Sleepless in Midland

NBC's Brian Williams -- hey look at me, I know the difference between full auto and semi auto

Last night as the local TV news was about to give us the weather report both NBC and CBS burst in dominating the news with reports of shots fired in Boston. And there were the star anchors filling time until the real news broke.

Granted, once the real news came an hour and a half later, it was real news of the second bombing suspect's apprehensive.

In the meantime, the star anchors had to keep blabbing away and injecting themselves into the news story. So we got to hear an NBC field reporter telling about having heard gun shots. Celebrity anchor Brian Williams interrupted with what could be the most inane question of the day.

"Did it sound like fully automatic or semi automatic gunfire?"

That question was extremely out of place. The odds that either of those kids would have a fully automatic weapon are extremely low. And if Boston law enforcement was using automatic weapons in a residential neighborhood that would be startling news. So there's only one reason for Williams' question.

He was showing off. Two months ago news celebrities were using "automatic," "semi automatic" and "fully automatic" interchangeably -- they're anchormen, how could they have known there was a difference? But now Williams knows, and anyone who still gets news from NBC knows he knows. And that was the real point of the question.

Yeah, thanks Brian. We get it. Now get off and put "Grimm" on.

Confession in Kaufman County murders -- wait wait, wasn't it supposed to be the white supremacists?

Shortly after the Kaufman County DA and his wife were assassinated, our local paper's print edition gave us a front page article borrowed from MySanAntonio.com which tried to tie the murders on the Aryan Brotherhood. See God forgives. The Aryan Brotherhood of Texas does not. One had to read the whole thing to conclude that there was no evidence and that it was mere conjecture.

But that was irrelevant, the story had a good narrative -- prison gangs, revenge, and white supremacists, especially white supremacists, without whom the hot button of racism couldn't be pushed.

Here's a tip for newspaper readers everywhere: Whenever you see the Southern Poverty Law Center quoted, your BS detectors should go on high alert. You may remember the SPLC from its snarky comments about Fox News and the Tea Party rallies of 2009. The msm, unfortunately, accept their opinions as fact. Round up the usual suspects.

So now we learn that former Kaufman County JP Eric Williams' wife Kim just confessed that she and Eric committed the murders.

No one is going to ask how the Aryan Brotherhood is going to get its reputation back. But this isn't really about the Aryan Brotherhood. This is about the once proud profession of journalism and how the effort to be on top of things looks more like an effort to get attention from the cool crowd.

Obama wants lenders to make more risky home loans

This is astonishing.

There was an NPR program back in 2008 which attempted to explain the cause of the financial crisis. They went to the Republican convention and ask attendees what caused it, and the resounding answer was the Clinton mandate for relaxed lending standards for people with bad credit. The answer Democrats gave was the Republicans' deregulation of the banking industry. The conclusion on the government radio program was that they were both right.

However, Democrats must have missed the message, because now they seem to think the Dodd-Frank somehow caused the posibility of another lending crisis to disappear. WaPo has the story -- Obama administration pushes banks to make home loans to people with weaker credit.

Sure enough, lending standards are to be relaxed so that the ability to pay it off isn't that important. Don't worry, the government will provide a safety net if the loan goes bad.

That's insane. Really. If insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result, then that's insane.

Be cautious whenever someone says, "It's different this time." The difference this time is that there's a Democrat in the white house. And with a Democrat friendly media setting the news agenda, somehow it will all be Bush's fault.

Newspaper keeps incumbents coming back

The morning paper contained an editorial today criticizing efforts to bring term limits to state offices. See it on the right.

The paper is always carrying puff pieces about elected politicians. For example, just other day there was a front page article about a city councilman's business activities in another city. My favorite was a article last year in which the U.S. Representative held forth about a local accident involving a train and a parade float. Was that necessary?  See it on the left.

Although those articles don't supply readers with much real news, they do serve at least three other purposes. They keeps the politician’s name recognition at a high level, a service not provided for challengers. It keeps the politician happy with the newspaper coverage so he might be available someday for a real story. And it provides something to fill the space between newspaper advertisements. The newspaper and the politicians keep each other happy. And the result is that it's almost impossible for a challenger to defeat an incumbent.

But then why does the newspaper editorial come out against term limits? They are already doing their part in keeping incumbents in office. To criticize term limits seems like over kill.

It might be the same insecurity gun owners feel about efforts to register guns or ban shooting accessories. It's just the first step. It's the camel's nose under the tent. Let one get through, then they're on to the next target. Likewise, the tea party supporters wanted term limits on politicians. So if they get that, then they'll just move on to their next objective. Before you know it, the newspaper people will have to suck up to a whole new set of politicians, some of whom might have gotten elected in spite of, not because of, the press coverage.

