Late For Your Own Funeral

When I hear someone use the expression, "You'd be late for your own funeral," I've always thought that the correct response would be either, "I hope so," or "That's the plan." However, in one place, being late for your own funeral will cost you. That place is Venice, Italy, where the left-wing municipal council has just imposed a late fee for the late lamented, so to speak.

ROME (AFP) – The city of Venice will impose fines of up to 50 euros for organisers of funerals that are running late, after complaints by gravediggers who have to work overtime, an official said Monday.

The decision by the left-wing municipal council which was voted last week provides for "penalties when reserved hours are not respected," a city official told AFP, but would not give details.

Obviously, this is a grave problem in Venice. But let's vault to the truly important issue that needs to be buried here:

How do you dig a grave in a canal?

Self Delivering Christmas Dinner

An 83-year old man in Traverse City, Michigan got a special delivery Christmas dinner, right through the window of a third floor bedroom.

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. – The noise that Chuck Ritter heard while sitting in his living room was a turkey that crashed through a third-story bedroom window. Ritter, 83, was relaxing Saturday when the uninvited guest arrived.

Ritter called Joe Battaglia, the on-call maintenance workers at his Traverse City apartment, and they tried to corral the 25-pound bird as it flapped around on the carpet amid blood and shards of glass.

After trying for quite some time to herd the ambulatory feast-to-be out the window with no luck, Ritter finally grabbed it by the neck and heaved it out the window. Ritter is now looking for a family to donate the now thoroughly tenderized fowl too. (Remember it was on the third floor.)

You realize what this means, of course. The Animal Uprising™ has perfected the guided turkey. Nobody has been able to do that before. Oh, sure, everyone knows that Benjamin Franklin lobbied for the turkey to be adopted as the national bird. But few remember him suggesting that the continental army use carrier turkeys to send messages. The idea was, of course, laughed at and resulted in "that turkey Ben" being sent to France, ostensibly to be an "ambassador."

Hot Tubbing: All The Cool Cats Are Doing It

Ah, relaxing in the hot tub outdoors on a cold winter day. Why it would be just perfect with a little company. How about your local mountain lion?

DEADWOOD, S.D. – A relaxing soak in a hot tub came to an abrupt end when Marlene Todd came eye to eye with a mountain lion in her backyard.

"I was kind of hidden, sitting with my back up against the side of the tub, and I heard a little rustling sound in the needles right beside me," she said.

Todd said she thought it might have been her house cat until she saw "this big, tan, hairy body" just 4 inches away.

"I didn't realize what it was until it took a leap and jumped up on the side of my hot tub," Todd said.

The cougar was cornered somewhat because the deck stairs blocked its retreat. It would have to go up and over the hot tub.

"It just took a leap. It jumped on the side of the hot tub," Todd said of the Thursday morning encounter. "We locked eyes, and it kicked off of the hot tub and ran away. When it jumped, it flipped my robe into the hot tub."

Authorities think the cat may have been attracted by the warmth of the hot tub. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard, animal experts all, think the answer is much simpler. The cougar was seeing if the soup was ready.

“Surrender”

A witness to the events at the New Life Church yesterday described the scene as volunteer armed security guard Jeanne Assam stopped the bloodshed by shotting the gunman.

Larry Bourbonnais, a combat-tested Vietnam veteran, said it was the bravest thing he's ever seen.

Bourbonnais, who was among those shot by a gunman Sunday at New Life Church, watched as a security guard, a woman later identified as Jeanne Assam, calmly returned fire and killed the shooter.

"She just started walking toward the gunman firing the whole way," said Bourbonnais, who was shot in the arm. "She was just yelling 'Surrender,' walking and shooting the whole time."

Which is exactly what is taught in carry class – shoot until the threat stops or the gun is empty. There is no doubt whatsoever that Jeanne Assam saved many lives. The shooter, identified as Matthew Murray, a 24-year old from Englewood, Colorado who "hated Christians" had a backpack with 1,000 rounds of ammunition, an "assault rifle" and two hand guns. He has also been identified by forensic evidence as being the same gunman who killed two people early the same day at a missionary training center. Murray had been enrolled at that missionary center briefly at some time in the past.

Police describe a chaotic scene with smoke bombs going off outside the New Life Church moments before Matthew Murray began firing in a rampage that killed two and wounded three others Sunday.

Forensic evidence from the shooting at the church matches evidence found at Arvada's Youth with a Mission, a missionary training facility, scene of an earlier shooting spree that killed two others. Murray had once been enroleld there.

Police say Murray, 24, of Englewood, was the lone gunman in both cases.

