To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
Ex-Marines, knitter among Blagojevich jurors
The actual writer might know some:
A former Marine severely injured serving in the Middle East, a voracious reader of knitting magazines and a man born in a U.S. internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II.
Put that in a stylebook somewhere, kids: there are no ex-Marines, only former Marines. Show some respect.
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I savaged the preceding book in the series, Forever Odd, when I read it in 2007. Why the gap? I didn’t like the predecessor so much, and I had a hard time finding this book at book fairs. I finally found one without a dustjacket and read it.
I liked this one better than Forever Odd. The voice didn’t great on me as much, but I think Koontz better interspersed the narrator voice with action and interaction with other characters this time around. I seem to recollect Odd spent a lot of time alone in Forever Odd.
In this book, Odd is living in a monastery in the Sierra Nevada mountains, trying to rest and trying to help the spirit of a brother who committed suicide to move on. As such, he has a special skeleton key that allows him all access to the grounds of the monestary and of the abbey and school for the disabled next door. Bodachs start appearing, which means bloodshed is imminent, so Odd and the brothers and sisters have to investigate why and to protect the children from a devilish creation of bones.
I enjoyed reading this book and looked forward to sitting down and reading it at night. I’ve spent a couple weeks where I haven’t looked forward to the nightly reading, which probably explains the recent dearth of book reports hereabouts. But when I get that way, I always end up reading a book that refreshes that hunger for the printed word within me. It’s probably as much biorhythms as Dean Koontz, but there you go.
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TaxProf points out that charitable giving dropped last year:
Giving USA Foundation and the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University today announced today that charitable contributions fell 3.6% (3.2% inflation-adjusted) in 2009, to $303.75 billion.
Personally speaking, my charitable contributions have dropped slightly (although not 3.6%, probably) as I have redirected small checks from charitable organizations to Republican candidates and the RNC and its committees.
Because if I’m going to have any to spare for donations in the future, the government is going to have to change.
(Link seen on Instapundit.)
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California voters approved an open primary system yesterday.
Lots of people are gnashing their teeth about it (see Ace and Bookworm).
I’d gnash a little more if a similar initiative hadn’t already been struck down in California in 2006.
I’m no constitutional scholar, but what I read of the opinion in the settled case–that the blanket primary takes away the parties’ right of association–doesn’t seem solved in the new proposition. I don’t see any comparisons between the two laws, so I could be mistaken. I wish someone would enlighten me how this could pass Constitutional muster.
Or are the proponents hoping that a Supreme Court with a different makeup will rule differently in a couple of years?
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Dana Loesch has a long piece about the Tea Party activists and somber reflections the day after several primaries did not swing the Tea Partiers’ way.
Here’s my contribution:
If you really want to change the GOP to reflect smaller government, conservative principles, you had better get over any instant gratification/revolutionary impulse you have. This is politics. Sometimes the votes go your way, sometimes they don’t, but if you give up and go home when things don’t go your way, the entrenched interests within the party won’t take you seriously and won’t listen to you. That old greybeard whose “turn” it is to run? He’s attended meetings, held party office, hosted fundraisers, and contributed to the local party for 30 years. He’ll be here in 2010, 2012, 2014. If you’re only going to be here in spring and summer of 2010, what impact will you make beyond what he has done for a lot of candidates for a long time? You’re a pup, albeit a loud member of a pack of pups.
If you want to change the GOP, you’d better get your arse to the local party meetings, to the local fundraisers, and to the local campaign offices of candidates you support. Politics is work, not a hobby. If you want change, you have to work for it, not just tailgate at a semi-annual protest.
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Chinese exports of cadmium, particularly in children’s products and dishes, will remain uncurtailed.
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Embattled Florida Governor Charlie Crist has left the Republican Party and his senses (two different things) in his bid to become a Senator for the state of Florida by any means necessary. He’s shedding his conservative followers by shredding his conservative principles, and no one thinks he’s much of a man anymore. Except him, maybe.
However, I’ve got the only strategy that remains for him to get elected: Make people confuse him with New Jersey governor Chris Christie.
Charlie Crist. Chris Christie. It could work.
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Wow, it’s been over a year since I read Viets’ Urban Affairs, which is a good thing. It means I’m not obsessed with her. I am developing a little crush on her through these collections, though.
As with the previous collection, this book collects her columns from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In the introduction, she mentions that this collection is uncensored; as far as I could tell, the only impact I saw was one instance of a synonym for excrement that appeared on someone’s shirt.
I don’t know if the columns are timeless, but I lived in the era in which they were written near the city where they were written, so I like them. Sadly, I think I’ve run out of Viets’s collected columns and will have to start on her fiction when/if I find some.
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In time of a recession, bonuses come under fire for some government pension plan employees. No problem: the pension system will just give them raises instead:
Most employees at the Missouri State Employees Retirement System will get their last bonuses this month. The annual incentives, which drew sharp criticism from Gov. Jay Nixon, are being discontinued.