Hey, I criticize the old rag, but I love it just the same. It really is the best place to get local news. It's like an old relative. We can love her and disagree with her at the same time.

It's OK for them to oppose term limits if they want. But it would be nice if they threw a bone to the taxpayers every once in a while. For example, wouldn't it be remarkable if they came out in favor of a law prohibiting the naming of taxpayer built structures or roads after career politicians? That would be a blow for press freedom.

ABC news cites year old internet usage facts as current information

The article, What Happens in 1 Minute on the Internet, is dated Mar 20, 2013, 2:31pm, under the authorship of Alyssa Newcomb. She cites several factoids, including one saying, "More than 1.3 million video clips are watched on YouTube," in that one minute. The source she cites is an article at Intel's blog which is titled What Happens in an Internet Minute? That post links to a very neat looking infographic  -- see on the right -- which contains that same info. But here's the problem. The Intel post is dated March 13, 2012, over one full year ago.

So if the statistics in that infographic were accurate then and are still accurate today, a more appropriate and astonishing headline would have been, "Internet usage stopped growing one year ago."

Note to ABC: That's what happens when you get your news from HuffPo.

Mike Conaway redefines town hall meeting

What is a town hall meeting?

The morning paper had this front page headline: "TOWN HALL MEETING Conaway Discusses Sequestration, Immigration."

One might think that if a town hall meeting deserved a front page headline the newspaper would have published an announcement about it prior to that meeting. I looked through the papers from the past two days (Sunday and Monday), and couldn't find anything. If there was an announcement it must have been in the classifieds hiding between the found terrier and the lost retriever.

Representative Mike Conaway has held real town hall meetings in the past, but he found out that many of his constituents were not too pleased with the Republican spending programs he championed. So at some point his town hall meetings became private meetings called "town hall meetings." Newspaper Newspeak.

Meanwhile, here's the definition of a town hall meeting from Wikipedia:

A town hall meeting is an American term given to an informal public meeting derived from the traditional town meetings of New England. Everybody in a town community is invited to attend, voice their opinions, and hear the responses from public figures and (if applicable) elected officials about shared subjects of interest. Attendees rarely vote on an issue or propose an alternative to a situation. It is not used outside of this secular context.

So who do we blame for this distortion of the old phrase, Mr. Conaway or the newspaper? Maybe the Urban Dictionary folks can come up with a new definition that somehow correlates these private meetings with town hall meeting.

Newspaper to Sheriff: If President say confiscate guns, confiscate guns

Many American gun owners are worried by President Obama's gun control blustering, and they're thinking about what they might do should Obama either sign a law or issue an executive order commanding gun owners to turn in their guns to the government.

Not surprisingly, some of those gun owners are planning a little civil disobedience. After all, we are descendants of a people who fought hard for our constitutional freedoms.

Midland County Sheriff, Gary Painter, recently said in a speech that he would not enforce an executive order to confiscate guns. [Note: He is one of many sheriffs who said they will stand up to Obama on gun control.]

So it was interesting to see the opinion piece in the local paper warning the sheriff that the writer expects him to enter homes and confiscate guns if President Obama did in fact issue such an executive order. They are talking about an executive order from President Obama, mind you, not a law passed by both houses. Recall that one of the President's solo acts - a recess appointment - was declared unconstitutional by a Federal Court just the other day and is on its way to the Supreme Court.

The editorial writer wants law enforcement officers to exercise a zero tolerance for violations of executive orders and laws. That's radical. LEOs must be able to exercise some discretion or the whole system would collapse. The public wouldn't tolerate speeding tickets for traveling one mile an hour over the speed limit.

An executive order that immediately makes criminals out of thousands of otherwise law abiding citizens is bad law. And a wise LEO wouldn't attempt to enforce it, especially an executive order that is unconstitutional on its face.

Here's a question for the workers at the Midland Reporter Telegram. Have you ever used a radio scanner to listen to police or fire radio transmissions? And if so, did any information you got from that transmission benefit your work? If the answer to both of these is "yes," then you've violated the city code. Please go turn yourself in. If anyone short of a judge in your trial attempts to dismiss you, then insist on zero tolerance.

Speaking of gun grabbing governments, it happened in Australia. And it spawned a joke. Here goes. Question: Why do Australians oil their lawns? Answer: To keep their guns lubricated.

Hmm. I guess it lost something in translation.