At an afternoon press conference, police described the chaos at New Life Church that began at about 1:10 p.m. Sunday.

Smoke bombs went off near two entrances to the mega-church before Murray fired his first shots.

Then Murray, who was armed with clips for 1,000 rounds of ammunition, and two hand guns, began firing an assault rifle in an corner of the parking lot.

Sisters Stephanie, 18, and Rachael Works, 16, and their father, David Works, 51, were struck. Stephanie died at the scene, and her sister died later at Penrose Hospital.

One thing that strikes me as I look at this cluster of stories over at Memeorandum. Not a single lefty blog is commenting on this – at all. There is, I suspect, a reason for that. This tragic incident would have been much, much more tragic but for the presence – and the presence of mind – of one armed civilian. Jeanne Assam saw what had to be done to stop the murderer and took exactly the right action. She saved a lot of people.

Thank God that church had enough sense not to declare the grounds a "gun free zone".

UPDATE: Video of Jeanne Assam at the press conference here. At the end of the presser, the reporters burst into a very hearty round of applause.  

Ice Storms Sweep Nation

Heavy Ice storms are roaring across the country along a line from Texas to New Hampshire. More than 500,000 homes and businesses are without power as transmission lines snapped under the weight of the ice coating them or as tree branches collapsed onto them. Very, very bad weather and brutal cold is coming in behind the storms. States of emergency have been declared in Oklahoma and Missouri. At least 13 people have died in traffic accidents across the region.

A state of emergency was declared for the entire state of Oklahoma, said Michelann Ooten, spokeswoman for the state Department of Emergency Management. Fifty industrial generators and three truckloads of bottled water were to be shipped to blacked-out areas. Missouri had declared an emergency on Sunday and put the National Guard on alert.

Oklahoma utilities said some 400,000 customers were blacked out as power lines snapped under the weight of ice and falling tree branches, and utilities in Missouri said more than 100,000 homes and business had no power there. Roughly 11,000 were blacked out in southern Illinois.

The sound of branches snapping echoed through Oklahoma City neighborhoods.

"You can hear them falling everywhere," Lonnie Compton said Monday as he shoveled ice off his driveway.

Ice was as much as an inch thick on tree limbs and power lines in parts of Missouri.

Schools across Oklahoma were closed and some hospitals were relying on backup power generators.

Tulsa International Airport had no power and halted flight operations, and most morning flights at Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City were canceled because of icy runways.

Greyhound Bus service was disrupted, stranding passengers, some of whom spent the night in a shelter in a church in downtown Tulsa. They were joined by some local residents who had no heat.

There was no way to estimate when power might be restored, said Oklahoma Gas & Electric spokesman Gil Broyles.

"This is a big one, we've got a massive situation here and it's probably going to be a week to 10 days before we get power on to everybody," said Ed Bettinger, a spokesman for Public Service Company. "It looks like a war zone."

They'll be pulling line crews from all over the country for assistance and it will still be very rough getting everything back on. Been there, done that. It's probably doubtful many people in those states can read this, but a word of warning about downed power lines – stay away from them completely. Even if they are dead at the moment, you never know when a switch will be thrown. The utilities will be trying their best to survey the damage so they know what's on the ground, but it is slow, tedious and dangerous work – especially in the ice and cold.

Call it the Gore effect on steroids – he gave his Nobel Prize acceptance speech today. So you just knew there would be vicious winter weather.

Hillary’s Pay-To-Play

Ouch. The Los Angeles Times takes a look at Hillary Clinton's outsized use of earmarks, by far and away much larger than any other candidate and notes one other little detail. Many of the private companies receiving the earmark funds are also sending Hillary huge amounts of campaign cash. Pay-to play on and enormous scale that makes the Lincoln bedroom issue from a few years ago look like chump change.

Her record stands in contrast with others in the Senate seeking the presidency, particularly John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.). McCain, who has long opposed earmarks, does not write them. Obama has used the device, but now declines to earmark funds for private companies; he uses earmarks only to secure funds for government projects such as road building and hospital construction. Other senators seeking the presidency provide earmarks to home-state constituents and collect donations from recipients of the federal largesse. But The Times review found that Clinton does it on a different scale.

For example, in the appropriations bills that have passed the Senate so far this year, Clinton earmarked 216 separate projects for a total of $236.6 million. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) secured $112.8 million; Obama earmarked $90.4 million, and Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) earmarked projects totaling $70.8 million.

Since Clinton arrived in the Senate, she has collected in excess of $1 million from earmark beneficiaries and their associates.

