Backstreet Boy-d

Like 'em or not, the Backstreet Boys had/have plenty of fans. Go check out this one. Guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

Still Need Fact Check on Aisle Nine

(click to enlarge)

Above is the latest article posted on the News-Leader site as of 10:15 a.m. Friday. Drury University has not been "college" since Jan. 1, 2000. The photo caption at least gets Tindle Mills right.

Fact Check on Aisle Nine

(click to enlarge)

Some one on the night desk at the News-Leader needs to fact-check better. Drury University has not been named "college" for nearly eight years (since January 1, 2000). And TINDLE Mills has been TINDLE for over 100 years. I captured this screen at 1:53 a.m. October 12. The story was posted at 9:47 p.m. October 11.

Hats, Men, Chill

On this chilly October morning, a bit of nonsense. That damn hippie Atrios posted a YouTube video of the 80s tune "Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats. I made the mistake of watching, and now can't get that tune out of my head!

The group's (or was it just the one guy?) name circled my brain for a bit last night, eventually landing on a scene from "The Big Chill." Tom Berenger, enters the living room late at night to find William Hurt sitting on the couch watching an old movie on late-night television:

Berenger: What's this?
Hurt: I'm not sure.
Berenger: What's it about?
Hurt: I don't know.
Berenger: Who's that?
Hurt: I think the guy in the hat did something terrible.
[shot of TV shows a man being thrown through the glass window of a door. All characters are wearing hats]

Why I chuckle every time I think of that scene, I don't know.

Because Granny Asked for It

A double-dose of Beagle-Blogging. These were taken with my cell phone. Quality isn't as good as I'd like, but the flash upsets Baxter when he's not expecting it.

One More Way NOT to Support the Troops

In it's never-ending efforts to make sure your children's future income is spent as efficiently as possible, the Army is ensuring National Guardsmen returning from 22 months in Iraq do not qualify for full educational benefits under the G.I. bill. Those clever bean counters at the Pentagon deployed more than 1,100 of them for only 729 days… exactly one day short of the 730 days needed to guarantee thousands of dollars a year for college.

When they came home from Iraq, 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard had been deployed longer than any other ground combat unit. The tour lasted 22 months and had been extended as part of President Bush's surge.

1st Lt. Jon Anderson said he never expected to come home to this: A government refusing to pay education benefits he says he should have earned under the GI bill.

"It's pretty much a slap in the face," Anderson said. "I think it was a scheme to save money, personally. I think it was a leadership failure by the senior Washington leadership... once again failing the soldiers."

Anderson's orders, and the orders of 1,161 other Minnesota guard members, were written for 729 days.

Had they been written for 730 days, just one day more, the soldiers would receive those benefits to pay for school.

"Which would be allowing the soldiers an extra $500 to $800 a month," Anderson said.

[snip]

Both Hobot and Anderson believe the Pentagon deliberately wrote orders for 729 days instead of 730. Now, six of Minnesota's members of the House of Representatives have asked the Secretary of the Army to look into it -- So have Senators Amy Klobuchar and Norm Coleman.

Klobuchar said the GI money "shouldn't be tied up in red tape," and Coleman said it's "simply irresponsible to deny education benefits to those soldiers who just completed the longest tour of duty of any unit in Iraq."

[snip]

Senators Klobuchar and Coleman released a joint statement saying the Army secretary, Pete Geren, is looking into this personally, and they say Geren asked a review board to expedite its review so the matter could be solved by next semester.

Minnesota National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Kevin Olson said the soldiers are "victims of a significant injustice."

Hobot and Anderson must be some of those "phony soldiers" Rush spoke of this week.

"Make Your Day Count" To the Extreme

Lindsay Roberts, daughter-in-law of Oral Roberts, and "First Lady" of Oral Roberts University, is the host of "Make Your Day Count"

an uplifting half-hour daily program aimed especially at the needs of women.

She certainly knows how to "uplift" her daily needs:

Twenty years ago, televangelist Oral Roberts said he was reading a spy novel when God appeared to him and told him to raise $8 million for Roberts' university, or else he would be ''called home.''

Now, his son, Oral Roberts University President Richard Roberts, says God is speaking again, telling him to deny lurid allegations in a lawsuit that threatens to engulf this 44-year-old Bible Belt college in scandal.

Richard Roberts is accused of illegal involvement in a local political campaign and lavish spending at donors' expense, including numerous home remodeling projects, use of the university jet for his daughter's senior trip to the Bahamas, and a red Mercedes convertible and a Lexus SUV for his wife, Lindsay.