Mexico wants Americans to register guns -- What's the Spanish word for chutzpa?

Mexico has some very tough gun laws, as anyone who has seen news reports about some hapless American who accidentally took a shotgun down there knows. But those stringent gun laws only serve to make the honest citizens helpless against the armed gang members.

Anyway, in this video clip at the Phoenix CBS news website KPHO.com the reporter says Mexico's congress voted to ask the U.S. Senate to create a registry of all commercialized firearms in U.S. border states to make it easier to trace guns used in violent attacks there.

Some of the more reactionary websites are assuming the Mexican government expects to get the list for themselves. Examples here, here, here and here. But to be fair, they all refer to the same KPHO.com video which says only that Mexico wants the U.S. Senate to create the list, not that Mexican politicians want it for themselves.

There are some law enforcement reports from time to time about real gun smuggling into Mexico, but since the borders are supposed to be so secure, one has to assume those are rare. The real problem was the U.S. government's involvement in the Fast and Furious operation through which guns were allowed to be sold to smugglers and taken into Mexico.

Atty Gen Eric Holder and President Obama got a free pass on that one. To those Senators considering Mexico's request, you need to refocus and find out what Holder and Obama knew about Fast and Furious and when they knew it.

Internet makes fun of headline - Volunteers needed to help rape victims

Brevity is the soul of wit, or so said Polonius. Be careful, though. Maybe an extra word or two can help eliminate those unintended interpretations.

Oh, how ruthless that internet can be. Photo was found at Criggo.com, TheWhatEver.com and Reddit.com.

Original article with revised headline found here.

American guns and Mexican crime

The morning paper contained an article from Texas Tribune on the front page today. (Link.) And it's about how the proliferation of guns in Mexico should be a factor in the gun control debate going on in the U.S. Yes it should. Mexico has some very tough gun control laws, and several Americans have been jailed there for inadvertently taking a firearm across the border. But in spite of tough gun laws, gun violence in Mexico if off the charts.

So the point should be that tough gun control laws do not control crime.

However, the Texas Tribune article is remarkable in what it omits. The word "fast" does not appear in the article. Neither does the word "furious." So obviously, the phrase "fast and furious" is not there. Surely an article about American guns in Mexico should mention that the Obama administration oversaw an operation that allowed guns to be smuggled into Mexico which resulted in hundreds of murders. But no.

Reminds me of the White House Correspondence Dinner where Jimmy Kimmel was the guest speaker. He made a joke about Fast and Furious, and the audience, half of whom were reporters, scratched their heads and wondered what the heck he was talking about. It just show how a biased media can influence its customers, not by misrepresenting the facts, but by merely withholding items that would otherwise be news.

This is the event no reporter wants to cover -- right

Saturday afternoon I caught about half a minute of a segment on Fox news channel which turned out to be a navel gazer regarding the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.

It began with the photo of a child, and the voice-over said, "This is the event no reporter wants to cover." Really? It sounded a little bit too sanctimonious when we recall that after the shooting reporters were tripping over each other to cover the event, get a scoop, interview someone who knew someone, and put as much on the air as possible.

It was the event every reporter wanted to cover.

Mass shootings -- if you want to ban something ban news coverage

Well, maybe not ban news coverage entirely, just the breathless wall to wall coverage we get now.  All we needed was a perfunctory announcement then only the relevant parts as they come out.

As it is now, the networks obsess over these things. Yesterday, if you watched any TV news programs, the world stopped except for the mass killing of children in Newtown, Connecticut.

The call for new laws is loud and clear with liberal President Obama sending a message:

And we're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.

That's a gun-control dog whistle to give him cover and get his followers going.

John Lott and others say that the writings left by most mass shooters indicate that their motive is twofold. One is to commit suicide. The other is to get as much news coverage as possible, perhaps to get noticed in a world they perceive as ignoring them.

So if anyone wants action, focus on the news coverage and how to deny killers what they want.

Worried about 1st amendment rights? Apply that same level of worry to the 2nd amendment.

PolitiFacts is too biased to be believable

The reason why msm political bias is so pernicious is that it trickles down throughout the downstream media before it can be corrected.

The case in point was the way Yahoo trumpeted the headline that Mit Romney had won PolitiFact's Biggest Lie of the Year in Yahoo's stream of interesting/useful/entertaining news items. It has since been removed, but it appeared in the number one spot yesterday and early this morning. The article is still online at Romney earns PolitiFact’s ‘Lie of the Year’ for Jeeps made in China, but it doesn't jump out at you like before.

