Sleepless in Midland

American retirees in Mexico trusted banker -- big mistake

This is sad. But was it predictable?

American retirees in Mexico say their life savings vanished from a Mexican bank. Excerpt:

The Machirs sold their house in the U.S. and used the proceeds to begin building a new house in San Miguel de Allende. But their retirement dream turned into a nightmare in December 2018 when they suddenly found themselves unable to pay their contractors.

Their story may send a chill down the spines of the more than 1 million other U.S. citizens, many of them retirees, who live in Mexico. The life savings they had entrusted to their local banker of more than six years had all but disappeared. ...

NBC News spoke to nine American families who say Marcela Zavala Taylor, a former banker with Grupo Financiero Monex, had gained their trust only to disappear after they discovered money had gone missing from their personal accounts. These families, whose estimated losses total more than $7 million dollars, all say they were blindsided by what had happened.

Well, it's Mexico. No FDIC insurance there. And there was this:

Several of the people NBC News spoke to say getting their money back from Monex has been an uphill battle, especially when it comes to getting refunded for 100 percent of the amount they say was initially in their accounts.

Wells Fargo should open a bank in Mexico. Oh wait. Never mind.

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1:56 PM 9/29/2019

Quote of the week -- from Nicole Ault about Austrian economics

Colleges Go to Court Over a Donor’s Intent, by Nicole Ault, was about a dispute over whether funds were being applied to “dedicated and articulate disciple of the free and open market economy (the Ludwig von Mises Austrian School of Economics)” as the donor wished.

And the quote below pertained to a mind-set that leads to socialism. To wit:

I majored in economics at Hillsdale, and “Austrian I” was one of the most absorbing and inspiring classes I took. It taught me to appreciate the unpredictability of human behavior and fallibility of markets. It also showed me how mainstream economic thought feeds the socialist temptation. When people conceive of economic knowledge as purely factual and objective, Hayek pointed out, they may also assume they can engineer society.

As socialism grows chic—particularly among college students—the humility supplied by the Austrian view is critical.

(Bold added.)

The socialist movement in the U.S. today is not a positive development. If that is a result of our current education system then reform certainly is in order.

Meanwhile, the University of Missouri, the school which the donor wanted to add an articulate disciple of free and open market economy, appears not to have complied with the donor's wishes.

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1:41 PM 9/28/2019

Fox Friday 9-27-19, no foxes, just a lovely dove

Spread wing dove.

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2:33 PM 9/26/2019

suicide by firearm -- there's has to be a better way

A psychiatrist named Brian Barnett has published a piece titled National support for ‘red-flag’ gun laws could prevent many suicides in which he advocates for red-flag laws to add mental health providers to the list of those authorized to petition a court for removing guns from individuals in those states which have such laws. His concern is for the well being of those individuals, and the removal of guns would eliminate the easiest means of suicide for those people. It makes sense up to a point.

A firearm suicide leaves a mess. Anyone contemplating it should consider what the person who stumbles onto the scene will have to see. It would probably be very traumatic for whomever that person is and probably more traumatic if that person happened to be a family member.

But lack of access to firearms wouldn't necessarily prevent a suicide -- there are other ways to terminate one's life. According to CDC.gov only half of the 47,173 suicides in 2017 involved firearms.

My objective with this post isn't to prevent suicides, although that would be a nice result. There are plenty of better places to seek help, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention would be a good place to start. (The chart on the right came from there.)

And here's an interesting finding among the Research & Suicide Prevention: Top 10 Findings: "Ninety percent of people who die by suicide have an underlying — and potentially treatable — mental health condition." Help is out there.

Most of us, while not being suicidal or having a mental health condition, can contemplate a situation which might inspire suicide. And if suicide really is the only resort, please don't use a gun.

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10:41 AM 9/25/2019

government waste -- agencies practically give money away at end of year to spend what they asked for

A few years ago a friend was boasting about a slightly used computer he got free from his employer. His boss was the United States government. And the agency that employed him had some money left over at the end of the fiscal year which was spent on new computers it didn't need.

The system is set up so that agencies always expect a little more each year, but if they hadn't spent all they got in the previous year, then they wouldn't get as much. That logic has worked for decades. And taxpayers get the bill.

How do we end that practice? Sen. Joni Ernst, Iowa Republican, has a modest proposal:

To that end, Ms. Ernst has proposed the End-of-Year Fiscal Responsibility Act. The legislation, which she said has the support of many federal procurement officers, would mandate that spending in the final two months of each fiscal year not exceed the average spent in the previous 10 months.

What has happened year after year is departments, loath to come before appropriators with flush accounts, rush to deplete their coffers, according to Open the Books, a nonprofit group that tracks government spending.

