It's a stickup!
Perhaps you've noticed that bank robbery has become a rather mundane activity in the USA, rather akin to robbing the local convenience store. Dan Barry explains why in Friendly Bank Makes It Easy for Robbers:

What is it about Commerce Bank? Why does it seem to attract those who prefer using the threatening note to the more traditional bank slip? Who insist on making cash withdrawals without technically having an account? Who are in such a hurry that they don't even have time to accept a complimentary pen?

The answer cannot simply be an extreme interpretation of the company's slogan: "America's Most Convenient Bank." There must be other explanations for why this New Jersey company has captured a healthy share of the city's bank robber market, generating the kind of buzz you just can't buy among the Rikers Island cognoscenti.

Commerce has had 14 bank robberies in Manhattan since January, a reach-for-the-sky number that exceeds by one the number of its Manhattan branch offices. Some of its larcenous visitors have stolen a few thousand dollars; others, just a few hundred. Some exude a "don't give me no dye pack" air of sophistication; others seem only vaguely aware that they are in a bank.
...
The police offered advice. Stop looking like cosmetics counters and return to a style that says you handle cash, not inquiries about eye shadow. Put up Plexiglas dividers called bandit barriers. Make surveillance cameras more prominent. Hire security guards; call them "greeters" if you like. Make the smile in "service with a smile" less doltish.

The police have adopted a kind of "Goofus and Gallant" model to reinforce its message. The Gallant is Amalgamated Bank, which has all the recommended — though not foolproof — security measures, including bandit barriers. It has not had a successful holdup at any of its seven branches in more than a decade.

Although many banks might have qualified for Goofus, the police settled on the brash new kid, Commerce. "Commerce does very little of what we recommend," Mr. Browne said. For example, he said, "They've told our detectives they have no interest in ever putting in the barriers."
...
In June, two Commerce branches were robbed on the same day — the company's 12th and 13th reported robberies this year. A few days later, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly made an unannounced visit to the grand opening of a Commerce branch in TriBeCa. He was not there to collect a balloon, but rather to point out, yet again, the absence of bandit barriers.

The next day, the Commerce branch at Third Avenue and 43rd Street was robbed — for the fourth time this year. The robber reached across the teller's counter, grabbed more than $2,000 in cash and hustled past a "greeter" who thought he was just another happy customer.

The branch manager did not want to discuss the robberies at his bank this week. But he did offer a free pen.

Sigh, I'm of an age that remembers when banks, if not exactly fortress-like, were a little bit formidable.

Euroweenie alert!
Rosemary Righter sums up the EU Assembly hijinks I mentioned on Wednesday in Berlusconi must have an apology from the red rabble:

The occasion was a formal one, the presentation that takes place at the outset of each rotating EU presidency. Berlusconi treated it with appropriate seriousness, delivering an accomplished, thoughtful speech. He, and the country he leads, were entitled to the customary courtesy of an adult debate on its substance.

What did he get? Before he even opened his mouth, a raucous claque of Green and left-wing MEPs waved placards plastered with the best insults they could plagiarise (the favourite, “No Godfather for Europe”, was a lift from Der Spiegel’s oh-so-witty cover story). His speech was greeted by a barrage of invective, all of it ad hominem, much of it infantile, some of it contemptible — the French Communist’s calling the Berlusconi Government “barbaric” or the Belgian MEP’s accusing him of laying Italy waste as did Attila the Hun. Martin Schulz, the deservedly obscure German Socialist now enjoying his 15 minutes of fame, was the last in a discreditable line-up of nincompoops who disgraced democracy by their inability to tell the difference between free speech and the political equivalent of a wrecker’s demolition ball.
...
Right, then. The rowdy Red-Green bunch conspired to drown out Berlusconi’s speech because it is not just Citizen Berlusconi the media tycoon whom they fear and detest, but his ambitions to make Europe less bureaucratic, more outward- looking and capable of adult partnership with America. Nor will they forgive his inexcusable presumption in asserting that Italians have as much right as the French or Germans to be heard in Europe’s councils.