Maybe that's because Tony Lee poked a hole as big as a Jeep Grand Cherokee in the analysis at Politifact Calls Factually Accurate Romney Jeep Ad 'Lie Of The Year'.

As for the biggest lie of the year, they should have looked at Barack Obama's claim that he called the Benghazi killings a terrorist attack from the beginning, with a timely assist from CNN's Candy Crowley, in a Presidential debate of all places. Astonishingly, PolitiFact did not even put that lie in the running.

Romney lost the presidential election, and he is not likely to try it again. So it raises questions.  Why do they keep trying to pick on him?  Furthermore, do all those newspaper people serving PolitiFact care that they are mere tools for Democrats?

The newspaper business is doing all right

There was some fretting a while back about the fate of newspapers after the internet invasion. Don't worry. Judging by today's Midland Reporter-Telegram, they're doing OK.

Newspapers are basically conduits for advertising, and I've long thought they should give newspapers to the customers for free. Still waiting on that one.  In any event, the Midland Reporter-Telegram for today, Thanksgiving day, November 22, 2012, is loaded with the advertising that butters their bread.

 
The newspaper that hit my driveway this morning weighed in at around 3.6 pounds -- see photos of scales. Strip out the advertising supplements and there's not enough left to tip the big scales. However, the trusty postal scales measure the newspaper portion at 4.5 ounces. Plugging this into a spreadsheet tells us that the newspaper portion comes to a little less than 8% of the total.  Put another way, the advertising outweighs the news 12 times.

The ad volume was substantially more then normal due to the holiday sales drive. But still, that must be a lot of advertising revenue coming into the MRT coffers this month. It will be a Merry Christmas in that office.

P.S. Zoom in on those Pitney Bowes postal scales and get a load of that 15 cent first class rate. According to this chart that was the rate between '78 and '81. Hmm, I wonder if weights have inflated, too. That could account for human weight gain. An ounce 30 years ago probably measures in at two or three ounces today.

Memo to AP: You don't have to call him darlin', darlin'

Those words from David Allen Coe's mournful You Never Even Called Me by My Name spring to mind from this AP editor's pick from the morning paper: Tea party darling Cruz wins Texas' US Senate race.

Bless their msm hearts. They just can't hide their contempt for Tea Party supporters. But this is only the beginning. Get ready for a barrage of demeaning descriptors for any elected Republican who resists tax hikes.

Happy birthday Media Research Center

Today is their 25th birthday. Media Research Center has made a major contribution to the public discourse by exposing media bias in a way that gets noticed as well as providing a voice for those who are disgusted by it.

Unfortunately, the reporters MRC highlights are usually so biased they are unable to recognize it in themselves. Or more likely they just don't bother to hide it anymore.

Last week MRC had its 25th Anniversary Gala and 2012 DisHonors Awards program. Among those dishonored along with their awards were as follows:

"Obamagasm Award" winner was Chris Matthews.
"Vast Right-Wing Knuckle-Draggers Award" winner was Thomas Roberts (daytime MSNBC host).
"Damn Those Conservatives to Hell Award" winner was Ann Curry.
"The Barbra Streisand Political IQ Award for Celebrity Vapidity" winner was Sean Penn. (David Letterman was a runner up. Better luck next year, Dave.)
"Worst Reporter in the History of Man" winner was Katie Couric.
This next one was a genuine honor:
"William F. Buckley Award for Media Excellence" was awarded posthumously to Andrew Breitbart.

Click the link to watch the clips.

Happy b'day MRC! And thanks for continuing to lampoon those reporters who can't stop sucking up to Obama and belittling people who don't agree with them.

News organizations' credibility still slipping

Local news seems to have slipped the least. Maybe it's the competition and familiarity with the subject matter that has kept them believable. But the recent poll results published by Pew Research suggest that news organizations' credibility has been in a long decline. Here are the first two paragraphs from the overview of Further Decline in Credibility Ratings for Most News Organizations:

For the second time in a decade, the believability ratings for major news organizations have suffered broad-based declines. In the new survey, positive believability ratings have fallen significantly for nine of 13 news organizations tested. This follows a similar downturn in positive believability ratings that occurred between 2002 and 2004.

The falloff in credibility affects news organizations in most sectors: national newspapers, such as the New York Times and USA Today, all three cable news outlets, as well as the broadcast TV networks and NPR.

Here's a chart from the study.

(Click to enlarge.)

Political party preference certainly was a factor as Democrats seem to be more believing than Republicans, especially of ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN and New York Times. Republicans who answered the poll considered Fox News the most credible.

