POWIP Piece of Work In Progress

Bombs in the News 3-24-11

Naturally, the new Presidential Nickname is Obomba, even though this is just a kinetic military action he's involved us in in Libya. I got your rumba, your samba, your lambada, your zumba, your Roomba, your Alhambra, and baby now I got your Obomba!

Everybody's doing it!

Detroit guard suspended for moving bomb that union explosives specialists were supposed to move.

FBI arrest suspect in attempted Spokane MLK parade bombing case. Father says, yeah, he's a racist, but he was with me that entire day. It's a strange case: why would the guy have left two locally traceable t-shirts in the backpack? The bomb was described as sophisticated. Judging by the story, he's not very.

He's a moron; he's an evil genius: he's George Bush!

More bombing:

Could Mistress of Disaster Jamie Gorelick really be on the short list to lead the FBI? Miss Attila has an opinion. So does Bingley.

DOJ sues school for sacking teacher who insisted they give her three weeks off for the Hajj.

More on the strange journeys of Claire McCaskill's private plane.

Fannie and Freddie hiding another $100 billion in losses? Meh, $100 billion isn't what it used to be. Gorelick earned $26 million helping drive them into the ground. So, clawback, you see.

Staunch ObamaCare supporter Weiner: how about a waiver for NYC?

EPA uses taxpayer funds to fund Lung Association attacks on Republicans. This is the essence of Obamaism.

Rachael Ray: Murderous Cannibal

Wisconsin Dem candidate to replace Judge Prosser on State Supremes accepted donation from husband of Judge Sumi (aka, Dolores Umbridge, Union-Dane County). More.

In case meep is busy, Monty's got some morning DOOM! for you.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Rumor Wire: Is Stacy McCain Moving to Sarasota, FL?

I stumbled across this advertisement, and my read is that it's a done deal, but they're trying to put color on it by complying with the open position requirements:

We want to add some talent to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune investigative team. Every serious candidate should have a proven track record of conceiving, reporting and writing stellar investigative pieces that provoke change. However, our ideal candidate has also cursed out an editor, had spokespeople hang up on them in anger and threatened to resign at least once because some fool wanted to screw around with their perfect lede.

We do a mix of quick hit investigative work when events call for it and mini-projects that might run for a few days. But every year we like to put together a project way too ambitious for a paper our size because we dream that one day Walt Bogdanich will have to say: “I can’t believe the Sarasota Whatever-Tribune cost me my 20th Pulitzer.” As many of you already know, those kinds of projects can be hellish, soul-sucking, doubt-inducing affairs. But if you’re the type of sicko who likes holing up in a tiny, closed office with reporters of questionable hygiene to build databases from scratch by hand-entering thousands of pages of documents to take on powerful people and institutions that wish you were dead, all for the glorious reward of having readers pick up the paper and glance at your potential prize-winning epic as they flip their way to the Jumble… well, if that sounds like journalism Heaven, then you’re our kind of sicko.

For those unaware of Florida’s reputation, it’s arguably the best news state in the country and not just because of the great public records laws. We have all kinds of corruption, violence and scumbaggery. The 9/11 terrorists trained here. Bush read My Pet Goat here. Our elections are colossal clusterf*cks. Our new governor once ran a health care company that got hit with a record fine because of rampant Medicare fraud. We have hurricanes, wildfires, tar balls, bedbugs, diseased citrus trees and an entire town overrun by giant roaches (only one of those things is made up). And we have Disney World and beaches, so bring the whole family.

Send questions, or a resume/cover letter/links to clips to my email address below. If you already have your dream job, please pass this along to someone whose skills you covet. Thanks.

