelievable.”

He acknowledged an uncomfortable feeling that the United States was in danger of losing its democratic ideals, like in the movie.

“I didn’t think it was going to get this close. I hope this doesn’t come true in our country.”

Story in St. Louis Post-Dispatch: FCC commissioners warn of effort to consolidate media:

Two members of the Federal Communication Commission called upon the public Saturday to help their agency resist new efforts to relax rules allowing big corporations to own more television and radio stations.

Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, the commission members, spoke before an overflow crowd to the National Conference for Media Reform at the Millennium Hotel in downtown St. Louis. More than 2,200 people from across the country are attending the three-day conference.

The federal agency voted to relax its rules on media consolidation two years ago, but Congress and the courts intervened to stop it.

Copps said the three Republican members of the commission, a majority, are ready to try again. He expects big media companies to bring “a lot of pressure” on the commission to allow more consolidation of newspapers and radio and television stations.

With the explosion of new media types such as blogging, podcasting, satellite radio, and coming media forms that are directly consumer-interactive such as streaming movies and Internet video, I think the major media companies will fight for a diminishing share of consumers.

However, certain segments of the FCC want to ensure that it retains the ability to regulate businesses as much as possible. Because as the audience fractures and the broadcast media become less relevant, so too the functionaries and appointees who regulate it. Unless the demonstrate some vision and leadership to intrude upon other, non-airwave media, too.

The latest journalist to revise Bush’s rationale for the Iraq War as only Weapons of Mass Destruction: Mark Silva of the Chicago Tribune:

With American dissatisfaction over the conflict in Iraq reaching its highest level since the invasion two years ago–and the initial reasons for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein undermined by the discovery that he possessed no weapons of mass destruction–Bush has set out this year with carefully scripted tours of the recently liberated nations of Europe to cast all of these events as chapters of one great world saga.

But the peaceful, homegrown movements of these nations bear little resemblance to what Bush has dubbed “Purple Revolution” of Iraq–named for ink-stains on the fingers of Iraqis who voted in January for a new government.

Critics contend that the president is masking the original, and later discredited, reasons for invading Iraq with his vow to end world tyranny, a theme Bush voiced in his second-term inaugural address and has repeated across Europe.

Like Sylvester Brown, Jr., before him, Mark Silva and his unnamed critics don’t remember this reason as existing prior to the war. They also seem eager to determine that the Iraq War and its democratic aftermath are unrelated to these peaceful revolutions.

Mere coincidence, perhaps, explains why these things are happening now in the age of straightforward, ultimatums-upheld foreign policy instead of in the economically-supercharged and multilateralist-triumphant 1990s where treaties were signed and discussions were held and the status quo remained.

Shrieking headline: Animals in abandoned pet shop are discovered in squalid conditions.

Lead:

The Department of Agriculture is caring for 206 animals living at the Pampered Pets store in Alton Square mall while the shop’s ownership is resolved in court.

Management at Alton Square mall learned this week just how messy a business breakdown can be when pets are the merchandise.

Matthew and Jessica Buckingham, the owners of the Pampered Pets store on the mall’s second floor, defaulted on a loan and abandoned the store, said Jeff Squibb, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Agriculture. The agency regulates such businesses.

My dog, man! How long were those animals living in abandoned squalor?

When the store did not open for business on Thursday, mall officials notified Alton authorities.

“We arrived and found horrible conditions,” said James Greer, Alton assistant chief of animal control. “When animals are unattended like that, even for a short time, things get filthy fast.”

It sounds like the officials were confronted with the same amount of mess that pet store employees confront every morning, and the facts in the story imply that Thursday was the first day the store hadn’t opened. The story, on the other hand, uses the appropriate words to imply the opposite.

Story:

Two men each received two life sentences plus 512 years in prison on Friday for robbing a grocery store in St. Charles.

Wow. If Martin Luther had gotten that sentence for his 95 theses, he’d be eligible for release in 2128. Of course, in today’s prosecution environment, he’d have gotten a separate count of something for each thesis.