What was missing? Radio news other than NPR. Maybe radio news has been overtaken by talk radio. Come to think of it, talk radio might be an interesting topic for a poll.

The newspaper/politician partnership

Each needs the other. The newspaper needs newsworthy stories to fill space. And the politician is happy to oblige because he/she needs the exposure the newspaper offers. Neither wants to offend the other, and both work to see that the other is kept satisfied. This is one reason why incumbents are so difficult to unseat.

I don't mean to pick on newspapers, it applies to other news media as well. It just happens that I have the morning newspaper in front of me.

And this morning's paper has no fewer than two stories on the front page parroting the message of Texas District 11 Representative Mike Conaway, one of which gives us the Representative's vision of the upcoming Farm Bill. But let's reserve that for another post.

With very few exceptions, the free publicity and easy money make it almost impossible for a challenger to defeat an incumbent.  Mr. Conaway sucks in about a million dollars in campaign contributions each election cycle, including this one, which dwarfs the money any challenger can raise simply because the entities who want something from the government need to insure their investment in the incumbent.

Politicians won't break this cycle on their own, but term limits might do it. And they might free the newspapers from the shackles that bind them to incumbent politicians.

survey results -- Congress influenced by media bias

A George Washington University study which purports to tell us how Congress is influenced was released the other day.

They got responses from 3,000 Congressional staff members and lobbyists. What the responders said about who or what influences themselves might be suspect, however what they said about others might be more credible if not more interesting. For example, there is this remarkable statement:

Ninety-five percent of congressional staff members believe that political bias in the media influences or shapes decision-making in Congress.

Commentators are speculating that the media influenced Chief Justice Roberts into changing his mind about the Obamacare judgment. Whether or not that happened, the media were certainly trying.

And now we learn that congressional staffers believe their bosses are susceptible to the biases on display by the media. Given congress's consistently low approval ratings maybe they should listen more to the people in their districts.

By the way, the bias the poll staffers were referring to must be the national media, because at home it looks more like our congressional representative has more influence on the local media than the other way around.

It might be nice to take a look at the whole report, but the asking price is $597.00. Let the national media buy it, it will certainly boast their egos.

Jennifer Lopez - world's most powerful celebrity?

Forbes has an amazing list of The World's Most Powerful Celebrities. And it includes such luminaries as:

1. Jennifer Lopez
3. Justin Bieber
6. Britney Spears
7. Kim Kardashian, and
12. Tiger Woods

So these are powerful people.  Hmm.

Way down at the bottom at number 100 is Adriana Lima. Who? Article says she's a super model.

How in the world does someone quantify power among celebrities? They say they talked to industry insiders, agents, lawyers, producers and other experts to come up with an estimate of how much they earned in the previous 12 months. Then they used Google, Factiva, Lexis/Nexis, magazines covers, Facebook and Twitter to compile numbers which are used to compute a celebrity's power and rank.

All fun and games, and it's really meaningless if we are trying to correlate power, as they define it, with influence. But it is interesting to note that Larry the cable guy at 91 beat out Tina Fey at 93. Tina Fey probably did more than any other one person in 2008 to create a negative image of Sarah Palin. So it's reassuring that she's so far down on the list. Karma, maybe.

Don't rule newspapers out yet

Warren Buffet is famous for finding and buying undervalued assets. So take a look at this headline at Omaha.com: Buffett to buy 63 newspapers.

The transaction involves a $142 million purchase of newspapers from "financially troubled" Media General Inc. of Richmond, Va. And the deal involves daily and weekly newspapers in the Southeast.

One has to wonder whether employee layoffs are in the future for those newspapers.

In defense of Mike Wallace

The late Mike Wallace will probably get a royal sendoff from his old 60 Minutes friends when they eulogize him in the next show. So let's leave the plaudits to those who feel they owe it to him. The purpose of this blog post is to highlight one particular talent he had.

I stopped watching 60 Minutes many years ago after happening upon an article written by a target of a 60 Minutes' hit piece. The writer made a very compelling case for the other side of the issue. A loyal 60 Minutes viewer might scratch his head and ask, "There was another side?"

Yes, there was. But in a typical 60 Minutes episode there was only the most modest hint of it, like the ubiquitous, "He's presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court of law," we hear at the end of those true-crime style documentaries after they've laid out the most damning of evidence.

That's why there are trials with rules of evidence and both sides having an opportunity to make a case most favorable to their side. Take away that right from one of the sides, and the jury, or viewers of 60 Minutes, will come away with their minds closed on the issue. And that was the 60 Minutes way.