Matthew Doig

Sarasota Herald-Tribune
1741 Main St.
Sarasota FL, 34236
(941) 361-4903
matthew.doig@heraldtribune.com

Congratulations, Stacy, and I hope you're not dying.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Ace of Spades Suffers Serious Inconvenience [UPDATE]

Much more important than this is Michelle Malkin and family's continuing search for Marizela Perez, of course, of whom nothing has been heard for two and a half weeks. I'm particularly interested in seeing that Marizela is recovered, because of the many kindnesses that I and others whom I like and admire have received from Michelle, but also because I too suffered from profound depression my first year and a half in college. Ed Morrissey has been a stalwart in this regard, rekindling interest on his radio show, and I know that Jimmie Bise has mentioned it a lot, too.

To be frank, that there's not been a post at the website since March 18 is depressing. Please keep them in your prayers. If anyone can send me a widget for my sidebar, please do.

UPDATE: Michelle's posted this evening with a link to her appearance on Hannity regarding her missing cousin.

Little Miss Attila is also blegging, and was very kind to me during my recent bleg, and really all along since I've known her online. Thanks to the kindness of these and other people online, including Glenn Reynolds, I've been able to get the car fixed and make the down payment on Daughter Girl's braces. I'm behind on sending out personal thank yous, naturally, but beginning to catch up. So, many thanks to all who've contributed.

But I want to make you aware of Ace's predicament. For many years, of course, he's been one of the most prolific and entertaining of righty bloggers. It's true that he has a great stable of guest bloggers at his place, including Maetenloch, who has kindly linked on occasion. But Ace is also an avid hobbyist, and sometimes he has to spend time cleaning up.

In recent years, Ace was able to outsource some of the clean up to a company operating out of Ohio. His minions, when they travelled west, would make a short detour off of I-90 and drop off some of the accumulated side effects of his hobby at this very innovative and helpful business, where he enjoyed discounted bulk rates in exchange for an ad in the sidebar. Unfortunately, bureaucrats, probably in the pay of Big Embalming, have put the kibosh on this enterprise.

An Ohio funeral home that is the first in the nation to use a cremation alternative that dissolves bodies with lye and heat has effectively been blocked from using the procedure by state regulators.

Edwards Funeral Service in Columbus is the only U.S. funeral business offering the procedure called alkaline hydrolysis to the public, according to Jessica Koth, a spokeswoman for the National Funeral Directors Association. The process is touted by proponents as being better for the environment than cremation. While funeral homes in other states are moving toward the method, Edwards' owner, Jeff Edwards, told The Columbus Dispatch that he has used the method on 19 bodies since January.

But a memo issued last week by the Ohio Department of Health has left Edwards unable to continue using the procedure.

The health department's memo directed local officials not to issue permits required for disposing of bodies or accept death certificates when bodies are to be disposed of through alkaline hydrolysis.

It's not that Ace can't do the work himself, it's just that he'll have to reassemble his lab, and probably lease some out of the way warehouse space. So, do what you can, please, and for Scared Monkeys, too.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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More on the Fond du Lac Shooting and James Cruckson [UPDATE]

UPDATEx2: From Tonya Sullivan in comments:

OK I have talked to a few people that knew Jim and/or Josie pretty well and it was NOT Craig [Birkholz, the killed officer, or "murdered" if you prefer] she was sleeping/messing with.
Second of all NO the officer was not on duty when it happened; was he there? That is not known. He is probably the officer that changed shifts with Craig.

Note: My apologies to the family and friends of the slain officer for the misinformation.

Yesterday, on a tip from a reliable source, I floated information that I can't confirm about the case in Fond du Lac in which James Cruckson shot two police officers, killing one of them. As I mentioned at the time, I had no way of verifying that the officer who was killed was having an affair with Cruckson's live-in girlfriend, but that if there were more to the story than was being told in the press, I hoped that the Fond du Lac Police would come clean and bring forth all the pertinent information.

