Late Night Laugh: Olympic Moments You Might Have Missed
August 9, 2008
It’s getting tougher for the dishonest, the mentally unstable and the overweight to get hired as Cook County jail guards these days. As a result, fewer guards are getting hired.
Until recently, would-be correctional officers only had to pass a drug test, a criminal background check and a physical agility test that included bending over and picking up a chair.
“Everybody has employee issues, but it seems our problem employees get more notoriety,” Dart said. “At the end of the day, it’s very hard to fire somebody. … Let’s make it so that we only accept the highest-quality people at the outset. The theory is, I’ll have less headaches down the road.”
Dart also will have fewer jail guards. He hasn’t hired any new correctional officers since last November. And only 23 of a potential 373 candidates were accepted into the recruit class that started last week.
The new physical ability test weeded out 274 candidates. Thirty-five people failed the polygraph test, and another 28 flunked the psychological test. After a final interview, another 34 candidates were rejected. Only 23 of the 29 people who made it through the process accepted jobs.
Previously, the sheriff’s office hired about 55 recruits four to six times a year to keep up with attrition. Currently, there are about 170 correctional job openings. Dart said he expects those positions will be filled later in the year.
“Some people are concerned about it, but I’m excited as hell. It bodes well for the future here,” Dart said. “We need bodies over there, but I’d rather have the highest-quality bodies. People ask me to lower the bar a little bit here or there. I say, ‘No. That will present us with decades of headaches down the road.’”
Last week, a federal report on Cook County Jail conditions found a culture among guards that fostered beatings to the point of hospitalization when inmates talked back or rebuffed orders. Many of the beatings brought lawsuits and costly settlements.
Dart said he’s creating a computerized “early warning system” that will track complaints against individual jail guards and help build cases against problem employees.
Sweden evokes Hitler in condemning Russian assault
August 9, 2008
Sweden has evoked the memory of Adolf Hitler in condemning Russia’s attacks on Georgia over the breakaway region of South Ossetia, saying the protection of Russians there did not justify the assault.
“No state has the right to intervene militarily in the territory of another state simply because there are individuals there with a passport issued by that state or who are nationals of the state,” said Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt in a statement.
“Attempts to apply such a doctrine have plunged Europe into war in the past… And we have reason to remember how Hitler used this very doctrine little more than half a century ago to undermine and attack substantial parts of central Europe,” Bildt said.
Russian warplanes on Saturday bombed targets in Georgia as that country’s president declared “a state of war”, while Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said his country would “force the Georgian side into peace.”
Russia backs the separatist government in South Ossetia and sent in tanks and troops on Friday in response to pro-Western Georgia’s military campaign to take back the province which broke away in the early 1990s.
Sweden has called for an immediate end to bombing raids and the withdrawal of Russian troops that have entered Georgia to allow for a peaceful solution to the conflict.
Earlier on Saturday, Sweden joined calls for an emergency European Union summit on the escalating conflict in Georgia. Bildt said EU foreign ministers could gather on Monday in Paris.
“There must be a very strong response on the part of the European Union,” said Bildt, quoted by Sweden’s TT news agency.
Sweden’s top diplomat was the international community’s high representative in Bosnia-Hercegovina in 1996-1997 following the Balkan wars.
Bildt also evoked the memory of the late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic in addressing Russia’s agression against Georgia.
“We did not accept military intervention by Milosevic’s Sserbia in other Yugoslav states on the grounds of protecting Serbian passport holders,” he said.
Did the MSM drop the ball on John Edwards?
August 9, 2008
Gary Hart’s presidental chances were dead and buried in a heartbeat after he challenged the media to bust him. Why can the Miami Herald stake out Hart and still have principles but Edwards is treed in a hotel basement in the dead of night by the National Enquirer and no one else will take the shot?
John Edwards. There, I said it.
I guess it’s too late to be dramatic, now that Edwards has talked to a MSM outlet (ABC) about his affair. I really meant to say something earlier, when almost every daily newspaper, including The Chronicle, was not touching a story broken by, gasp, the National Enquirer, but I was tied up.
Most MSM in general had stayed away, picking at it with their noses held, as if looking for something valuable in a moldy dumpster. Of course the New York (City) Times said they were “looking into it” but certainly not printing a story. Oh, no. On journalism sites, the finger-pointing, self-loathing, self-righteousness and tut-tutting was massive. Don’t touch that dirty tale! Don’t trust but verify! Why are we ignoring this?
It’s the same old problem when the most scandalous of the tabs breaks an actual story. It happened a lot with Bill Clinton, and Edwards now seems a little Bill lite-like (“I had sex with that woman but she meant nothing to me.” I’m sure Rielle Hunter feels as good as Monica Lewinsky did about that.) The perp is a little ashamed but leave it to the Mrs. to take the real humiliation hit.
As always, the most interesting thing (OK, to me) about this are the cultural currents and implications. Is it worse when a darling of progressives betrays you than if it’s Newt Gingrich? Better? The same? Was there a conspiracy to out Edwards hatched in a political brain? Will the MSM ever figure out the journalistic etiquette following a big tabloid scoop? Does anyone really think that a story splashed in the tabs and debated on blogs like a powerful fire back draft is somehow not part of the public discourse? And if it’s true – except, according to Edwards, the baby part – and the Enquirer first reported it in October of 2007, then apparently caught the guy at the Hilton with Hunter last month, how come it took everyone else so long to get there?