She is accused of dropping tens of thousands of dollars on clothes, awarding nonacademic scholarships to friends of her children and sending scores of text messages on university-issued cell phones to people described in the lawsuit as ''underage males.''

[snip]

The allegations are contained in a lawsuit filed Tuesday by three former professors. They sued ORU and Roberts, alleging they were wrongfully dismissed after reporting the school's involvement in a local political race.

Richard Roberts, according to the suit, asked a professor in 2005 to use his students and university resources to aid a county commissioner's bid for Tulsa mayor. Such involvement would violate state and federal law because of the university's nonprofit status. Up to 50 students are alleged to have worked on the campaign.

The professors also said their dismissals came after they turned over to the board of regents a copy of a report documenting moral and ethical lapses on the part of Roberts and his family. The internal document was prepared by Stephanie Cantese, Richard Roberts' sister-in-law, according to the lawsuit.

An ORU student repairing Cantese's laptop discovered the document and later provided a copy to one of the professors.

It details dozens of alleged instances of misconduct. Among them:

-- A longtime maintenance employee was fired so that an underage male friend of Mrs. Roberts could have his position.

-- Mrs. Roberts -- who is a member of the board of regents and is referred to as ORU's ''first lady'' on the university's Web site -- frequently had cell-phone bills of more than $800 per month, with hundreds of text messages sent between 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. to ''underage males who had been provided phones at university expense.''

-- The university jet was used to take one daughter and several friends on a senior trip to Orlando, Fla., and the Bahamas. The $29,411 trip was billed to the ministry as an ''evangelistic function of the president.''

-- Mrs. Roberts spent more than $39,000 at one Chico's clothing store alone in less than a year, and had other accounts in Texas and California. She also repeatedly said, ''As long as I wear it once on TV, we can charge it off.'' The document cites inconsistencies in clothing purchases and actual usage on TV.

-- Mrs. Roberts was given a white Lexus SUV and a red Mercedes convertible by ministry donors.

-- University and ministry employees are regularly summoned to the Roberts' home to do the daughters' homework.

-- The university and ministry maintain a stable of horses for exclusive use by the Roberts' children.

-- The Roberts' home has been remodeled 11 times in the past 14 years.

Tim Brooker, one of the professors who sued, said he fears for the university's survival if certain changes aren't made.

''All over that campus, there are signs up that say, `And God said, build me a university, build it on my authority, and build it on the Holy Spirit,''' Brooker said. ''Unfortunately, ownership has shifted.''

Texting underage males in the wee hours of the morning. Tens of thousands of dollars for clothing in one year. A Mercedes and Lexus SUV. God's work. Oh yeah.

Gov. Blunt Trying to Steal Credit

Gov. Matt Blunt is behind the curve on one of his latest toutings. Thursday, Blunt announced:

he is shining a bright light for consumers on Missouri businesses not paying taxes, launching an Internet site that lists businesses that have failed to comply with state tax law, www.whoisnotpaying.mo.gov.

All well and good, except the Missouri Dept. of Revenue has had such a web site up for over a month:

Beginning August 28, 2007, Senate Bill 30 gives the Missouri Department of Revenue authority to publish the name of any business which has a revoked sales tax license. A sales tax license may be revoked for either failing to remit sales tax collected from customers or for failing to remit income tax withheld from employees.

The list will be maintained on the department’s website at www.dor.mo.gov.

Senate Bill 30, sponsored by Sen. Gary Nodler (R-Joplin) and handled in the House by Rep. Bryan Stevenson (R-Webb City) cleared the House and Senate on May 16th and signed by the governor on June 13th. Specifically,

Section 144.083 would require a business to obtain a no-tax-due statement from DOR to obtain a local business license and would allow DOR to publish the status of a revoked business account without revealing confidential information.

So the Dept. of Revenue announces its web site listing businesses with revoked sales tax licenses on August 29th. KSPR News at 10 broadcast a story on this web site and some Springfield businesses listed on it on Sept. 11th. And now, on October 4th, Matt Blunt wants to take credit for the web site, saying "he is shining a bright light for consumers on Missouri businesses not paying taxes"? Riiiiiiiiiiggghhttt.

The guv's release also states:

The department has contacted businesses listed on the revocations site by mail or phone several times. Thirty days prior to actual revocation of a business’ sales tax license, the business receives a certified letter explaining its noncompliance with state tax law and the repercussions to occur as a result.