Andrew Stuttaford sums up at The Corner:

Corrupt (check out how they pay themselves), self-important (all those declarations) and futile (what does it actually do?), the European ‘parliament’ has long been a disgrace, but it is revealing to see how often its MEPS use the chamber as the site for demonstration rather than debate. The reason? In the absence of a genuine shared political culture across ‘Europe’ there is nothing to debate. The EU’s ‘democracy’ is theatre and its members are nothing more than actors – over-indulged, overpaid but, alas, not yet over.

Weird news from all 'round
Hillary says Bill could be 'first mate' - Kewl! Then he could be keelhauled.

Heated political debate in hot tub hits boiling point - He's in a hot tub with five women and he starts talking politics! One of the women disagrees. He had to have stitches over his eye. Naturally, he's a liberal. No, it wasn't Al Gore.

Slain Over Butt Crack - Don't tell your new wife she has a skinny butt. Also don't say 'Stab me, I don't care.'

PM accused of French phobia

Labor has accused John Howard of suffering from "post-Iraq war Francophobia", calling on the Government to accept a French offer to join an Australian-led multinational intervention force in the Solomon Islands.

Hey, if you don't need any cooks, you don't need any cooks.

And last but not least, via William Gibson, there's the The First International Moblogging Love Hotel Conference. I'm not sure I get the big picture on this, but the small pictures are quite clear.

Do I get credit?
After extensive research, I am proclaiming:

The Cracker Barrel Philosopher's Law:
Anyone in the news claiming that free speech rights have been violated has never read the 1st Amendment to the Constitution.

All I have is empirical proof, but it seems to be a reliable guide. Case in point - Karen Hunter, formerly an august member of the editorial board of the NY Daily News and currently a professor at Hunter College, who penned In Jersey, free speech takes a hit:

New Jersey's General Assembly voted 69 to 2 this week to eliminate the state's poet laureate position. The real purpose was to get rid of the controversial Amiri Baraka.

Baraka was asked by Gov. Jim McGreevey to resign last fall following publication of his poem "Somebody Blew Up America," which asks a series of questions, among them: "Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed/Who told 4,000 Israeli workers at the twin towers/To stay home that day? Why did Sharon stay away?/Who? Who? Who?"
...
Even if you agree that Baraka pushed too far, don't we need to defend his right to speak?
...
Democracy and freedom of speech are basic to America. Eliminating New Jersey's poet laureate position is an effort to censor Baraka - and thus a symbolic slap at free speech.

Bzzzt! Thanks for playing, Karen. And you can't weasel out with a "symbolic slap".

Maybe these folks are from some alternative universe where every eructation that passed their lips was greeted with homage by the general populace, who then proceeded to shower them with loose change. Well, let's all welcome Imamu and Karen to Earth.

And then maybe someone can explain why New Jersey had a poet laureate in the first place.

Let the games begin
The Prowler reveals Democrats Get Dirty:

GRAY AREAS
Across the country, Gov. Gray Davis's opposition research team -- the one that worked overtime during the last election to dig up dirt on former Los Angeles mayor Dick Riordan and opponent Bill Simon -- is at it again. Davis is said by one state Democratic insider to have budgeted more than $100,000 to dig up dirt on Rep. Darrel Issa, the multimillionaire who is helping to finance the recall effort against Davis, and who says he will run for the governor's job if the recall drive succeeds. Davis has also sent his minions forth to begin digging up dirt on actor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

We've already seen the stuff on Issa coming out. If you want to get the flavor hop on over to http://www.stoptherecall.com/, a labor union sponsored site that has teasers like "Darrell Issa... An Extremist!" and "Darrell Issa... A Car Thief?". But web sites aren't the preferred venue:

Davis has been using his favorite news outfit to spread his dirt on Issa. Both negative reports about Issa's distant past -- that he and his brother were suspected of filing a false car theft report more than 20 years ago and that Issa faced gun charges more than 30 years ago -- appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. "They just handed everything over to them," says the state Democratic Party operative. "That's how it works. I doubt the paper even had to do any of its own reporting. Davis's people are pretty thorough."

