The Gov puts on his tinfoil cowboy hat

Perry's Disease: you decide to run for President and then start making batshit comments about the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and conspiratorial scientists. And I'm sure the fun is only beginning.

"Purple Hotel is about to die..."

Granted, this is a lot less fun that your average game of Gauntlet. David Roeder writes:

The place has so many code violations that in February the village got the legal right to raze it unless owner Donald Bae made repairs. None has occurred, said village Administrator Timothy Wiberg, so the town is preparing specifications for demolition bids.

But that’s probably not Bae’s biggest concern. His lender, First Midwest Bank, wants to foreclose on him and is trying to sell the unpaid mortgage note. The buyer then could be in position to take control of the site, which Lincolnwood officials want redeveloped.

Podolsky Northstar Corfac International is the agent for the note sale. Senior Vice President Adam Tarantur said he hopes a winning bidder will be selected by the end of the month. He said Bae owes $4.6 million, counting penalties.

Bae is a Korean business leader whose conduct in this matter has been strange. He has listed the property for sale with a $25.8 million price, a figure that real estate experts say is so high that it deters serious inquiries. Rather than sell it for whatever he can get, Bae now risks losing the property altogether. He could not be reached for comment.

Color me unsurprised that he doesn't have a comment.

On the Markuze/"Mabus" arrest

Dennis Markuze - better know as "David Mabus" on the plethora of Usenet newsgroups and Internet atheist, skepticism and science forums that he's plagued over the years - appears to have been arrested in Montreal after a petition to have him investigated for the threats he's made on those aforementioned sites over the years. Apparently, despite the previous indifference of the Montreal police, it worked.

Keep in mind that despite the raging assholery that Markuze has engaged in over the years (a catalog of only some of it is available here), he probably is a profoundly mentally ill man who needs thorough psychiatric treatment much more than he needs prison time. As Phil Plait put it,
 
I don’t want to see Mabus tossed into jail. I’m not a psychiatrist, but it’s clear the man has mental problems. We tend to stigmatize mental illness, but that’s unfair and unhelpful; it’s a prejudice that may blind us to how that person’s condition can be mitigated with attention and care. My fondest and most sincere hope is that this arrest leads to an evaluation of Mabus and that he gets the help he so obviously needs.

At least it ended this way instead of how it could have; witness Anders Behring Breivik. Granted, the two incidents are far from analogous, but consider that the supposedly saner of the two was the one who actually succeeded in pulling his murderous fantasy off.