Yet, when KSPR asked the owner of Blimpie Subs and Sandwiches why he was operating without a sales tax license, he said he had no idea why he was on the list. Michael Clemons says he never received a certified letter from the state.

Watch the video. Clemons seems genuinely surprised. The DOR MAY be spinning. Clemons MAY be spinning. But for certain, Matt Blunt IS spinning, and trying to take credit for something he had little to do with.

Sprucing Up The Place

I haven't changed the look of the blog much since I started, so I'm going to slowly install some upgrades. Comments will now be through Haloscan. Unfortunately, that means all previous comments are gone. Eventually I want to move to three columns. But life calls.

Give a Listen

So I was watching this movie this evening for the umpteenth time (love the kids who portray Nathan, and Kurt Russell's subtle facial expressions) and became intrigued by the music used during scenes of "Todd's" education on aspects of life other than soldiering.

The song is entitled "Night Ride Across The Caucasus" and was written and performed by Loreena McKennitt. It may be found on her album "The Book of Secrets."

Checking the trivia section on Internet Movie Database led to the discovery of inside jokes contained within the movie, including references to "Blade Runner", also written by David Webb Peoples, and many other Kurt Russell films.

But my favorite is that "Todd" is trained in the use of the "Illudium PU36 ES,M." For those familiar with Bugs Bunny cartoons, that would be the Illudium PU36 Explosive Space Modulator, the weapon Marvin the Martian is always threatening to use on Earth.

Class dismissed.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe ...

to go back in the water:

PHOENIX - It sounds like science fiction but it's true: A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die.

Even though encounters with the microscopic bug are extraordinarily rare, it's killed six boys and young men this year. The spike in cases has health officials concerned, and they are predicting more cases in the future.

"This is definitely something we need to track," said Michael Beach, a specialist in recreational waterborne illnesses for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"This is a heat-loving amoeba. As water temperatures go up, it does better," Beach said. "In future decades, as temperatures rise, we'd expect to see more cases."

According to the CDC, the amoeba called Naegleria fowleri (nuh-GLEER-ee-uh FOWL'-erh-eye) killed 23 people in the United States, from 1995 to 2004. This year health officials noticed a spike with six cases — three in Florida, two in Texas and one in Arizona. The CDC knows of only several hundred cases worldwide since its discovery in Australia in the 1960s.

[snip]

Though infections tend to be found in southern states, Naegleria lives almost everywhere in lakes, hot springs, even dirty swimming pools, grazing off algae and bacteria in the sediment.

Beach said people become infected when they wade through shallow water and stir up the bottom. If someone allows water to shoot up the nose — say, by doing a somersault in chest-deep water — the amoeba can latch onto the olfactory nerve.

The amoeba destroys tissue as it makes its way up into the brain, where it continues the damage, "basically feeding on the brain cells," Beach said.

People who are infected tend to complain of a stiff neck, headaches and fevers. In the later stages, they'll show signs of brain damage such as hallucinations and behavioral changes, he said.

Once infected, most people have little chance of survival. Some drugs have stopped the amoeba in lab experiments, but people who have been attacked rarely survive, Beach said.

"Usually, from initial exposure it's fatal within two weeks," he said.

Researchers still have much to learn about Naegleria. They don't know why, for example, children are more likely to be infected, and boys are more often victims than girls.

[snip]

Beach cautioned that people shouldn't panic about the dangers of the brain-eating bug. Cases are still extremely rare considering the number of people swimming in lakes. The easiest way to prevent infection, Beach said, is to use nose clips when swimming or diving in fresh water.

"You'd have to have water going way up in your nose to begin with" to be infected, he said.

Duuuuuuuhhhhhhhh dun. Duuuuuuuhhhhhhhh dun. Dun duh dun duh dun duh dun duh .......

Your Tax Dollars at Work

So President Bush says we can't afford to spend an extra $30 billion over five years to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP. But, he wants to spend another $42 billion more just next year for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

(side note -- this would raise the total spending on the Iraq war alone to more than $600 billion -- or TWELVE TIMES the $50 billion cost the Pentagon estimated in 2002)

I wonder if the president's request includes money to fix this:


That's an aerial view of a U.S. Navy barracks in Coronado, Calif. It's been that way since 1967.

Since it was not visible from the ground, officials decided not to make any changes.

But aerial photos made available on Google Earth in recent years revealed the buildings' shape to a wide audience of computer users.

Glad we have our priorities straight.