Gary Hart’s presidental chances were dead and buried in a heartbeat after he challenged the media to bust him. Why can the Miami Herald stake out Hart and still have principles but Edwards is treed in a hotel basement in the dead of night by the National Enquirer and no one else will take the shot?
Don’t say it was because Hart was an active candidate and Edwards isn’t. Not if you want to keep any real conviction about that answer.
One tab, I can’t remember if it was the Enquirer or the Star, once found the unlisted number of my first wife’s then-husband, called and harassed the poor guy about me (we’d never met and I didn’t know his name). Even more impressively, they tracked down his college roommate and peppered that guy. Now that’s some reportorial birdogging, I do have to say.
So here’s the real question of the moment, that I meant to ask a month ago when this thing popped: if the Enquirer, so good at stalking, had a bunch of reporters who caught Edwards sneaking in and out of his girlfriend’s hotel, chased him to the basement, cornered him in a bathroom then forced him to be led out by hotel security, where was the photo? Didn’t anyone even have a cell phone camera? Tabloids are all about the photos. Show me the picture!
This morning’s question was whether an Edwards speaking role at the Dems’ convention hinged on his speaking up about this story. If that’s the case, that’ll be a pretty interesting speech. I hope they give the Enquirer press credentials.
Nanny Nation: Big Brother In Your Business
August 9, 2008
Here on the West Coast, we sort our garbage — or else. We rummage through our food scraps, just ahead of the worms. We take our little canvas bags to the grocery store lest we get caught with the embarrassment of a dreaded paper-or-plastic denouement, and the scorn of neighbors.
If we smoke cigarettes, we do it in the alley — huddled with the other losers. We’ve banned junk food from our school vending machines and soon — in 32 square miles of Los Angeles where a moratorium on new fast food restaurants will be in place — it will be treated like tobacco: the cheeseburger as death-wich.
We do this because we’re so-o-o-o virtuous, and our self-regard is tied to the size of our curbside proclamations. Mostly, we do it for others — the poor, the fat, the ill-informed. Of course, we would never smoke, or get caught finger-licking the extra-crispy runoff from KFC, or tossing a foil wrap in the trash.
Nearly every week brings news of another act of forced high-mindedness. Last week it was San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom with a plan to start inspecting people’s garbage, on the lookout to find someone who may have let a banana peel slip into the trash. Before that it was Seattle, which will soon charge people 20 cents a bag in the grocery checkout line.
It’s not just us Left Coasters. New York has begun enforcing an ordinance that requires fast-food chains to post the caloric content of food on menus — in type as big as the menu item itself. How enticing: a fistful of calories on a bed of cholesterol, to go. Chicago, that city of deep-dish pizza and tailgate brats, has just been named the most meddlesome and restrictive in the country by the libertarian magazine Reason. Red states are more restrictive on sex and liquor; blue state prohibitionists tend to aim at garbage and tobacco. But as Reason noted, “Chicago gets moral prudery and public health fanaticism — the worst of both worlds.”
Seattle was only number two. We’ll show them in my fair city, once we have to start sorting our food scraps next year. And, playing catch-up, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels tried to ban lap dancers from moving within four feet of their customers, unleashing police with tape measures. The voters, mercifully, turned him down.
In Portland, Ore., which has somehow escaped excess civic nosiness, strip clubs proliferate in family-friendly neighborhoods, as commonplace as a burger hut. What’s more, you can drink and gamble in the clubs. The city is said to have more strip clubs per capita than any other in the country — including Las Vegas — in part because of Oregon’s liberal free speech provisions in the state constitution.And yet, the city, has low crime, uber-fit citizens, and it’s clean. They do it all by example, not mayoral fiat.
At a time when so many people are losing homes and jobs, and making tough decisions about whether to fill a gas tank or pay health insurance, city governments should avoid counting calories and dispatching garbage police.
Government should empower us — to use the word so favored by activists. Make sure our food is safe. When products kill, make companies pay. Show us the way to a cleaner garbage stream. Lead by example.
But then, leave us alone. These dictates and fines and inspectors — they only undermine larger efforts and encourage ridicule. Conservative talk radio on the West Coast would have to go silent without the fodder of strong-armed earnestness from city halls in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle this summer.
San Francisco already has one of the highest recycling rates in the country. Do they really need city inspectors out poking through the trash can? Besides, if you make a fruit forbidden, it only becomes more enticing. After Oakland schools banned junk food from vending machines, I went there to have a look at lunch hour. Lo and behold, students walked more than half-a-mile — a sprint, almost — to make it to the nearest mini-mart for their sugar highs and empty calories. At least the ban encouraged exercise.
If blades of grass or apple cores find their way into my garbage, I’m in trouble. But, ever thoughtful, Seattle officials have given me a way out. It’s now legal for city residents to own pygmy goats, which — we are told — can be used to process yard waste in an eco-friendly way.
Ba-a-a-ah.