But under a proposed new pay plan, the workers wouldn’t lose much money when the bonuses disappear. On July 1, when the state’s new fiscal year begins, MOSERS staffers would receive raises worth 90 percent of their average bonuses the last three years.
A compensation committee made up of MOSERS board members voted 3-1 Friday to recommend the plan. The full 11-member Board of Trustees will consider it later this month.
Gary Findlay, MOSERS executive director, said afterward that it would be incorrect to say employees would get raises under the new plan. “Actually, they’re getting a cut” since only 90 percent of their bonuses would be rolled into base pay, he said.
Only a longtime government employee, long enough to get to directorship of a government pension plan, would be audacious enough to try to convince citizens this is a cut. However, by “cutting” this money into a base pay rate, Mr. Findlay is also ensuring that this money is “cut” into base pay increases in the future (that is, the percentage increases will be greater since this 90% becomes part of the salary that the percentage increase is part of) and this money will “cut” into the amount of money used to calculate the pensions of employees (which is based on base salary when the employee retires).
The government is the only place in the world where cuts cost more money than non-cuts.
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As you remember, gentle reader, I read the book in 2005. When I discovered that the Demi Moore film was based upon the book, I bought it and had to watch it.
As I did, I had the following thoughts:
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The Republican-run Missouri legislature spent its final moment amalgamating an abomination, and quite possibly an unconstitutional abomination, that combines numerous unrelated laws into a single bill.
From childhood to the grave, nearly everything is covered in Missouri House Bill 1692, 1209, 1405, 1499, 1535 and 1811.
And no, that string of numbers is not the result of a computer malfunction.
Missouri lawmakers melded a diverse collection of ideas into a single, massive bill which they passed overwhelmingly in the final hours of their legislative session earlier this month.
The bill’s title declares that it relates to real estate. But within its 116 pages there also are provisions on child support cases, death certificates, cemeteries, divorce records, gun laws, boat engines and funding for courtroom renovations.
Republican “leaders” defend business as usual:
“Very seldom do you get a pure bill that doesn’t have something else tacked on it,” said House Speaker Ron Richard, R-Joplin.
“I’ve been doing this 20 years, and it’s been happening my entire 20 years,” added Senate President Pro Tem Charlie Shields, R-St. Joseph, who is barred by term limits from seeking re-election this year.
It was broken when I found it/got here, so I continued to break it. Thanks, guys. Keep that in mind when the Tea Party movement does not align with your interests, which is apparently preserving the status quo as long as you’re in the majority.
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Here’s a picture of a wildflower that somehow dodge my lawnmower:
Open thread!
Just unlike Althouse, the open thread will be mostly empty if not completely empty.
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This book promises a wide variety of two-hour crafts, but I bet that once you factor into the time allotment how much time it takes you to get the materials together, learn the basic techniques you need to use to make the craft, make the craft, and then clean up, you’re past the two hours.
That snark aside, the book draws from a wide variety of craft veins, including needlework, knitting, beading, painting, scrapbooking, and paper arts. It offers a couple of small projects in each and prefaces each section with a list of materials you need and basic techniques you use. Then, each section has a couple of projects using those techniques.
However, when it comes down to the actual crafting, you get three steps to everything, no matter how complicated. Because that’s how it’s laid out, you see. Even when step 1 to the build an automobile craft is assemble the engine and drive train. I exaggerate, but not by much. I’ve mentioned that I don’t care for steps in anything that require more than one sentence of imperative mood followed by a couple sentences, maybe, of explanation for why you do it.
The book is a pretty good primer on a bunch of crafting things, but I’m not sure I’ll do any of these projects. I might take some things away from it for inspiration, maybe. As a very early starter book to crafting, though, it’s probably worthwhile.
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The City of St. Louis shows its consistency in bad judgment when joining with developers to revitalize downtown:
Just three months ago, Pinnacle Entertainment and the city of St. Louis were standing side by side to save the President Casino.
Now they are racing to the courthouse steps, brandishing lawsuits against each other.
City Hall and the Las Vegas-based gambling operator each sued the other Tuesday as a dispute about their contract for Lumière Place casino boiled over. At stake is the city’s shot at Missouri’s precious 13th casino license and $50 million in new housing and retail that Pinnacle had promised to build downtown.
The suits focus on a 2004 redevelopment agreement that paved the way for the half-billion dollar Lumière Place.
In it, the city agreed to oppose any new casino development within 25 miles — aside from Pinnacle’s new River City Casino in south St. Louis County, which was then on the drawing board. Pinnacle agreed not only to build the glitzy Lumière complex north of Laclede’s Landing but also to put $50 million worth of residential or retail development nearby.
Yes, indeed. The corporation got what it wanted and stalls on providing what the city wanted. Maybe they should call this development Casino Village to make the parallels clear.
Do you think this latest lesson will teach the city not to take on loans to renovate private property or to cosign loans for mall development where the developer can just walk away or to give great tax breaks and whatnot to developers who want to build something profitable but promise to build something unprofitable and unsupportable afterwards?
Hardly. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, such as those who run the city of St. Louis.