As I noted at the time, Cruckson's mother, notified that he was holed up inside his house when the tactical squad came to "continue a sexual assault investigation" and remove a young child whom they thought might be in the residence, but who turned out to be in a neighboring house, was contacted while she was in Arizona to try to talk him into surrendering himself. She told the local paper that friends had told the shooter on his return from a training mission with the Guard on the West Coast that his live-in girlfriend had been cheating on him, that he sounded without hope, and that he had tried to make it work for himself, his girlfriend, and their two young children from previous relationships, but it never could be right with that girl. The girlfriend was never named in the article, or anywhere else in the paper, which seemed odd, and Cruckson ended up suiciding. (Another example here, where the police say that there's nothing to suggest that the girlfriend's sexual assault charges are false, but give no evidence that they're true.)

As often happens, this post ended up receiving more interest than other, more substantive posts I've done over the past day and a half. Many people have come to look via a comment apparently left at the local newspaper that I linked. Some have left me messages, too, and before I reproduce what's below, I just want to say once again that I'm asking the questions that have been given to me. I haven't made a survey of coverage in Wisconsin, and if I'm wrong about any of the information I've got, I sincerely apologize to those affected. It's just that I believe the friends and family of all involved, and the local citizens, deserve to have all the pertinent information. It's terrible that Cruckson killed one officer and seriously wounded another. But in the initial television address by the spokesperson for the force, Cruckson was also treated as though he were a long-term malingerer, when in fact he was newly returned from another training mission with the Guard, and had served honorably in Iraq.

So, one email reads as follows:

another question comes to mind as a coverup - the girlfriend's name has never been brought up - if she was such a big part of this, why not?

Good question. Another one:

I question why the media has pulled the interviews that they did with the 1st witnesses on the scene, the lady walking by who heard the gunshots before the police were on scene ~ and the reports that he was talking about this the night before at the bar…I didn’t know that officers gave prior notification that they were going to be visiting at 6am the following morning.

Also, I heard that the girlfriend was just returning Sunday morning around that time from a vacation in Florida. I also heard from friends of hers that she was having that affair with an officer.

Here is that girlfriend, she's enough to drive anybody insane:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/josephine.clark2

http://www.myspace.com/josie_warner/photos

you will see her in photos with James Cruckson - along with a million other guys...also photos of their two children

Okay, I don't know about this lady who heard gunshots before police were on the scene, or Cruckson (I assume) talking about this in a bar the night before. Naturally if anyone has any more information, I'd like to hear it.

Here's a picture, apparently, of the girlfriend with Cruckson:

[link from photo doesn't work, so this is the page]

There's a striking photo of her at her Facebook page, information above, and she also has a Facebook fan page, where she noted that she would be in Daytona Beach from March 12-18 to do photo shoots, in case any photographers were interested. A quick review of her FB friends suggests that a lot of them are very body conscious (hot girls and buff dudes).

She goes by Warner or Clark, alternately, but hasn't made a lot of effort to conceal her identity, having, it appears, gone to Friendship HS in Adams, WI.

She says she wants fame, though until now it has perhaps eluded her. Congratulations. But I hope for the sake of your child that you get it together. If anyone over at the Fond du Lac news outlets would like to say why they've suppressed her identity, I'd like to hear the explanation.

If you're visiting from my home state of Wisconsin, you might also be interested in my posts about Scott Walker or Honey Badgers. You might not agree, but you might be interested. And feel free to comment.

There's also Packers stuff, if you care to search.

UPDATE: Neighbor quashes bar story:

“People snap from the war and everything. Anybody could snap at any time," Cruckson's friend and neighbor Steven Andrews said.

Andrews was with Cruckson the day before the shooting, and said contrary to reports that the gunman was at a bar planning the attack, he was actually at home working on his house. Relatives said Cruckson lost it when his girlfriend returned home in the middle of the night from a trip with another man, details Fond du Lac Police have not confirmed.

Also:

The most recent arrest was in 2009. At the time, Cruckson was charged with misdemeanor battery and resisting or obstructing an officer.

