Looking for a solution to high local property taxes? Ungovernment your town.

Going out of business appeals to small places like Cooper, where only 145 people live. With no jobs and an aging population, the tax base is shrinking even though the costs of government keep rising. “It just got to be more than we could handle,” says Sue Dorsey. Dorsey says that’s why the 26 residents of Centerville let the state take over their affairs – everything from education to snow removal. “There was more to do and less people that wanted to do it,” says Dorsey. Centerville not only locked the door to city hall, it sold it for $3,500.

8 out of 9 small towns in Maine that have done this have seen a drop in property taxes.
Hat tip – Dr.Joyner

I suppose it was bound to happen. As Powerline notes, the Democrats are now trying to “redefine the meaning of close” in a last gasp attempt to avoid conceding defeat. In so doing, they risk convincing a good percentage of fair-minded Americans who had given them the benefit of the doubt over the Florida fiasco, that they might well be renamed the Lawyer Party Of Losers. At the core of this party is a group of people who are intellectually corrupt and emotionally immature. Little is going to change in Democratic Party fortunes until they are purged.
Hugh Hewitt has been unwavering in his optimism during the campaign, and as it turned out, he was closer to being right than nearly anyone else. Hewitt’s blog should be an example for our local talk radio hosts – he has done a marvellous job of connecting his show to the voices on the internet, and it has made him all the more influencial. He writes;

Pete Coors is a gentleman.� Trailing by less than 50,000 votes out of nearly 1.8 million and with 12% of Colorado’s precincts yet to be tallied, Pete nevertheless took a calm look at the numbers and called Ken Salazar to concede. Classy.
�
Contrast that with Tom Daschle, Tony Knowles and Betty Castor, and of course John Kerry.� No reasonable interpretation of the data in any of these races can give any of these candidates a win, but they are hanging on.
�
This is not the conduct of a great party, but it is also not surprising for the party of Michael Moore. What an example for the new democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps sleep will bring wisdom to this group.� Sleep, and a good hard look at what Al Gore has become.

Hugh also notices that the gain of 4 senate votes breaks the Democrats ability to filibuster presidential judicial nominees – their last power wedge is gone.
Other big losers are the mainstream media – how badly and how permanently their credibility has been harmed is too soon to tell, but the results – the highest all-time popular vote total, the first majority won since Bush Sr’s 1988 win – are a repudiation to the attempts to sway the election. The American public is “onto them”.
update: Saner heads prevail …. but as we are still awaiting the speech, there’s still time for one last flip-flop!

You heard it here third.

I love rock ‘n’ roll
So put another tube In the pneumothorax, Baby

A problem best solved with a bullet, I say.

Nicholas Packwood notices that the Guardian’s website has been Drudgealanched/Instalanched off line. For this:

“On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And S**’s law dictates he’ll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr – where are you now that we need you?”

Apparently overlooked by the leftist rag from across the pond – the targets of those three gunman so “needed” were none other than Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

Gregory Djerejian at Belgravia Dispatch goes on the search for Bin Laden.

Folks, bottom line: we have to go all the way back to December 26th 2001 to see a video of UBL that really seems to get close to passing a smell test evidencing that’s he actually, you know, alive in it (and he didn’t look too smashing in this one either).

And if not dead, well, there’s a certain inconsistancy to his “appearances”.
Via Instapundit.

Why, look everyone! CBC is airing a George Chuvalo documentary!
How many is that now? 80?

“The People’s Champion.” Translation: “Got the crap beaten out of him for a lot of years, twice by someone very famous. The Canadian role model template does not require achievement. One need only stand up in stubborn contrast to successful Americans.”

Sadly, it seems no one told Chuvalo that boxing is a sport. George – it’s ok to fall down when you’re rendered unconscious by blows to the head. You can even fall down before that. The world will go on. That guy in the blue trunks is not going to move past your bloody corpse to destroy the Peace Tower should you fail. He’s going to get a stinking belt and go back to the dressing room for interviews.
Take a look around at other sports – tennis, for example. Tennis is a sport, too. Beginning, end, referees, points, winners, losers. Some tennis players feel quite passionately about winning their matches. Tennis players hate losing as much as boxers do, I’ll wager. But damn it, George – they don’t impale themselves on the opponants racket in a pathetic attempt to pretend they’re somehow better at losing than the other guy is at winning. And if they did, what do you suppose it would gain them? (Well, maybe the interviews.)
I cannot help but wish that Chuvalo had been knocked out by some potbellied trainer before he ever set foot in a pro ring – hung up his gloves at the age of 15, gone to trade school, remained in blissful anonymity, got a real job. Saved his family.
But in Canada we pervert extraordinary failure into miserable virtue – and thus, George Chuvalo is a beacon of inspiration, a flag bearer for serial losers. He fought Ali and lost. He battled the evils of drug abuse and depression and lost – three sons and his wife.
Now, he’s a sad old man doing high school drug lecture tours, looking battered. And lost.
Perennial documentary fodder.
George, I don’t mean to be cruel. But this has to stop. Tell the vultures who keep propping you up in front of the camera and microphones to get the hell out of your life. I think you probably still know how to throw a punch.
Win one for yourself.