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The Springfield News-Leader notices that the tax initiatives on the ballot are now getting organized opposition:
A quarter-cent Capital Improvement Program sales tax that has been renewed six times in the past is up for renewal again on June 8.
But for the first time that anyone can remember, there is organized opposition to the tax that resurfaces streets, builds sidewalks and improves intersections.
“People need a break right now,” said Steven Reed, a sales tax opponent who acknowledged recycling “Vote No” yard signs from the recent pension sales tax vote for the upcoming CIP sales tax election.
I’ve always seen organized support for pretty much every tax increase I’ve seen on a ballot, often because tax dollars or existing union or other existing organization money is behind it along with the actual organizations themselves. The side of increasing taxes has always had targeted true believers for each cause (people who like libraries acting to support those initiatives, teachers and school boosters acting to support property tax increases, and so on).
I attribute the new rise of anti-tax supporters directly to the Tea Party movement because I know that the people who opposed, unsuccessfully, the St. Louis County Metro sales tax on a recent ballot were Tea Partiers. Now we will see some real effort and opposition to tax increases that will stun people who’ve supported the tax increases on autopilot for the last several decades.
However, yard signs won’t be enough. To succeed, the opposition needs to master Get Out The Vote efforts. A lot of these taxes are stuck on off ballots in the spring or the summer when turnout is low and favors the true believers out to get the thing passed. I recall voting against a property tax increase for the library in Webster Groves (where I was and still am a dues paying Friend of the Library) on a ten degree February day. The tax increase was the only thing on the ballot, but I carved thirty minutes out of my day to go to the polling place and cast my vote. I didn’t have to wait in line, as only a couple hundred voters out of a population of 23,000 showed up. Mostly to support the proposition.
I think the new organization and connections that the Tea Party Movement has made will provide some good energy to drive people to the polls to counteract the continual ratcheting up of tax rates, a half percent here and fifty dollars annually on your assessed value there. I welcome it. Maybe it will compel the government and our elected and unelected municipal leaders to make priorities to spend existing tax revenue accordingly instead of continually going to the bottomless well of citizen pockets.
But it will take effort every time. Don’t just remember November. Remember February, April, June, and whenever they sneak the initiatives in.
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Missourians warned not to eat raw crawfish
Telling people here that raw crawfish can make you sick won’t work. They’re from Missouri: you’ll have to show them. Pass the raw crawdads, please.
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The Kansas City Royals are so desperate that they’re holding open tryouts at a city park.
There’s something very underdoggish about baseball teams that are often futile. I explained to my wife that the Royals are too often the direct object in the sports headlines (Dodgers Pound Royals, Oakland Shuts Down Royals, and so on), and the direct object teams don’t win pennants.
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This book represents one of MacDonald’s more bleak novels. In it, a middle manager in Florida is stuck in a rut during the summer when his English wife takes their children to England for a visit. He happens upon a 23-year-old wild rich girl, sort of a Paris Hilton type if you can imagine a Paris Hilton in the Eisenhower years. MacDonald did, so they must have been out there.
At any rate, the fellow falls in with this woman, falls into adultery, falls into drunkeness, falls into additional drunken adultery, slacks off on the job and loses it and then ends up with a three week blackout period after which he really has no taste for the rich girl, but when her rich father makes him a job offer to ease the whole kept-man thing, Craig thinks it over, but ultimately decides that he’s going to leave town, with his wife when she returns if she’ll come after what he’s done. The book ends there, although there’s a little hint in a phone conversation he has with his wife over a bad 1958 trans-Atlantic connection that perhaps she will have something to confess when she gets home.
The book reminded me somewhat of Kim du Toit’s Vienna Days in that the character starts out sympathetic, and you feel bad for him when he makes a couple bad choices that put him in a tight spot. But eventually they keep making the bad decisions, and I lose patience with them and lose empathy for them.
Now that I’ve sort of panned the book, let me pan the cover. Clemmie is a 23-year-old, lithe, small woman. This is the cover:
That is not a 23-year-old woman. That, my friends, is someone’s mother who is trying to put a little sizzle back in her love life after an Oprah marathon on Oxygen. Someone that the artist must have wanted to impress. Maybe even sizzle with.
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Tam points out this story about a New York legislator who wants police to aim for off-center mass:
City cops are livid over a legislative proposal that could handcuff the brave officers involved in life-and-death confrontations every day — requiring them to shoot gun-wielding suspects in the arm or leg rather than shoot to kill, The Post has learned.
The “minimum force” bill, which surfaced in the Assembly last week, seeks to amend the state penal codes’ “justification” clause that allows an officer the right to kill a thug if he feels his life or someone else’s is in imminent danger.
The bill — drafted in the wake of Sean Bell’s controversial police shooting death — would force officers to use their weapons “with the intent to stop, rather than kill” a suspect. They would be mandated to “shoot a suspect in the arm or the leg.”
The legislators apparently favor bad guys drowning in their own pools.
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Death rates decline sharply in kids under 5
You are healed!
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