His family tells us the arrest surrounded an incident involving Cruckson's girlfriend.

"She went back to court and she said she lied, that it wasn't true, but he was still charged with the battery," Hlee Cruckson told us.

Cruckson eventually pleaded no contest to battery and the obstruction charge was dismissed.

From what I have read elsewhere, Ms. Warner told the police at the time of his arrest that he had pulled her hair as they were driving from a bar, and she had stabbed him in the arm with a pen knife. The argument that led to that was over a woman whom she felt he had been getting too physically friendly at the bar.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Yesterday’s Big Union News and Related [Now with Penises]

I've got a couple of videos up already today, so you can check out the story that the indefatigable Pam Key of Naked Emperor News debuted at The Blaze, of former SEIU operative Steven Lerner speaking to radicals behind closed doors at Temple University about how to destabilize the financial markets and bring down the government. Director Blue, tipping Protein Wisdom, comments on the manifest sedition, and Stacy rounds out some of the details.

Many lefty blogs are making a big deal of the fact that he's a former SEIU employee, but he was sacked in November as a result of allocating without authorization a couple of million dollars for this pet project. I don't imagine that this will be among the materials distributed to Wisconsin students as part of their mandatory indoctrination into sanitized union history. In that history, undoubtedly, they will learn that unions created the middle class in America, as unions in their propaganda materials and rallies have repeatedly stated.

Unions have contributed to the emergence of an American middle class, undoubtedly, but they'd like to say that it was all on them, having nothing to do with the many millions of Americans who worked their asses off to better their own lives and bring about the material conditions that till now we have enjoyed. The results of unions and their bought and paid legislators pushing things too far can be seen in places like Detroit, though, where yesterday it was announced the census showed another 250,000 reduction in population. This, of course, is the fault of globalism, though as Lerner makes clear, one-world government is really what they're after.

Yes, yes, I'm certain that I'm blowing things way out of proportion, but the news also came out yesterday that Obama's keen to establish a Youth Conservation Corps to protect us from the chimera of Climate Change. Now that the federal government controls virtually the whole market for higher education loans, it's an easy matter for them to decide whether or not loans ought to be extended to certain individuals, whose sentiments regarding government may be haram. Would they perform ideological litmus tests? I put nothing past these people. See, for example, Dolores Umbridge.

If anybody would like to overdub Bill Staines' version of "The Happy Wanderer" onto footage of the Hitler Youth enjoying the great out of doors, I'd be willing to post it. The leftist youth indoctrination movement really is that creepy. Because Scott Walker, when he's not being Joe McCarthy, is Hitler, you know.

Meanwhile, Obama's been down in Brazil telling them to go ahead and drill, even in the Gulf of Mexico. We'll buy the stuff from you. Why, we'll even give you seed money for your projects, with actual unrepentent former Nazi George Soros as a co-investor. He's now in El Salvador, lecturing them about gun smuggling, even as Napolitano and Holder are up to their necks in a Mexican gun-running scandal that even CBS has latched onto.

Obama conceded Monday that the United States also bears a burden when it comes to gun trafficking.

No shit, Sherlock.

Obama also prodded the region to fight poverty, lauding countries that have pushed more of their population into the middle class.

"We'll never break the grip of the cartels and the gangs unless we also address the social and economic forces that fuel criminality," he said Monday.

Funes, who despite being elected with support from former Marxist guerillas has charted a moderate course in El Salvador, agrees with Obama that all countries in the region need to contribute to a solution.

Note that the writer assumes that governments can push people into the middle class, when in fact the middle class prospers when governments get out of the way and let them.

Unfortunately, Obama's insane policies, such as reliance on ethanol, have helped to push world food prices to historical highs and created unrest. He has cozied up to the Marxists in Latin America, such as the President of Brazil, including the ones who align themselves via oil with Arab actors who wish us no good (in increasingly impoverished Venezuela, Chavez has facilitated the construction of mosques, when he hasn't been busy digging up Bolivar's bones). At the present rate, there's little chance that the Venezuelan people will suffer the fate of the Martians, though capitalist pigs may cause them to suffer natural disasters (and though the Venezuelan economy is entirely dependent on the exportation of the evil climate changing stuff).