It’s good to see perspective and reasonability involved in sentencing. After all, with improvements in medical science, it’s important that we as a society sentence offenders to half a milennium in prison.

Just what we want in relationship of mobs of people to leaders: mass hysteria:

“Everyone was screaming and jumping up and down. It was mass hysteria,” claims a graduate of a women’s liberal arts college in Decatur, GA, site of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s commencement day address this weekend.

Will they do anything for their leader? Because that’s the other sign of a too-successful Great Leader.

Professor Bainbridge points to an article that might indicate that the ruling class has almost succeeded in erasing history to its benefit:

Who will be the Greatest American? Political giant Abraham Lincoln or Bill Clinton? Sports legend Babe Ruth or Tiger Woods? Media mogul Oprah Winfrey or Walt Disney? These remarkable people, and many more, have been named by America as some of the top 100 Greatest Americans.

The common man gets to vote for the greatest American from these choices:

Abraham Lincoln
Albert Einstein
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Hamilton
Amelia Earhart
Andrew Carnegie
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Audie Murphy
Babe Ruth
Barack Obama
Barbara Bush
Benjamin Franklin
Bill Clinton
Bill Cosby (William Henry Cosby, Jr.)
Bill Gates
Billy Graham
Bob Hope
Brett Favre
Carl Sagan
Cesar Chavez
Charles Lindbergh
Christopher Reeve
Chuck Yeager
Clint Eastwood
Colin Powell
Condoleezza Rice
Donald Trump
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Eleanor Roosevelt (Anna Eleanor Roosevelt)
Ellen DeGeneres
Elvis Presley
Frank Sinatra
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Frederick Douglass
George H. W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Lucas
George Patton
George Washington
George Washington Carver
Harriet Ross Tubman
Harry Truman
Helen Keller
Henry Ford
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Howard Hughes
Hugh Hefner
Jackie Robinson (Jack Roosevelt Robinson)
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Jesse Owens
Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Stewart
John Edwards
John Glenn
John F. Kennedy
John Wayne
Johnny Carson (John William Carson)
Jonas Edward Salk
Joseph Smith Jr.
Katharine Hepburn
Lance Armstrong
Laura Bush
Lucille Ball
Lyndon B. Johnson
Madonna (Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone)
Malcolm X (Malcolm Little)
Marilyn Monroe
Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
Martha Stewart
Martin Luther King Jr.
Maya Angelou
Mel Gibson
Michael Jackson
Michael Jordan
Michael Moore
Muhammad Ali (Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.)
Neil Alden Armstrong
Nikola Tesla
Oprah Winfrey
Pat Tillman
Dr. Phil McGraw
Ray Charles
Richard Nixon
Robert Kennedy
Ronald Reagan
Rosa Parks
Rudolph W. Giuliani
Rush Limbaugh
Sam Walton
Steve Jobs
Steven Spielberg
Susan B. Anthony
Theodore Roosevelt
Thomas Edison
Thomas Jefferson
Tiger Woods
Tom Cruise
Tom Hanks
Walt Disney
Wrights Brothers (Orville & Wilbur Wright)

Excellent! The blurring of historical achievement and current celebrity. Once the process of completely eliminating a sense of history from citizens occurs, the greatest Americans will narrow to contemporary celebrities and political figures. Wirhout a perspective on history, who will we be to challenge the thoughts and views of the Greatest Americans as they tell us what to do and think?

My, aren’t I dystopian in the morning?

In a move undoubtedly designed to stimulate the economy, the White House has determined that you should pay more for your clothes:

The Bush administration is re-imposing quotas on three categories of clothing imports from China, responding to complaints from domestic producers that a surge of Chinese imports was threatening thousands of U.S. jobs.

The administration action will impose limits on the amount of cotton trousers, cotton knit shirts and underwear that China can ship to this country. American retailers say that will drive up prices for U.S. consumers.

Higher prices and diminished sales always benefit consumers, retailers, and the economy. Or so this administration thinks when it starts slapping around the tariffs. Perhaps the Bush administration can only replicate the success of Smoot-Hawley in the twenty-first century.

