Musings from Brian J. Noggle

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch uses the AB-InBev merger as a springboard to launch a series of “damaging” fatuous questions at John McCain, whose wife owns an AB distributorship.

The head of the Washington Bureau “asks”:

John McCain’s Straight Talk Express is far less talkative when it comes to beer.

McCain’s campaign is unwilling to directly address questions flowing from InBev’s purchase of Anheuser-Busch Cos. in light of his wife, Cindy’s, ownership of a large Anheuser-Busch distributorship in Arizona, Hensley and Co.

— For more than 20 years as a legislator, McCain has abstained from taking positions or voting on measures related to alcohol. As president, would he act on beer-related legislation — or continue to abstain, in effect casting a veto?

— InBev does business in Cuba, designated by the United States as a state sponsor of terrorism. As a candidate, McCain has been tough on the Cuban government. Will his wife now sell the products of a company that does business in Cuba — or even expand her business to include InBev’s other products?

McCain’s campaign is unusually tight-lipped on those questions, and wouldn’t say whether the candidate’s wife plans to separate herself from Hensley.

The paper’s really making an effort here to springboard from a rather touchstone local issue into casting aspersions onto McCain’s ethics. Particularly creative is trying to cast his recusing himself from voting on things that would benefit him through his wife’s company and complaining about how a parent company would do business in Cuba. We’re really stretching here.

I mean, for crying out loud, Barack Obama drives a Chrysler 300, and DaimlerChrysler does business in Cuba. Shouldn’t Barack have rented a Ford? And what about his publisher’s parent company, guilty of using Nazi slave labor at one point? Will Barack abstain from signing legislation in favor of slavery or Nazis?

I mean, I’m just a crackpot backwater blog making sarcastic remarks about Obama here, but the story and the leading questions in the paper is from a “credible” periodical with a (declining) metropolitan audience.

Forget this story, Post-Dispatch. If you need to try to gig McCain based on a narrative of local concern, investigate why he’s tight-lipped about trading for a good middle reliever for the Cardinals. Sure, it’s not his job, but you can still blame him for with a couple of bullet points.

(Full disclosure: I am actually a citizen columnist for a sort of sister publication of the Post-Dispatch.)

When he agrees with the journalist’s point of view:

A rising number of uninsured patients are going without necessary care and are raising medical costs for those who have insurance coverage, according to a report released Tuesday by the Missouri Foundation for Health.

The report, “The Significance of Missouri’s Uninsured,” took several recent studies from health care think tanks and federal agencies, located data relevant to Missouri and added analysis. The report was prepared by the foundation’s Cover Missouri project, which began earlier this year.

“I think there is an increasing understanding among Missourians that we’re reaching crisis,” said Ryan Barker, a health policy analyst for the nonprofit foundation, which conducts health research and advocacy. “This is a problem not just of a few people but of almost 800,000 Missourians.

Spending money on health care for the poor? Not when there’s a study to conduct to bolster allocating tax money to a cause!

When it’s a special interest group that the paper likes, it’s not lobbying, it’s advocating, and the special interest group-funded study isn’t suspect, it’s news.

I know, it goes without saying. But I’ll say it anyway because it’s as important to make a mystical chant out of the truth as it is the less-than-true that you want to stick in people’s heads.

Michael Williams endorses Steelman.

No doubt he’s getting a flurry of hits from the House of Representatives since he quotes the magic Google term “Kenny Hulshof” in his post. I hope you fellows there in Kenny’s office are doing official government work on those computers and not campaign work because I’m under the impression that’s naughty.

But Washington naughty doesn’t count, right?

When Obama says fix the economy, I expect he means neuter.

PS, Time-Warner: I sort of accidentally resubscribed to Fortune, and your love of promoting service to Mother Gaia and pimping politicians in a “business” magazine reminds me that when this year-for-ten-bucks subscription ends, I ought to go with Forbes.

The Post-Dispatch headline is Steelman lags behind Hulshof. What, in votes? No. Projected votes based on a few people reached by phone? No.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Kenny Hulshof rode a wave of endorsements to fundraising success this quarter, outpacing his primary opponent, Sarah Steelman, by more than a 4-1 ratio.

That is, he’s raised more money than she has. But! Citizen, money is a corrupting influence in politics, which is why (the rationale goes) it must be limited by the government.

But the papers, who cheerlead the limitations because they like all government intervention, especially the ones that increase their influence, report on this as though it’s indicative of anything more than who’s got the friends with the deepest pockets.

We could expect it to be Hulshof, the Washington, D.C., resident running for the job. I’m for Steelman, of course, because I think going to Washington, D.C., is sort of like a British man going to WWI. Dudes, I’m Mrs. Dalloway in this scenario, and I just want to have a little party here without damaged veterans of foreign wars or DC “politics” (self- and party-enrichment) ruining it.

What’s my point, other than I saw the movie of the Woolf novel? Oh, yeah, go Steelman.

St. Charles County cuts spending:

Less-than-expected sales tax receipts spurred County Executive Steve Ehlmann today to order county agencies to reduce spending by 8 percent and to eliminate discretionary travel.

Whoa. Must be a stop gap measure until they can figure out how to raise taxes, but still. It’s the sound of fiscal responsibility, if not the practice (but possibly the beginning of the practice).

Cruising bill hits a brick wall:

“I am all too aware of the problems facing the areas targeted by cruising. The cruisers, many of whom are not from St. Louis, are terrorizing our neighborhoods,” Reed said in a statement. “Something needs to be done, but pushing through flawed legislation, which in this bill only continues to erode civil liberties, is not the answer.”

Not passing a poor law just because they can? What sanity-flavored Kool Aid are those alderman drinking? I’d think $4 a gallon gas will curb cruising better than making it illegal, but I’m just thinking back to my young cruising days and shuddering at the thought of putting the whole week’s pay into the gas tank on Friday and Saturday nights, before the Kalt’s burgers and Jolt Cola.

Maybe there is room for some slight optimism in the country and its governance today.

By today, I mean “this morning.” Give me a couple hours and I’ll work myself out of it.

Well, now that many municipalities have eliminated the pit bull and rottweiler threats, perhaps they need to turn their attention to another nemesis of mankind, the miniature dachshund:

A dog chewed off an Alton woman’s big toe while she napped earlier this week.

How many innocent toes have to die before we remove the scourge of this dog breed from our cities? If it saves one toe, it’s worth any cost.

They were bred to bite toes and feet; look at them! They serve no other purpose. City fathers, I demand you round them up and gas them.

Some people think the power of licensing can prevent the deaths of children or tragedies of all sorts. What sort of license could have prevented this?

Adin was already dead, beaten by the defendant at a Motel 6 near the airport because he had wet his pants and was crying, Gabler admitted the next day to police and in court Wednesday.

Gabler wrapped the body in sheets, stuffed the corpse into a suitcase, and drove to Clyde Hamrick Elementary School, just west of Highway 21, near House Springs, where Gabler grew up.

Adin was the son of Min Choi of Maryland Heights. She was visiting relatives in New York and left Adin in Gabler’s care. The couple had been going together for about two years.

Larner said Gabler went on a heroin binge that week and took the drug both before and after Adin’s death.

• A license before dating a heroin user.
• A license before traveling to New York without your children.
• A license for dumping bodies.

Add your own tasteless comments if you need to. Point is, though, that people lie at the heart of many tragedies, whether accidental or willful, and any license regime will not prevent them.