They have a word for stuff like this:

Newspaper photo coincidence leads to robbery suspect. (with photos/KTVB/Idaho)

Yep. A coincidence.

A really beautiful coincidence.

It's a wonderful world.

Why All the Fuss?

The Mitchell Report (on steroids in pro baseball).

Wouldn't it just be easier, more honest, and waaaaaaaay more entertaining to run Stock, Fuel and Modified? And "Funny"?

Madness Redux

H/T to Billy Beck who points to an illustration of why the madness I describe below exists...

Anyways, here's the link to a NY Times article that states that tax cuts are crippling the economy.

From the article:

From 2002 to 2011, forgone revenue from the cuts will account for 37 percent of the federal budget’s descent into the red... (emphasis mine)

"Forgone revenue"...it will do you well to understand and know that the only way such a term makes sense is if you start with the assumption that the State owns all the money in the first place. That makes "foregone revenue" the money the State could have taken (should have taken from the point of view of the editorial) but didn't grab yet.

But there's a big difference between a dollar lost and a dollar not taken. If you have a dollar and the State takes it, you've lost a dollar.

But, if you have a dollar and the State doesn't take it, the State hasn't lost a dollar in any way shape or form--unless (like the twit who wrote that article) they assume the money was *all* theirs in the first place.

The twit who wrote that article might have chosen to be honest enough to simply say that the government didn't steal enough to pay for a 37% shortfall between revenue and spending (in other words: the State spent money they didn't actually have), but that would be saying something that could be interpreted as "the government spent too much"--and no Statist/interventionist is gonna trot that out when it's spending they want or wanted.

Question to supporters of the Meddler State: this kinda math doesn't make sense in your home? What in hell makes you think it works on a bigger scale?

This.

Powerful Bay Area Lawyers Represent Immigrants For Free

the lawyers [will] vigorously defend the constitutional rights of all people, including undocumented immigrants

Actions like this could get me to tell a few less lawyer jokes because these American lawyers are correct in what they are trying to do, which is: ensure that the government recognizes that (from my own blog on Sunday, November 11, 2007):

Rights are not something governments give you. They are things you have because you are human, period. Now, governments can recognize your rights, or try to suppress them, but that is all.

In other words: rights are not the same thing as mere legal permissions. Confusion over (or simple failure to recognize) the distinction causes all sorts of sloppy thinking, and no end of human injustice and tragedy.

Spokane schools skip Christmas...

OK. Not exactly. It's just that the Spokane Public Schools newsletter for December omitted Christmas while Hanukkah, winter break, Human Rights Day, the Islamic holy day Eid al-Adha, the first day of winter and Kwanzaa all made the list.

Well, the folks who put the calendar together might have been inept, thoughtless, or trying to make some sort of point. Which is it?

"It was absolutely an error of omission," district spokeswoman Terren Roloff said. "In our efforts to be inclusive, we missed the obvious."

All three, evidently.

Uh, shouldn't that be spokesperson...