Musings from Brian J. Noggle

As some of you know, I was home in Milwaukee this weekend. As some of you in Wisconsin know, John Kerry and George Bush are holding simultaneous rallies in downtown Milwaukee (please don’t anything blow up).

I knew about the Kerry rally the minute I walked down Wisconsin because I was accosted by Kerry volunteers on every corner who wanted my attendance.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t have known about the Bush rally if I hadn’t seen it on the news.

I hope this smacks of a certain amount of desperation to get bodies–that Bush has already filled up the convention center and that Kerry needs street people to fill the plaza outside the Starbucks. But who knows? One sees what one wants to see.

Special invective to James Mosby, undoubtedly what Ayn Rand would call a moocher, for this outburst reprinted in a St. Louis Post-Dispatch Business story entitled “Companies can call the shots on office space“:

“It’s an unfair playing field,” said James Mosby, a vice president with the commercial real estate firm Colliers Turley Martin Tucker.

“There’s a lot more office space than there are tenants … I think it will swing back in the other direction in the future,” he said. “But whether it’s 12 months or 24 months, I just can’t say.”

Undoubtedly, Mr. Mosby and his firm desperately need corporate tax incentives and other handouts to continue constructing empty office buildings and parks. Still, Mosby plays to the Post-Dispatch‘s favorite type, that of the wealthy businessman or corporateman who only thinks it’s fair if he holds the scarce resource and can demand exorbitant sums for it, preferably from the poor, widows, and orphans.

However, allow me to speak for my small cadre of small-time capitalists without offices downtown and without commission seats, luxury boxes, or connections with the ruling families of our community–and by small cadre, I mean me–when I say, “Shut up and scratch your own back for crying out loud.”

I stopped reading an article entitled “Lawyers argue over $50 fee designed to replenish fund that helps poor“, before I got to the “The Internationale”. Actually, I stopped pretty much after the first couple of paragraphs:

What’s $50 to a lawyer? A nice lunch or a designer tie?

For many lawyers, $50 amounts to not even one billable hour.

But a proposal to assess members of the State Bar of Wisconsin $50 to help pay for civil legal services for the poor has led to a pretty strong debate among attorneys.

Without the $50 assessments, the foundation that helps fund legal service programs will be broke and out of business soon, said Deborah M. Smith, past president of the Wisconsin Trust Account Foundation.

I didn’t make it to the part at the bottom where the socialism-loving journalist decides that she’s going to kick in any of her salary to help out. But then again, as a crusading journalist out to reallocate the funds of other people, she’s contributing enough just framing stories in a right-minded fashion.

Just received this important message in my junk e-mail box:

A week ago, we sent you an email asking for help debunking anti-Bush documents. After receiving hundreds of responses, it become clear that all the documents were actually real: the Bush/Cheney DUIs, the Ken Lay letters, and even the bin Laden memo. For more information visit the documents page:
<link removed>.

We also received hundreds of emails from concerned bloggers that eloquently expressed the problems with the Bush administration. And as we traveled across America campaigning for Bush, we learned more than we wanted to know about Bush’s policies. We came to see that this administration is a catastrophe for most people.

As a result, we are abandoning our support of Bush and officially endorsing John Kerry for President. You can read more at the Yes Bush Can web site:
<link deleted>
We deeply regret our misguided support and apologize for our previous email. This will be the last email we will send directly to bloggers. If you want to join us in supporting Kerry, you can find out more here:
<link deleted>.

Thank you for your understanding,

Yes Bush Can

I’d blame it on the Democrat counterpart of Karl Rove, but unfortunately this as diabolically genius as they can do. Diabolically third grade.

A Japanese “adventure traveller” is the latest hostage threatened with beheading in Iraq, according to this story:

Japan scrambled Wednesday to win the release a 24-year-old Japanese man taken hostage by Islamic militants in Iraq, dispatching high-level diplomats to the Middle East and launching an appeal for his freedom on Arabic television.

A man identified as Shosei Koda, an adventure traveler from the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, was shown pleading for his life in a video released to a militant Islamic Web site Tuesday and broadcast on national TV early Wednesday in Japan. Under a sign bearing the name of the radical Muslim group led by Jordanian Abu Musab Zarqawi, the hooded kidnappers threatened to behead Koda if Japan did not withdraw its 550 non-combat troops from Iraq within 48 hours. That demand was immediately rejected by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

Unfortunately, it’s more of the same. Although this fellow’s impending beheading is barbaric and deplorable, I’d hate to think that foreign policy of any sovereign nation is beholden to the fate of people who foolishly put themselves in harm’s way for fun. I sympathize more with workers who put themselves in danger for money.

I’m saddened, too, with anyone who thinks that the foreign policy of a nation should change to spare the life of a single person. This thinking begets more kidnappings and more beheadings, but it elevates those who think it above those rabble in touch with reality; that is, those who recognize that uncivilized human nature is a dirty, base, and ultimately despicable thing in many, if not most, cases.

(Link seen on Outside the Beltway.)

I am a one issue voter.

This issue.

You can believe Kerry would prove better for domestic policy, and you can almost convince me. You cannot, cannot, convince me that his foreign policy will protect America better.

That’s the most important job of the president.