Tidbits From Elsewhere - 9/13/06

So it appears now that skinny is out. Frankly, I applaud any opportunity to portray a healthy (but not overweight) body image for women. The more realistic approach to a woman's look will hopefully discourage the sickly look that many models were beginning to display.

The Birmingham News is reporting that President Bush will be speaking at a fundraiser for the Riley campaign. Alabama is one of the few states where the president still has an approval rating above 50%, so it will be interesting to watch. It may actually boost Riley a few more points.

In Birmingham, Councilman Joel Montgomery is proposing a pay raise for emergency workers. More specifically, he believes police officers should be paid a rate that competes with other departments. This comes on the heels of a threat from officers from one of the nation's most dangerous cities to have a "sick out". It also follows a recommendation by Mayor Bernard Kinkaid to give a signing bonus to new recruits instead of a pay raise for all officers. What Mr. Montgomery sees and Mayor Kinkaid does not is that this sets up the City of Birmingham to become a training ground for rookies who move on to greener pastures after their two year bonus is paid out with two years of on-the-job experience under their belt. It also means that Birmingham will be left with bottom-of-the-barrel cops. Better paying cities will only take the best officers, leaving Birmingham with the leftovers, which tells you about the quality of officers that Birmingham will be keeping.

Over at the Gun Toting Liberal, two particular subjects of discussion have caught my eye. First, USAF Secretary Michael Wynne has suggested testing the use of non-lethal military weapons on U.S. citizens in "crowd-control situations" (protesters) before using them against our enemies. Second, Matthew O'Keefe talks about how U.S. officials did not count all casualties (such as those resulting from bombs) in their report of how many people had been killed in Iraq so that they could say that a recent U.S. crackdown had been successful.