Once again, Christopher “Pork” Bond promises to fight fiscal responsibility if it, you know, impacts his voters:

U.S. Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond, R-Mo., said during a news conference outside the base gate Friday that he was “stunned” by the recommendation [to split up the area’s 131st Fighter Wing at Lambert Field, to relocate the Army Human Resources Command from Overland, and to move the Defense Finance and Accounting Service as part of BRAC] and promised to fight it.

“It has very clear homeland security implications that must be considered and, I do not believe, have been adequately considered by the Pentagon,” Bond said.

Because, you know, the Pentagon has overlooked homeland security and military considerations which a senator, whose job involves bloviating on all sorts of unfocused topics, sees immediately. The important homeland security functions provided by the Human Resources Command, you see, which only possible Bond voters can provide adequately.

Perhaps Bond means his homeland job security implications, which puts him in the chorus of local democrats (William Clay, Charles Dooley, and Francis Slay). Excellent company you’re keeping, Senator. Those of us who value fiscal conservatism in our federal legislators have taken note.

The blame for the 13-year-old who climbed an electrical tower, touched a 19,700 volt transmission line, and fell lies not with the child, for his lack of common sense, nor with parenting that didn’t hone his instincts, nor with the friends who had five dollars to bet him he wouldn’t do it. Of course not.

Anna Thebeau says her son, 13-year-old Justin Porter, wouldn’t be in the hospital recovering from burns and a broken pelvis if the electric tower he scaled on a $5 bet had a warning sign.

It’s Illinois Power’s fault for not having a sign. Lawsuit countdown begins.

Because teenagers heed all signs and obey all posted rules. Perhaps Justin is an anamoly, but somehow, I doubt it.

Fowl play on highway:

St. Louis police detained seven ducklings Wednesday after they blockedHighway 40 and caused a traffic accident, but later released them to custody of their mother. No charges were filed.

Officers gave this account:

A minor collision occurred about 11 a.m. in the eastbound lanes of the highway, which is also Interstate 64, near Kingshighway. Motorists blamed slowed traffic trying to avoid the feathered pedestrians. No injuries were reported, human or otherwise.

Because once ducks cause a couple of fatalities, the city of Denver will kill them all.

You know the unnamed capital-O Objectivist in the post below?

A complete and utter fabrication. If blogvestigators hit the streets and the lawns of the Ayn Rand Institute, looking for someone who even heard of Musings from Brian J. Noggle, they would find no one to fit the description. Then they would pressure me to give up my position here for misleading The Public, or just you, gentle reader. I don’t want this to happen to me.

So please understand that here at Musings from Brian J. Noggle, we got no truck with reality. We do however, got truck with bad sixties slang that continues to live on into the twenty-first century for some reason or another.

(Link seen on Michelle Malkin.)

Police used Taser on pregnant driver:

She was rushing her son to school. She was eight months pregnant. And she was about to get a speeding ticket she didn’t think she deserved.

So when a Seattle police officer presented the ticket to Malaika Brooks, she refused to sign it. In the ensuing confrontation, she suffered burns from a police Taser, an electric stun device that delivers 50,000 volts.

“Probably the worst thing that ever happened to me,” Brooks said, in describing that morning during her criminal trial last week on charges of refusing to obey an officer and resisting arrest.

She did not attack the officers, so they should not have feared for their safety. We can assume is that the officer who tasered her would not have shot her dead, which is the decision for which the taser provides an alternative. Instead, he used it as a people prod when she resisted.

An attitude adjustment, if you will. But don’t worry, citizen, you only have to worry if you ever might have a difference of opinion with a police officer.

Note the double standard that this story reveals:

It took 12 snakes and almost five years for Bill Carity to turn raw land into a subdivision.

The Butler’s garter snake, a protected species in Wisconsin, was discovered on his property in Menomonee Falls in 1999, and afterward, he struggled to satisfy the competing demands of the Department of Natural Resources and getting his project off the ground.