But enough about that. Here's the reason for this blog post.

One time in an interview in which Mike Wallace was the subject, he was asked to respond to the characterization that he was liberal. And this is a paraphrased version of his answer, "If being a liberal means siding with the little guy when he is being bullied by the big guy, then I guess that makes me a liberal." What a remarkable way to respond. He didn't deny it. He merely redefined the charge in a way that made him seem like the purest of angels. It was a trick, and that trick was a demonstration of the talent that made him a media star.

MRT and Rock the Desert

This morning's paper (MRT) tells us that the organization Freedom from Religion Foundation made an open records request to the city of Midland, Texas, about the payout of $50,000 of taxpayer money to the promoters of Rock the Desert, the Christian rock concert. And the paper provides a convoluted explanation of why the payment is justified. Click City leaders: Rock the Desert receives funds because of visitors it brings to read it for yourself and note the link to download a PDF of the contract between the city and RTD where you can get to the nut of the agreement.

Basically, the contract says the city will pay RTD to hire and feed security and emergency personnel, put up porta-potties, and pick up the trash. So the city is paying them to do what any other concert promoter would be required to do, except the part about providing food. But there's also a vague requirement that Rock the Desert publish and distribute material promoting the city.

The excuse the city provides, according to the MRT, is that the city pays money to the promoters out of funds obtained through the motel/hotel tax on the theory that the promoters are bringing in outsiders to spend money in the city and not because of the religious nature of the event.

Sure there's the religion issue, but that's only part of it. What we have is the concept of taking money from one set of taxpayers and rather than applying it to real city needs, the money is doled out to handpicked businesses and individuals at the whim of the city council.

Nationally the trend is moving toward a smaller government and fewer government payouts, although there is obviously some very strong resistance to those notions. Nonetheless, the trend is there. Midland has always been a few years behind most trends, and this one seems to be slow in coming here too. But there's hope. There's hope.

So how did the MRT discover that an open records request had been made? The article says a few individuals had written to the MRT about it, although my tired eyes aren't keen enough to have spotted any such missives in the letters to the editor section. The article also mentions that a guy wrote a whole blog post about it at the Friendly Atheist. So maybe the MRT cruises atheist websites. Who knew?

There's also the possibility that one of the city council members alerted them to try to get their side out there in case a law suit gets filed. But that's conspiracy theory stuff, and we can't go there.

Whatever.

Post Script. Regular readers of this blog may recall This Town Needs More Atheists which noted how the council seems to bend over backward whenever a church asks them for something and which also noted the $50,000 contribution to RTD. Commenter Andy said he notified the FFRF about it. Others saw the post, too, that's for sure. This blog typically gets a few hundred visits per day, but that one post attracted almost 9,000 visits over a two day span.

Joe Bob Briggs vs Nancy Grace -- no contest

It's probably safe to say veteran channel surfers' thumbs get busy the second Nancy Grace's mug appears on the tube. She's not only obnoxious, she's predictable. But since she's still on the air there must be an audience for someone like her.

On the flip side there's Joe Bob Briggs ready to administer a bully beat down to Grace and others in the media who whipped their audiences into a lynch mob frenzy after the Calee Anthony jury's "not guilty" verdict. See Pitchforks and Torches in Orlando. Excerpt:

So what are we taught to do in Journalism 101?

Acknowledge and ignore. Acknowledge that the rabble is outside. Write about it if it threatens to contaminate the jury. Ensure that we the media don’t become part of the story.

I never went to journalism school anyway, so I wasn’t around when they apparently added Journalism 102, which can be summed up by reporters’ attitudes at the Anthony trial:

STIR UP THE RABBLE! TELL THEM HOW RIGHT THEY ARE! GET IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STORY AS AN ADVOCATE FOR JUSTICE BUT DON’T QUOTE ARISTOTLE!

You tell 'em, Joe Bob.

P.S. Loved the drive-in movie reviews.

Click and Clack, tappet brothers tapping into government coffers

If Saul Alinsky were alive he would approve of the way Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-New York ripped forth with a sarcastic speech the other day mocking those who want to release NPR into the free market.

"We've discovered a target we can all agree upon. It's these guys. This is the comics, Click and Clack, the tappet brothers. We're finally getting rid of them. Thank gawd we've solved this problem for the country!" Link.

Very sarcastic and almost funny in the derisive way politicos like to portray those who disagree with them. Rep Weiner represents a very blue portion of the blue state of New York, and his constituents probably yuck it up when he skewers fiscal conservatives and their crazy notion that the government spends too much money.