What liberal bias?

And while we are on the subject, the Prowler also reveals:

THE HOWARD DEAN PROJECT
The presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry may be saying that it doesn't care about the new momentum of Howie Dean's team, but it sure isn't acting like it. Kerry's folks have begun intensive opposition research on Dean, sending staff to Vermont to pull together whatever dirt they can find out about not only Dean but also his wife, who continues to work as a physician in the state.

"It's early, but not too early to start taking him down a notch," says a Kerry staffer. "We've gone head to head with Dean in debates, we've tried to shout them down and shut them up, and they are still hanging around. We're going on the offensive."
...
The Kerry staffer says that Dean's recent appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" gave them pause. "He was avoiding having to talk about anything substantive from his background. There has to be stuff there. We're looking. If he's going to be around for the long haul, we might as well be ready."

And here it comes:

Mis-Dean-meanors

Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean may have a little scandal in his past.
...
Asked whether he'd done anything like that when he was young, Dean said: "I take the Fifth. Was I ever arrested? No. But I'm not going to catalog my misdeeds, of which there were a significant number."

Ruh oh! Maybe he means this - Howard Dean: I Beat Booze:

In an interview with New York magazine in February, Dean's Yale University buddy Ralph Dawson was asked about the Democrat rising star's student hobbies.

"Well, he drank," Dawson blurted out.

Dean later explained: "I quit drinking when I got married in 1981. I didn’t think I handled liquor well."

Then the candidate revealed that sometimes his drinking caused trouble. "Actually, I drank beer. I tended to misbehave. I had a hangover the next day," Dean told New York magazine.

The up-and-coming candidate won't say what kind of misbehavior he indulged in, adding only, "What’s funny when you’re 18 isn’t funny when you’re 30, so I just quit."

He insists that he was never arrested for drunk driving and that there is no alcoholism in his family.

I'm not holding my breath waiting for any tut-tutting from the usual whiners about President Bush.

Welcome the new neighbors to the Windy City!
Janet Rausa Fuller beats around the bush in Day laborers demand jobs center:

Having already turned their backs on the city's July 1 deadline to move, day laborers said Thursday they are staying put at a vacant lot in Albany Park and demanded that a permanent center be built for them to gather and solicit work.

Sounds fairly obscure right? Why do day laborers need a vacant lot?

"I need the place," said Jose Luis, a 52-year-old man who withheld his last name. If he and other workers lose the space, he said he would be forced to "go to the streets, go to the corners. And maybe run from the police."

Jessica Aranda of the Latino Union of Chicago, an advocacy group that has taken on the workers' cause, said the hope is to have a permanent site modeled after centers in Los Angeles and New York, where laborers would not only get work on a lottery basis, but also learn English and get educated on labor rights.

The answer is that it is a place where illegal aliens find illegal day jobs.

But not to worry, Oscar Avila reports in the Chicago Tribune that 9 nations ask county to accept ID cards

The consuls general of nine Latin American nations on Wednesday demanded that Cook County adopt a controversial plan to recognize ID cards issued by their governments.

Demanded?

The matricula consular will make the life of citizens from Latin American countries easier and more reasonable," said Alexandre Addor-Neto, the consul general of Brazil in Chicago.

Addor-Neto was joined by the consuls general of Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

It only makes the life of illegal aliens easier and only in locales that accept this crap as proof of something.

The emissaries are backing a proposal by County Commissioner Roberto Maldonado (D-Chicago) that would accept cards issued by Latin American nations.
...
But Maldonado, flanked by county law enforcement officials, said opponents are taking a "a very myopic view" toward the cards. He said officers prefer that undocumented immigrants produce cards issued legally rather than phony driver's licenses obtained on the black market.

Actually, I'm sure the general preference is that the illegal aliens not be there in the first place.

"If anything, what we're doing by accepting the matricula consular is enhancing the sense of the security of the citizens of Cook County," Maldonado said.

This guy is full of more crap than a Christmas goose. He must smell votes. I wonder how many holders of a "matricular consular" are also illegally registered to vote?