"This pattern shows that Clinton has made aggressive use of the pay-to-play earmark game," said Keith Ashdown, research director for the Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington.

The practice of congressional earmarking has a long history. But in recent years, its use has skyrocketed, and earmarking has emerged at the center of high-profile scandals, including the one that sent former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham of Rancho Santa Fe and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, both Republicans, to prison. Those scandals involved earmarks that led to the personal enrichment of lawmakers. There is no evidence of that in Clinton's case.

Because of the scandals, the practice of earmarking has become the subject of a heated debate among politicians, watchdog groups and good-government advocates.

Critics of earmarking object that it remains a relatively closed process that adds billions in spending directives, often over the objection of the president and Cabinet departments.

Specifically, Clinton has made sure that some 59 companies have received some $500 million in taxpayer money since taking office. In return, some 64% of those companies have funneled campaign money to her. That's pretty ugly. The LA Times isn't likely to be on Clinton's Christmas card list, is it? Stopping pork barrel spending is a bipartisan concern – everyone should be against politicians milking the system this way. Hillary Clinton's abuse of earmarks make her a poster child for why the system needs to be reformed.

The Old Hay Pay Wagon

The Washington Post has an editorial today that excoriates the pending farm bill now winding its way through Congress. The Post has been running a long, intermittent series on the absurdities of farm subsidies, of course. But the bill now pending ignores all that and heaps on lots and lots of gravy for farmers who, frankly, don't need it.

Under the pending farm bill, the U.S. sugar industry would get a 10-year, $1 billion program to prop up sugar prices by requiring the Agriculture Department to buy up excess production and resell it to ethanol producers at a deep discount. The idea is to protect American growers from Mexican competition after the North American Free Trade Agreement is fully phased in. The effect is to raise prices for every food that contains sugar. This illogical and wasteful plan passed the House thanks in part to $1.5 million in widely distributed campaign contributions from nine sugar farm or refinery groups, according to a Nov. 3 story in The Post by Mr. Morgan.

As Mr. Morgan showed in a Sept. 28 article, a "direct payment" program for corn continues to shovel millions of dollars to farmers even as they reap the benefits of high crop and land prices — which are in turn made possible by a separate federal program to subsidize corn-based ethanol. Mr. Morgan met an Iowa corn farmer who is wealthy enough to have pledged a $1.75 million donation to his alma mater, but, together with his two brothers, still receives $45,000 a year from Washington.

How nice that Congress is glad handing our tax money to millionaires. At a time of record prices for crops, the utter absurdity of subsidizing farmers is particularly galling. That big money is flowing to the politicians to ensure that even bigger money flows to the farmers just makes it worse. This bill isn't a bailout, it's a handout.

And they're handing out our money.

How Badly Is Hillary Sliding?

According to this report from Bloomberg, it may be very badly, indeed. A recent focus group conducted by Democratic pollster Peter Hart, the dedicated, committed Democrats attending found real problems with Hillary Clinton – ones that became more and more detailed as time went on.

When Hart pushed the group during a two-hour conversation about the strengths and weaknesses of the two candidates, a different picture emerged.

Obama, they worried, can't win the nomination; voters aren't ready for an African-American president (a point expressed most directly by the two black women participants), and he may not be sufficiently experienced.

A couple of victories in Iowa and New Hampshire would cure most of those problems.

The concerns about Clinton, 60, a New York senator, are that she is devious, calculating and, fairly or not, a divisive figure in American politics.

Those are a lot tougher to overcome.

It was revealing, too, when Hart pushed them to envision these senators as leaders of the country or, as he put it, their “boss.'' Obama, they say, would be inspirational, motivating, charismatic and compassionate. After praising Clinton's experience and intelligence, they say she would be demanding, difficult, maybe even a little scary.

Candor and authenticity were repeatedly cited. “I don't feel like I look at her and see someone who's telling me the whole truth,'' says Allison Lowrey, a 30-year-old human- resources consultant. “I'd like to see her approach a problem without the polls'' helping her make her decision, says Andrew Alebergo, a 39-year-old tanning-salon operator.

The story also reports that Bill Clinton is "bouncing off the walls" over the campaign's inability to stop the slide. I think that's probably the most telling detail. They are very worried that the wheels on the Clinton juggernaut may be starting to come off. Frankly, it will still take a lot of work for the Obama campaign to secure the nomination and the Clinton campaign would have to continue wobbling for that to happen. But a frightened campaign is more likely to make serious mistakes, isn't it? Right now, camp Clinton is looking pretty scared.

