First Looks category archive

Triumph Brewing Company, 2nd and Chestnut, Philadelphia, Pa, Tuesday, 6 p., just a hop, a scotch, and a soda from Penn’s Landing.

It’s safe this week. I’m on the road.

Details here.

And what’s that rustling noise?

Cattle ranching is a multibillion-dollar industry in the United States and cattle theft is a small but growing problem as a recession bites and thieves realize that stealing cows is a relatively easy way to raise a quick buck.

Stolen cattle are often loaded onto trailers and taken straight from their farm or ranch to auction at a stockyard, according to detectives involved in tracking thefts.

Identifying those cattle not easy since many are not branded and detectives and owners need to act fast to retrieve the animals before sale — a task made doubly difficult if they have been transported across state lines.

Texas, the nation’s biggest cattle state, reported thefts virtually tripled between 2007 and 2008 to 6,404 head of cattle, according to Carmen Fenton, spokeswoman for the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association.

An update on the crazy from James Wolcott.

BankUnited, FSB, Coral Gables, Florida, is no more.

Huffington Post says it’s the biggest failure since IndyMac.

Afterthought:

It’s Thursday. They usually wait until Friday for these announcements, so they have the weekend to take care of the details. This one may have been really messed up.

According to the press release, rather than being given over to another bank, as is the usual practice (it says something that one can write “the usual practice” about a bank failure and have it seem natural, but that’s Republican Economic Theory for you), it’s been reborn under a new, but similar, name. This is truly screwy.

It appears that thinking the whole swine H1N1 flu thing is over may be a mistake:

A novel flu likely circulated in Philadelphia in April and May of 1918, causing mild illness and going largely unnoticed. It returned in September, eventually killing more than 16,000 people in the city and 500,000 nationwide.

While the public may be over the initial scare from Mexico last month, it is the longer-term scenario – a version of 1918 would be the most extreme – that keeps pandemic experts up at night. A seeming resurgence of swine flu in New York over the last several days and its continuing spread worldwide haven’t helped.

“This one may or may not come back in September or October. It may or may not come back in December. It may or may not come back at all,” said Howard Markel, a medical historian at the University of Michigan and author of When Germs Travel: Six Major Epidemics That Have Invaded America and the Fears They Have Unleashed.

Q. How are hot dogs made?

Read more »

Regulars on the Arthur Godfrey Show:

After all, aren’t these the same folks who were going to save Chrysler?

Daimler is taking a 10 percent stake in Tesla Motors, a U.S. based electric car start-up, as it expands its green auto business, the head of Daimler’s research department said on Tuesday.

Off to drink liberally.

Find a chapter near you.

The Philadelphia Shrinquirer does its part.

First, John Yoo, who gives me the vapors, and now, for the vapors, Aye, there’s the rub.

What rub?

Why, the Vicks, of course.

The CIA? Make stuff up? Oh, the horrors.

I’ve been following it, but Brendan lays it out very well.

It smells real bad.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has sold out to the forces of darkness.

Seriously creepy. Almost, indeed, blasphemous.

Via Balloon Juice. Follow the Balloon Juice link for commentary.

Over at Jack’s Place.

Triumph Brewing Company, 2nd and Chestnut, Philadelphia, Pa., Tuesdays, 6 p. For drivers, there’s plenty of parking on Front.

Whether or not I make it depends on how bad my dentist beats me up Tuesday morning.

The Wilmington News-Journal analyzes the spray paint on the wall:

The most prolific taggers are mostly teenagers who think of themselves as artists, police said. They don’t think of their work as vandalism, don’t fear police and are motivated by a desire to earn respect by painting as much visible graffiti as possible.

“They all come from artistic backgrounds and a lot of these kids are very gifted, they’re just using it the wrong way,” said Officer Phil Young, who investigates taggers for the Elsmere police.

Though taggers come from all racial and economic backgrounds, the majority in Delaware are white middle- to upper-class youths ranging in age from 13 to 22, police said.

“It’s a whole culture that people don’t know about,” said New Castle County police Officer LaVincent Harris. “It’s their life. … If you can’t read it, so what? They want respect and notoriety.”

Wonder how the dollar amount of the damage compares to the time-honored practice of stealing stop signs?