Special Delivery Alert!
(Via The Fat Guy) Lightning Strikes Preacher Who Asked For Sign:

FOREST, Ohio -- Damage to a church in Forest, Ohio, is estimated at $20,000 after a preacher asked God for a sign.

A member of the First Baptist Church said a guest evangelist was preaching repentance and seeking a sign from God when lightning struck the steeple.

Ronnie Cheney called the incident "awesome, just awesome!"

Cheney said the lightning traveled through the microphone, blew out the sound system and enveloped the preacher, who wasn't hurt.

Afterward, services resumed for about 20 minutes until the congregation realized the church was on fire. The building was evacuated.

It's Howie the Duck!
Pro Kool-Aid drinker Sheryl McCarthy waxes lyrical in Newsday - The Candidacy of Howard Dean Takes 'Wing':

George W. Bush may be raking in campaign money hand over fist, but among the Democratic presidential hopefuls Howard Dean isn't doing too shabbily. He's raised more than any other Democrat during the second quarter of the year, and while this doesn't exactly make him the front-runner he's the one everyone's talking about.

I've followed the Democratic candidates with about as much enthusiasm as I'd muster for a high-stakes lacrosse game. But even I can see that Dean is catching on. Which makes me wonder: Does Howard Dean's growing popularity stem from the fact that people think he's Josiah Bartlet, the fictional president of NBC's "The West Wing?"

Sheryl explores this theory in depth, proving once again that "The West Wing" is the leftazoid epiphany. Gosh, I hope her panties aren't all wet!

But she's wrong. Howie's appeal is his resemblance to another fictional character:



UPDATE: Over at the Gaggle, Ith reports a Dean supporter's email to a "West Wing" mailing list urging "Help Bartlet's Candidate win back FL and the U.S." Is this some form of popular delusion? Also via the Gaggle, a link to Mark Steyn's takedown of Howie.

Another country heard from
Celeste Katz in the NY Daily News shovels it in Museum's art dumps on Rudy:

Here's Rudy Giuliani's latest art attack.

An artwork featured in a new exhibit opening today at the Whitney Museum depicts America's mayor looming heroically over the city skyline - with two balls of elephant dung resting at the sides of the canvas.

The work is thinly veiled reference to Giuliani's fury over a portrait of the Virgin Mary smeared with elephant dung that was part of a 1999 show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

The lampoon of the former mayor is part of the "The American Effect," a Whitney show featuring foreign artists' sometimes jaded take on the U.S. - just in time for the Fourth of July.

Zounds! The "artwork" at the Whitney really is crap! But it's nice of them to schedule it for Independence Day. Even better, the artiste, Zhou Tiehai, is from Shanghai. I guess we won't see Deng Xiaoping posed behind the elephant plops.

Thereby Zhou Tiehai and his colleagues are retracing the steps of the late Deng Xiaoping's revered theory of taking the initiative in the economic drive and moving towards the sea itself, into the world, 'xia hai'.

But back to the Daily News for other fare for connoisseurs:

... a 1996 painting of a Japanese air raid over a burning New York City and a photo of the soldier who pointed a rifle at a terrified Elian Gonzalez, enclosed in a picture frame that features a smiling Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

The Giuliani portrait - loosely based on his Time magazine Person of the Year cover - is not his first unflattering depiction in the Whitney. In 2000, some of his condemnations of the Brooklyn Museum show were printed in the Gothic typeface favored by the Nazis in an exhibit that featured a recording of storm troopers marching.

Way cool, but I hope they got the right picture in the Elian Gonzalez item.

Pontification from Der Slickmeister
In an opinion piece in last Sunday's NY Daily News, Bubba Clinton picked up the lefty refrain about nasty big media. Whatever staffer wrote it for red nose merely trotted out the usual. But what struck me was the opening bon mot:

"It's your money," says President Bush when he promotes tax cuts. I disagree with his tax policy but admire his spin.

High praise indeed, coming from Slick.

But I'm puzzled. You mean it really isn't our money? Who knew?