This is the kind of kook that Obama supports in our hemisphere, while Honduras' constitutional removal of lunatic Zelaya, last seen holed up in an embassy claiming that American special forces were battering him with crazy rays, he opposed.

This administration is dysfunctional bordering on insane. Card Check is dead? Every policy these guys have is undead.

Dang. Elizabeth Taylor died, and Serr8d beat me to it, because I was busy working on this crap. Thanks, Obama. Asshole.

However, I think I will have beaten him to the Worldwide Map of Penis Size. The Penis Size gap for the US isn't good news. Even Canadians have longer penises than we do, according to this information. And the trend has only accelerated during the Obama administration.

Whether these measurements take into account circumcision, I don't know, but perhaps this is the rationale for San Francisco's radical intactivist legislation.

At long last, we Americans are hung like thumbtacks. I, for one, blame the Irish.

And feminism. And our shameful lack of non-profit facilities for breast staring.

On the other hand, this data may just have been collected by WHO.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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A Hundred Ways Wrong

"Grotesque" doesn't quite cover this spectacle on "World's Got Talent" with Sharon Osbourne.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Spartanburg, SC Mini-Train Ride Turns Tragic

The conductor of a miniature train that derailed in Cleveland Park on Saturday told police that he was going too fast, according to an incident report from the Spartanburg Public Safety Department.

Police said 15 children and two adults were taken to a local hospital after the train derailed about 1 p.m.

Sixteen of the nearly 30 passengers on the train were members of the Corinth Baptist Church in Gaffney.

The church said its pastor, Dwight Easler, and pregnant wife, Tabitha, were hospitalized. Their 6-year-old son, Benji, died in the crash, and their other sons were injured.

Prayers, please.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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UW Prof in NYT: Scott Walker’s not Sen. McCarthy, but he’s a lot like him, really [UPDATED]

While social-welfare states all over the world are discovering that they're broke, Professor William Cronon (of history, geography and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison) takes to the pages of the NYT to tell us that if they're not quite anti-American, Scott Walker's activities have been anti-Wisconsinite.* Read the whole thing, but here's the kicker:

Scott Walker is not Joe McCarthy. Their political convictions and the two moments in history are quite different. But there is something about the style of the two men — their aggressiveness, their self-certainty, their seeming indifference to contrary views — that may help explain the extreme partisan reactions they triggered. McCarthy helped create the modern Democratic Party in Wisconsin by infuriating progressive Republicans, imagining that he could build a national platform by cultivating an image as a sternly uncompromising leader willing to attack anyone who stood in his way. Mr. Walker appears to be provoking some of the same ire from adversaries and from advocates of good government by acting with a similar contempt for those who disagree with him.

The turmoil in Wisconsin is not only about bargaining rights or the pension payments of public employees. It is about transparency and openness. It is about neighborliness, decency and mutual respect. Joe McCarthy forgot these lessons of good government, and so, I fear, has Mr. Walker. Wisconsin’s citizens have not.

I don't know whether or not the good Professor bothered to read the news (as Bingley pointed out, suitably buried on A-19), also in the New York Times, that a Rosenberg co-conspirator fessed up to helping them pass along secrets to Soviet agents, for love of the USSR. Until now, he had maintained for all those years, just as the Rosenbergs did unto death, that he was framed. I am sure that you'll be right there helping to rehabilitate the reputations besmirched by leftist propaganda.