“The Butler’s took me completely by surprise,” said Carity, of Carity Land Corp. of Brookfield. “For a long time, it was a painful process.”

If only they were humans who legally owned the property and had constitutional rights; then Menomonee Falls could simply have used eminent domain to remove the squatters from the government’s land–and with eminent domain, gentle reader, all land is government land–and could have given the land to developers.

But since the Butler’s garter snakes are reptiles with their bellies in the soil, the government will protect them from rapacious developers.

Horror: Compulsive gambling fuels criminal habits: Mother of 3 stole $520,000 to keep playing, and lost it

On the one-year anniversary of the last time she gambled, Pamela Wick was upbeat. She’s five months into a 10-year prison term for stealing more than $520,000, then losing it all – and more – at casinos.

“It’s a new beginning for me,” Wick, a mother of three, said in an interview last month at the Taycheedah Correctional Institution in Fond du Lac County. “It’s a whole new feeling that life can be normal.

“I’m really glad that I came here. It was time for me to accept responsibility.”

Accept responsibility after she got caught. Oh, she’s saying the right things for the parole board hearings to come.

Stories like this make me angry, because the helpful government wraps us all in stifling protective legislation to keep the few knuckleheads like this safe. People so consumed with stupid pursuits of destructive pleasures that they break the law and inspire new regulation to prevent the impetus the person had for breaking the law.

Let’s get to the nutty graph, where science and statistics are cast aside in favor of the almighty anecdote:

While there are no statistics on how many people run afoul of the law for gambling in the state, anecdotal evidence suggests that people such as Wick and Verbunker are becoming increasingly common, said Rose Gruber, executive director of the Wisconsin Council on Problem Gambling. The number of calls to the council’s gambling helpline has nearly tripled since 1996, with callers reporting escalating amounts of gambling debt.

“Every time we turn around, we hear about someone else,” Gruber said. “I would say that in the last two or three years, we’ve seen an increase.”

Ah, yes, an organization that exists to study and fight the problem tell us that the problem exists and is increasing. “I would say” hardly merits new rules, new funding, and any sympathy for burglars and embezzlers who are really just sick people with an addiction and no adultness to combat it.

Designing inside the box:

Historic renovations to older buildings and a regional boom in infill construction are fueling new design challenges for local architecture firms.

Many of these projects are construction conundrums, such as designing a smaller building to maximize space or following “green” construction standards that call for energy-efficient design codes.

Such challenges require architects to think about the big picture and the little picture when they design, said Michelle Swatek, executive director of the American Institute of Architects in St. Louis.

You have no choice, Howard. Give in, compromise!

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch spends a lot of pages in it’s A1 section today, including two thirds of the front page, thumping on the desk with this shoe: Lives on the line: Organ donors which tells the horror that can befall live donors. Live donors are people who give blood marrow, kidneys, and whatnot without having a motorcycle accident first.

The gripping lead:

Healthy people who donate organs to those desperate for transplants enter a world of unknowns.

Even the medical community does not know how big a risk they face.

Some get hurt. Some die. Some need transplants later.

The Post-Dispatch spent a year examining living donations. The newspaper interviewed about 200 donors, family members, transplant surgeons, hospital officials, government officials and scholars, and studied medical records and transplant research.

The newspaper’s investigation found:

• No one knows how many donors have died or suffered serious injuries or complications, because donors are not systematically tracked.
• The lack of comprehensive data makes it impossible for donors to assess the risks of what is portrayed as an ultimate altruistic deed.
• There is no agreement on who can donate an organ or how to evaluate potential donors. Those approved to donate include children as young as 10, drug addicts, mentally ill people and people who might be selling their organs, which federal law prohibits.
• The government does not regulate organ donations from living donors. Each hospital that performs transplants makes its own rules, which vary widely.

Excellent work, Post-Dispatch. As a result of your fearmongering, perhaps we can look forward to you treating us, in a couple months or a year, to a fearmongering expose on the declining number of live donors.

With a clear conscience, of course. Organizations don’t have consciences, and some don’t even have consistency.