At least he didn't try to downplay the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's draw on the US treasury as being a tiny portion of the whole debt. It all adds up, you know.

Rep. Weiner notwithstanding, it isn't Click and Clack. It's the whole big government mindset that permeates NPR. Liberals like it because it mirrors their own political views so perfectly. However, NPR can exist without government handouts if it has an audience. And if not, then maybe they should slim down like most other businesses have had to do in this economy.

They needn't worry, though. With friends like George Soros they'll do just fine as long as they stay true to his politics. And judging by the attitude of the NPR bigwigs expressed in the latest James O'Keefe videos, that shouldn't be a problem.

But there's a question Rep. Weiner needs to answer if he really wants to persuade anyone not in his liberal New York district. Is buying entertainment, such as that served up by Click and Clack, the best use of US taxpayer money?

HospiceMidland and Pet Peace of Mind -- making a video

Remember Pet Peace of Mind? It's a program that was created by Rev. Delana Taylor McNac a few years ago to help hospice patients with their pets. A pet loves its owner even when the owner is sick. But the patient may be too sick to provide the care a pet needs, and the pet suffers, too. And HospiceMidland, the only non-profit hospice in Midland, Texas, was the first hospice in Texas to adopt the Pet Peace of Mind program.

See What if you die before your pet, part 2 on these pages from March of last year about the program at the introductory phase in Midland.

HospiceMidland volunteers have placed several pets in new homes under this program, and each one is a two handkerchief story. Word gets around, and UMTV.org commissioned Jess Warnock to make a web video documentary featuring some of the hospice stories.

Watching a professional work

Jess Warnock is a professional videographer working out of Toledo, Ohio. Check out this video he did titled The Noah Project about a program helping the homeless in Detroit. First class in every regard.

So I was watching him work this past weekend on a video featuring some of the pets that got new homes through the HospiceMidland program. And it was a privilege being around such a smart professional who is so good at his job. He made it look so easy to make a high quality video, but he had the education, experience and equipment to make routine work out of a difficult project.

He could size up a situation immediately and determine where the best spot was for manipulating the light and what furniture would best suit the subject of the video. Working with animals is a challenge, but so is working with humans.

His videos aren't about him, and he prefers to let the subjects do all the talking. He might tell them what he would like them to talk about, and he might ask them a leading question. But they are the focus of the piece, and their words will end up on the finished video. From a spectator's point of view it's kind of funny to hear him ask a question and then hear the subject start out with something like, "Probably" or "Yes, " when the ideal answer would have been a straight narrative statement.

But he got some good stuff. And many people will be watching for the finished product to appear in about a month at UMTV.org.

Blogger's note. Have you ever been around a smart professional and thought how ignorant you must look in comparison? Then did you do something that removed all doubt? Well, I did. I took still shots of the video shooting process, staring outdoors, moving indoors, then going back outdoors.  I adjusted the camera white balance to get a better indoor shots. But once outside again I forgot to readjust the white balance. The next dozen or so photos came out bluer than the deep blue sea. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

Relying on advocacy groups for news

The other day a front page article in the local morning newspaper screamed that Texas children are on track to be poor, underemployed and subject to high healthcare costs. That last one, high healthcare costs, is a given no matter what else happens. But let's not get bogged down with details just yet.

The article is a retelling of a press release found here from an advocacy group called Texans Care for Children.

Let's just take one line from both the article and the press release: Here's the line from the newspaper article

Texas also ranks the highest for fatalities that result from child abuse or neglect ...

And here's the line from the press release:

The state also has the most fatalities from child abuse or neglect among states ...

Can this be fact checked? The press release leads us to the full report which says this:

In the last decade, more children in Texas than in any other state have died as a result of abuse or neglect.1

The footnote leads to this:

To access detailed source information for this section, visit txchildren.org/Report/Protection.

That's where we find this:

Sources in Child Protection
1 Every Child Matters Fund. "We Can Do Better: Child Abuse and Neglect Deaths in the U.S." (Washington D.C., 2009), http://www.everychildmatters.org/images/stories/pdf/wcdb_report.pdf

The above URL is a 404 dead end. But a search at everychildmatters.org, another advocacy group, leads us to a later report titled: SECOND EDITION We Can Do Better Child Abuse and Neglect Deaths in America. And there we find a couple of charts, one of which might seem to bear out the claim. But only two years are displayed, 2001 and 2008, with no explanation why only those two. And the number of child abuse and neglect deaths attributed to Texas is so high, 223 in the year 2008 versus 185 in California and 107 in New York that there has to have been some statistical fluke -- a higher population of children, a different reporting standard, or simply gaming the numbers.