Found at Feds rush to spend 20% of $500 billion in one month in 'use it or lose it' spending spree. It's a good starting place.

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3:39 PM 9/24/2019

Well this sucks -- hand sanitizer leaves a lot of bad stuff on your hands

They focused on the flu virus at Towards better hand hygiene for flu prevention. Excerpt:

The influenza A virus (IAV) remains infectious in wet mucus from infected patients, even after being exposed to an ethanol-based disinfectant (EBD) for two full minutes, report researchers at Kyoto Profectural University of Medicine, in Japan. Fully deactivating the virus, they found, required nearly four minutes of exposure to the EBD.

Dang. Four minutes is a long time. It might be easier to simply use soap and water. But then how long would we have to rub our hands together?

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4:50 PM 9/23/2019

Lizzie Warren took an ax and gave the economy 40 whacks

Elizabeth Warren is *looking increasingly like the candidate who gets the Democrat presidential nomination. Should any Democrat get elected as president in 2020 that would be bad news for the economy, given that they are all running on the theory that the more free stuff they can promise the more likely they are to win.

Liz Warren may not be the worst, but she has made some truly awful remarks, for example, echoing Obama's "you didn't build that" excuse for taxing the rich. Except in her case, it's a proposed tax on assets. Real property owners are well acquainted with that concept. Applying a tax to assets other than real property will require a huge bureaucracy of appraisers that will tell people how much their personal property is worth. Hiding assets will become a new pastime for the bazillionaires Warren targets.

Mona Charen makes a cogent argument against the Warren plan:

The only way to achieve a Scandinavian-style welfare state is to do what the Scandinavians do — tax the heck out of the middle class.

Elizabeth Warren’s approach is 1960s Great Society stuff. She would build public housing, throw money at the opioid epidemic, break up big tech companies, break up agribusiness firms, introduce a new corporate profits tax, and on and on. Implicit in every plan is the notion that the government is competent to spend money and run things for everyone’s benefit. That worked so well the last time.

The economy will suffer, the good times will end, and everyone will suffer -- except the rich who Warren so much wants to punish.

P.S. The title of this piece is a play on the words of the Lizzie Borden poem.

*At the time of this writing, Election Betting Odds has Warren at the top of the heap at 40.2% and the next runner up, Biden, at 24.3%.

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2:18 PM 9/22/2019

TV stations use of Star Spangled Banner cheapens it

Decades ago when there were typically three TV stations available and all the sets had antennas, the night time sign off included a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. After watching some horror flick on a Saturday night with sleep-over friends, that was a signal it was time to turn of the TV and get on with some other preadolescent late night activity.

When the Star Spangled Banner played, it didn't have much significance to our young minds. That song had it's place -- sports events, Fourth of July celebrations, events in the school auditorium and that sort of thing. It really didn't have a place on TV.

Fox News channel plays it when the station begins its programming on Saturday and Sunday mornings. So what are viewers supposed to do? Stand up at the breakfast table, place our hands over our hearts, and sing along?

Nah. The ritual has it's place. But it's not as bumper music for a program transition.

This news: More than 170 television stations will start daily broadcasts with Star-Spangled Banner seems more of a virtue signal than it does a sign of allegiance to these great United States.

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2:51 PM 9/21/2019

Related: from Babylonbee: Man Who Put Mini American Flag Up In House Hasn’t Sat Down In 5 Years

The economy in Blue districts differs from Red districts

An interesting piece at WSJ.com tells us this: Democrats and Republicans Aren’t Just Divided. They Live in Different Worlds. That article is behind a paywall, but a summary can be found at Red and Blue Economies.

After comparing Democrat House Districts with Republican House Districts, the conclusion sums it up this way:

America’s political polarization is almost complete. Its two main political parties increasingly represent two different economies. And they barely overlap. Democrats can be found in educated cities and suburbs where professional jobs are plentiful. Republicans live in working-class and rural communities, home to agriculture and low-skill manufacturing. Another way to look at it: Democrats are dominant among high-producing districts, while Republicans now represent more of those with the least economic activity.

Meanwhile, thehill.com says it's not all bad news for Republicans. See Trump's economic advantage within the Democratic base. There we are told that Trump's advantage is that his policies have helped create new jobs and brought people back into the workforce. Excerpt:

If Trump’s enhanced economy is already likely to be an important consideration for the general electorate, imagine what its magnification could mean in groups on which Democrats rely so much. In America’s zero-sum two-party system, it would not take large swings in such key groups to yield big political impacts — and even with Democrats winning large 2016 margins within them, they still lost the presidency.