WSJ Opinion Journal;

China’s one-child policy has many odious dimensions, but the most gruesome aspect of this type of “family planning” is the murder of millions of infant girls.
As a result, the ratio of males to females in China is unnaturally high, hovering between 117 to 119 boys for every 100 girls in 2000, according to China Daily and People’s Daily. There are one-fifth more boys than girls because girls are so often aborted or killed after delivery.
Chinese officials have in the past boasted about preventing 300 million births since the one-child policy was implemented in the late 1970s, and for this they have often received the accolades of Western “family planning” supporters–including, sadly, feminists–who see “overpopulation” as a threat right up there with global warming. The Bush Administration has been the target of bien-pensants from Brussels to Hollywood for withholding support from the United Nations Population Fund, an agency that operates in China despite the coercive nature of the one-child policy.
But now even Chinese officials are starting to admit that the vast majority of these 300 million were girls. So bad have things become that the government has finally started to worry, and earlier this month announced a raft of new programs to reverse the trend. The National Population and Family Planning Commission launched a pilot project called “Care for Girls,” which will experiment with incentives in some parts of the country.
[…]
China seems to have learned the hard way what the one-child program can produce. Because it was first imposed in the late 1970s, men in their 20s are having to deal with the harsh reality of six bachelors for every five potential brides. There are numerous reports of kidnappings of women across the country as frustrated men try any means to procure wives. As a new generation of (mostly male) Chinese move into positions of authority, they have an incentive to correct the gender imbalance.

A penny short and a day late, wouldn’t you say?

Re: the continuing/not-so-continuing Kerry – Cambodia contraversy, commentor “Dan” writes (scroll down);

“I was with River Division 514 (PBR’s) in Dec.68. We were patrolling the canals around Rach Soi and Rach Gia area. We came under attack Christmas eve(’68) during the “cease-fire” period , while patrolling a canal. I think we called it “echo” canal. To my knowledge, no Swift boats were in the rivers at that time.They all were coastal patrol units. I think they did start patrolling the rivers some months after I returned home (July’69). Our last station was aboard YRBM-16 in the Chau Doc area patrolling the Vinh Tay canal.I still don’t remember any Swift boats there. This area was on the Cambodia border.
I honestly feel that Mr. Kerry is full of himself or maybe something from the pasture lands.

And this, via Instapundit, who is rubbing the media nose in this mess of their own making;

Heh.

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe.”
— Albert Einstein

hat tip – John Gormley Live (650CKOM talk radio).

Circular firing squad, Nigerian style.

The group is believed to practice a ritual in which parties involved in a personal dispute – often over business deals – are made to drink a potion they are told will kill only the guilty one.
Police discovered “well over 50 bodies” and were searching for more, the police spokesman said. Some of the bodies were in caskets and others were headless.

Survivors get a free lottery ticket.

Sending a strong message to would-be gay activist, jewel thieving, politicians.
Svend must be kicking himself for giving the thing back.

Anti-Americanism as marketing ploy.

Last week, the Center for Individual Freedom launched a grassroots campaign against anti-American tray-liners at German subway stores.

The tray-liners — a promotion for the film “Super Size Me” — showed an obese Statue of Liberty holding a burger and fries in her hands, under a headline asking, “Why are Americans so fat?”
According to the Center for Individual Freedom, the headline used the word “Amis,” which is considered a derogatory term for Americans. The Center says complaints from Americans prompted German Subway shops to pull the tray-liners. But the cheeseburger-crashing-into-buildings image apparently is still out there — distributed in German subway stores over the past few days. (The food diary also promotes the film “Super Size Me,” and German Subway shops are distributing the diary.)

Unbelievable.
I just bought my last Subway product.
hat tip – Inoperable Terran

What can you say?
They’re simply made for each other.

From a reader, this ruling on Ontario’s sex offender registry. Relevant section is at the bottom, which you might want to skip right along to, unless you have a law degree and a glutton for punishment. (I skimmed, but not so quickly as to have missed this sober passage; “…but the words of McKinlay J.A. in Cuddy Chicks [1989]”.)
On to the money quote.

[130] As noted previously, the objectives of Christopher’s Law are admirable but I find that in fostering these objectives Christopher’s Law is overbroad. The legislation incorporates means which limit and violate Mr. Dyck’s right to liberty and security for no reasons. The objective of Christopher’s Law could be accomplished without infringing on the life, liberty and security interests of Mr. Dyck or others in the manner it has which I find is arbitrary or disproportionate. The provisions of Christopher’s Law impair the rights of Mr. Dyck under section 7 more than is reasonably necessary in order to achieve its legislative objectives.
[131] I find, therefore, that Christopher’s Law violates Mr. Dyck’s rights under section 7 of the Charter and the legislation cannot be justified under section 1 of the Charter.

Mr. Dyck (his real name or fun lovin’ psuedonym ? … the mind boggles) is a convicted sex offender who objected to being added to the Ontario sex offender registry and his objections are upheld.
So there you have it. Law abiding Canadian citizens are mandated by federal law to register their firearms (or face criminal prosecution) ; mandated by federal law to register all purebred animals (under threat of a $50,000 fine); by provincial law, to register all motor vehicles and trailers. They must register their intent to serve alcohol at a public gathering. They must register their intent to hold a charity raffle. They must register their newborns and their dead.
But it’s unconstitutional to mandate the errant Dyck to register his errant dick.

Court TV, Tehran;

“Counsel for the defense most strenuously objects to the charges, your Honour.”
“We have rock solid evidence that my client had no part in the misfortune that befell this woman. He had no knowledge of her detainment, took no part in her interrogation, did not lift a hand in the beating, promptly delivered her to medical authorities upon the first that her hunger strike had resulted in low blood pressure and death by old age.”
“In her sleep, I hasten to add.”