In any event, the phrase, "more children in Texas than in any other state have died as a result of abuse or neglect" is meaningless unless the objective is simply to instill a feeling of guilt.

This journey so far has been too tiresome to continue on to footnote #2, so I'm quitting. What should we make of all of this? If you are in favor of something an advocacy group is promoting, then accept their press releases as truth. If you are against it, then you probably don't have to search very long to find out they've stretched the truth to make their case. A press release from an advocacy group should be given the same respect as a TV commercial.

Finally, I don't want to sound as if I'm criticizing the local reporter, after all, she once received this blog's recognition as hardest working local newspaper reporter, and we know she can do her stuff. So we can't really blame her for taking a break from day-to-day reporting every once in a while and relying on advocacy group press releases. Heck, I may want to issue my own press release someday -- "Sleepless in Midland completed another year of blogging -- there were no survivors."

A sports reporter's asset

So a sexy woman interviewed young male athletes, sexual tensions arose, and someone made a remark. It was Ines Sainz of TV Azteca who probably got more than a glance from every heterosexual male in the arena when she showed up to conduct interviews of New York Jets players the other day.

But someone is alleged to have used "inappropriate language," and that unleashed a storm of political correctness. However, it was other women who complained. Why? Because she's on the job in a competitive business and has a cosmetic advantage. Her competitors want to strip away that advantage. It's like the futuristic short story from years ago in which anyone with a talent was given a handicap so that everyone would be equal.

Call it multiculturalism and give the gal a break. She's merely doing the jobs Americans won't do.

Post Script: Did you see the word "asset" and think of Ms. Sainz's gluteus maximus? Shame on you. Get your mind out of the gutter.

Question: When is a conflict of interest not a conflict of interest?

Answer: When it involves a newspaper.

The New York Times' Bill Keller, in an artful reply to that paper's public editor, helpfully explains that they have very wide latitude to define for themselves what is a "conflict of interest" and to decide whether it matters. Never mind that that latitude opens a hole so wide a garbage truck could drive through it.

But that's the New York Times. What about the local paper?

A few weeks ago when citizens made an unsuccessful effort to persuade the Midland, Texas, City Council not to raise taxes someone attempted to suggest a collusion among some of the City Council members and the Midland Reporter Telegram's Editorial Board due to the Editorial Board's published position which seemed to parrot what some of the Council members were saying. The Editorial Board responded with a public beat down of that citizen while waving the banner of government watchdog.

Some might find it suspicious that the head of the Editorial Board, Dave Wedel, was also the Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce at the very time that the Chamber of Commerce President appeared before the City Council at a hearing to express the Chamber's fear of losing out on a share of some of that tax money. Bob Cambell described it like this:

Chamber of Commerce President Rob Cunningham protested a possible $100,000 reduction to the Chamber’s Convention & Visitors Bureau if the sports complex is put under professional management.

Being the coward that I am and having watched the aforementioned beat down I'm certainly not going to accuse the head of the Editorial Board of a conflict of interest. If there are any dots to connect someone else will have to do it. The story template is probably that Mr. Wedel's cross-board membership doesn't cloud his judgment but makes him smarter than the rest of us. Don't agree? Re-read New York Times' Bill Keller's refresher course on how journalists decide what's fair and how insider connections provide a "measure of sophistication ... that someone with no connections would lack."

We would love to give Mr. Wedel "Three cheers for being a government watchdog!" But he has only given us an opportunity to say "Hip, Hip ... uh, ok, maybe we can give you the benefit of the doubt."

Glenn Beck launches new website

Glenn Beck launched a new website called The Blaze, about which Mr. Beck himself says:

Too many important stories are overlooked. And too many times we see mainstream media outlets distorting facts to fit rigid agendas. Not that you’ve ever heard me complain about the media before. Okay, maybe once or twice. ...

We want this to be a place where you can find breaking news, original reporting, insightful opinions and engaging videos about the stories that matter most.

The Blaze will be about current news — and more. It’s not just politics and policy. It’s looking for insight wherever we find it. We’ll examine our culture, deal with matters of faith and family, and we won’t be afraid of a history lesson.

Seems that most conservatives who get bit time media recognition these days end up loved by some and loathed by others with few in between. If you fall in the "loathe" camp you might enjoy gawker.com's derisive piece, Glenn Beck Launches News Website Mostly About Glenn Beck. But judge for yourself whether the items about Beck at The Blaze are as self serving as gawker.com would like you to infer.