As I have chronicled on this blog, and others such as Steve Eggleston have, too, the behavior of the teachers unions in Wisconsin has been increasingly un-neighborly for many years. All of that reached a peak, in the wake of the Ament scandals, when the Democrats tried to force through union-favorable legislation in an extraordinary January lame-duck session--only the second ever in Wisconsin history--so that the incoming legislature would be hamstrung. To do so, they got an imprisoned Senator sprung from prison, and timed their vote to capitalize on the absence because of vacation of a Republican Senator. But every Republican Senator who could showed up to vote against the measure, rather than fleeing to neighborly Illinois to avoid having to vote, after far less floor time was permitted for debate.

The Mayor of Madison colluded to delay the publication of the Walker bill once it was passed, in order to gain more time for municipalities so disposed to cut their own deals with teachers unions. And some of them jumped at the chance, saying to recession-strapped taxpayers, some things are more important than our representing you. You can bet that all of those negotiations were open and transparent. The state's ethics board made a terrible but unanimous ruling that campaign funds could be used to pay for the expenses one racked up evading their responsibilities.

For all of the talk about excellence in education in Wisconsin, there are problems. They seem not to be getting the results that they have continuously promised would come with throwing more money at schools. They like to point to SAT scores, but as is demonstrated here, that's a red herring.

The bottom line is that Wisconsin is broke, and has to make hard decisions about how to dig itself out of the hole. There will be no federal bailout. As opposed to EEEEEEVIL CONSERVATIVE Scott Walker, Governor Moonbeam has given walking papers to 19,000 California teachers. I'm sure that was much more neighborly. Half of Detroit's public schools are shutting down, some of them probably in what remains of neighborhoods. A much better question is how did public servants become so damned greedy that they think that they are owed privileges that other workers--even federal workers--are not?

It hasn't worked out. The welfare state hasn't worked out. Try to get a clue about how neighborly it is to insist that other people spend their money on a failed system. For the children. And don't lecture us on civility, sir, when we see how wonderfully civil the apoplectic left is when they aren't given what they want.

That's what democracy looks like? Go to hell, you supercilious douchebag.

NB: Professor Cronon is different from Voltaire's Dr. Pangloss, but remarkably very much the same, simultaneously.

* It's important for obvious reasons that he limit the consideration of "transparency" to Wisconsin. As we know, the teachers unions have been perfectly transparent concerning things like the health care gouging. Governor Doyle never hid a thing about his budgets, or the high-speed rail stuff, either.

More "transparency."

Tangentially related: Jerry Wilson recommends Palin supporters develop some Honey Badgerism regarding her critics.

UPDATE:

Source, via, via.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Socialized Medicine: When a high-heeled kook kicks your nuts in, get in the queue

Shocking CCTV footage shows Phil Burke fending off an attack by 23-year-old Gemma Ryan, in the Britannia Hotel in Manchester. Mr Burke is waiting for surgery after he was kicked in the groin by Ryan, who was wearing high heel shoes.

Disambiguation: Not to be confused with "The Good Gemma Ryan," who confines her combat to the stage and plays the accordion.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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More on that Fond du Lac, WI cop-shooting story

You may recall that two policemen were shot, one killed, "continuing an investigation into a sexual assault". A police dog was also shot. The shooter suicided.

Their spokesman says that the shooter, 30-year-old James Cruckson, had had many prior contacts with their department, including criminal arrest. At the end of the conference, the spokesman says that the immediate reason for their arriving with 7 squads was that they were concerned that a 6-year-old was in the residence, but that she turned up in another house.

This would appear to be the shooter and his girlfriend, who apparently made an attempt to get out of Dodge and start a new life.

I have no way of verifying this information, so take it for what it's worth, but one of my sources, whom I consider reliable, has stated that the killed officer was carrying on with the girlfriend of his shooter, [this is incorrect; please see update in more recent post about the shootings] and that this wasn't the first time that the two had traded fire over the situation.

Seems as though there might be some 'splaining to do.

Naturally, if my information is bad, I regret it. If it's not, I hope the police will come clean regarding the details.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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