Police Think Colorado Shooting Linked

The police in the two jurisdictions where shooting occurred yesterday believe the two incidents are related but have yet to formally link them. The two locations, a missionary training facility and a church, share a connection by virtue of a small office maintained at the church by the missionary group. So it seems likely that the two incidents are related somehow, just on that basis. Police from both the Arvada and Colorado Springs police are searching a single home located in Englewood, Colorado.

Five people, including a gunman, died in the attacks Sunday at a megachurch in Colorado Springs and at the Youth With a Mission missionary center in the Denver suburb of Arvada. Five others were wounded.

"Violent crimes of any sort are tragic enough, but when innocent people are killed in a religious facility or a place of worship, we must voice a collective sense of outrage and demonstrate a renewed commitment to keeping our communities safe," said Gov. Bill Ritter.

Police in Arvada said they believed the shootings — which occurred 12 hours and about 65 miles apart — were probably linked, though they had nothing conclusive to back up the theory.

"Given the circumstances, I think it is a good possibility that the two are linked," Arvada Deputy Police Chief Gary Creagor told The Associated Press early Monday. "But we have to prove that they are."

At a news conference Sunday, Police Chief Don Wick said that there was "reason to believe" the shootings were connected, though he declined to elaborate.

Early Monday, authorities were searching a home in suburban Englewood, about 15 miles south of Denver, that they said could be related to the Colorado Springs shooting case. Authorities could be seen coming and going from the home, and at one point searching the bushes in front.

The Denver Post sounds even more sure that the two incidents are related:

Arvada police said Sunday they have "reason to believe" that deadly attacks at two religious institutions 70 miles apart that left five dead and six injured are probably linked.

Arvada Police Chief Don Wick said his agency sent officers to share notes with Colorado Springs police. And late Sunday, authorities from both agencies were searching a home in southeastern Arapahoe County they say could be related to the case.

"We have reason to believe that the two may be related," Wick said at a news briefing.

The church gunman was shot and killed by a female church security guard. That woman saved a lot of people. The shooter was wearing body armor according to this report.

Tax Policy As Farce

The Opinion Journal points out the death of the Democrat's much-ballyhooed PAYGO rules in the ongoing battle to patch the Alternative Minimum Tax. They also point out that the PAYGO rules have been a farce all along. The rules were regularly flaunted by tricks that would have landed a private citizen in Federal prison for fraud.

But paygo shouldn't be allowed to expire without everyone kicking sand on its grave. That's because it has been nothing but a confidence game from the very start. Paygo doesn't apply to domestic discretionary spending, and it doesn't restrain spending increases under current law in entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid. Its main goals are to make tax cutting all but impossible, while letting Democrats pretend to favor "fiscal discipline," a la Ms. Pelosi's boast above.

In fact, the paygo farce has been unfolding all year. Since the day they took the gavel, Democrats have been using gimmick after gimmick to evade it. The Schip bill for health care, for example, includes a spending "cliff" that disguises its actual cost. It assumes spending would rise to $14 billion in 2012, but then pretends the costs would fall to less than half that level in 2013–which just so happens to fall outside the five-year budget scoring window. Some $60 billion in spending over the next 10 years were hidden through this ploy.

Then there is the House farm bill awaiting action in the Senate. That spending marathon includes between $5 billion and $10 billion in fictitious paygo savings by shifting the date of farm aid payments from one year to another. If a Fortune 500 CEO did that sort of thing, he'd be indicted.

House Democrats realize how humiliating this all is, so they're still vowing to make paygo work. Especially embarrassed are the so-called Blue Dog Democrats for whom "fiscal discipline" is a coat of political protection. John Tanner of Tennessee is so upset he says the Senate paygo abdication "is bordering on criminal," and about 30 Blue Dogs are threatening to vote against AMT repeal without offsetting tax increases. They'd have more credibility if they also opposed the various fiscal gimmicks in the Schip and farm bills, not to mention the 2008 Congressional budget outline that exceeded President Bush's budget request by $22 billion.

The Democrats have already signaled that gargantuan tax increases will be  passed as soon as they have enough votes and they have been socking Americans with hidden taxes on a regular basis since they took control. The energy bill is going to cost Americans billions upon billions in additional energy costs, in fact the cost of virtually everything is going to jump sharply if it becomes law. And there are still more tax hikes being floated on a regular basis.

As the editorial points out, the AMT PAYGO "offsets" were sunk directly because the people who would have been hit by it – hedge fund managers – paid huge sums of money to Democratic lawmakers. They call it "lobbying" and "campaign funding".

What does it smell like to you?