Finally, Democrats risk further compounding Trump’s economic advantage by nominating a candidate who either professes, or is perceived, to espouse a fundamental break from America’s historically free-market economic system. Not only would Democrats have to fight on comparisons of unfavorable economic performance, but a divergent philosophy as well.

I can picture Donald Trump telling Liz Warren, "It's the economy, stupid."

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2:49 PM 9/20/2019

Fox Friday 9-20-19

I had just about given up on seeing any foxes in the area until winter. But one showed up the other night. He didn't stay long, just long enough to get a drink of water, then he split.

Hey, come back again sometime, m'kay?

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3:47 PM 9/19/2019

Panic over climate change has been as cyclical as the climate

I stumbled upon this article featuring images of newspaper articles from the past several decades about climate change.

The period featured in the article started in or around 1917 with warnings that the glaciers were shrinking. That period continued through the 1930s when the dust bowl caused, of course, by human activity threatened humanity.

But in the 1970s the scenario turned upside down, and the fear then was global cooling and the coming ice age.

Then it flipped again to get to the present day when global warming is once again the existential threat.

The article, Climate Change Has been a Routine Scare Tactic Since the 1930s, is worth a look, at least for the ancient articles. And it ends with this interesting explanation:

The difference this time is they have been able to get governments interested on the basis that they can stop it by raising taxes. Canada imposed a $1,000 tax per home to stop global warming. Perhaps the theory is if the politicians get more money they will speak less and reduce the hot air they spout out by yelling the end is near.

Well, maybe. But it seems that the more money politicians are able to take from taxpayers, the more they want.

Via Liberty Pen.

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4:55 PM 9/17/2019

Democrats' bizarre focus on honest gun owners instead of criminals

Beto O'Rourke's noisy campaign to confiscate citizens' guns always gets an eager cheer of approval from his audience. Many gun owners believe Beto's followers and other Democrats are motivated less by crime reduction than by the urge to sock it to those who don't subscribe to the progressive agenda.

The "tell" is that Democrats have no realistic proposal to disarm criminals. It's only the law abiding citizens they want to disarm.

Time and again researchers have produced studies telling us that criminals have ways of obtaining firearms that bypass the legal channels. Here is a sampling with excerpts:

The Armed Criminal in America:

Based on interview with more than 1,800 incarcerated felons, the study found that few of the gun-owning felons had bought their guns from a retail source. Rather, the majority usually obtained them from family members or friends or on the street. Often they stole them.

Source and Use of Firearms Involved in Crimes: Survey of Prison Inmates, 2016:

An estimated 287,400 prisoners had possessed a firearm during their offense. Among these, more than half (56%) had either stolen it (6%), found it at the scene of the crime (7%), or obtained it off the street or from the underground market (43%). Most of the remainder (25%) had obtained it from a family member or friend, or as a gift. Seven percent had purchased it under their own name from a licensed firearm dealer.

The Last Link: from Gun Acquisition to Criminal Use:

The CIS respondents were almost all barred from purchasing a gun from a gun store because of their prior criminal record—as a result, their guns were obtained by illegal transactions with friends, relatives, and the underground market

It's trite but true. Outlaw guns and only outlaws will have guns.

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2:56 PM 9/17/2019

Happy Constitution Day 9-17-2019

September 17, 1787, was the day delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the Constitution. And while Constitution Day isn't a work holiday, we should celebrate it anyway.

It's a great constitution, and it will continue to serve us well if we let it. There are despotic regimes out there with great constitutions that aren't followed. The strength of a constitution depends on the people respecting it and our government following it.

As Ronald Reagan said:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

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5:49 AM 9/17/2019

AirSho 2019 -- ho hum

AirSho 2019 took place last weekend at Midland International Airport. It was OK. But the show was a shadow of what it was before the CAF abandoned the region for the big city.

Maybe I'm being unfair since I'm still feeling the sting of not getting a T-shirt in spite of 16 hours working as a volunteer over the weekend. Hey, there's an idea for my own custom T-shirt: "I worked 16 hours and didn't even get a lousy T-shirt!"

On the bright side, here is something that got my attention. Remember those mechanical bulls from a few decades ago that cowboys and city dudes used to ride in saloons like Gilley's? Well, an entrepreneur came up with a new use for an old product. The kids' area had a mechanical bull, except it wasn't a bull. It was made to look like a space shuttle. Now that was innovative. Hooray for capitalism!

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12:51 PM 9/16/2019

Quote of the week, Adam Carolla: "This is our safe space!"

Adam Carolla has a podcast which is almost always informative and entertaining. The other day his podcast website had a scan of a page that quoted him. The Carolla webpage can be found here.

*Carolla Combats Cancel Culture -
Adam Carolla, podcast juggernaut and veteran roaster since taking on Hugh Hefner in 2001, made damn sure his closing remarks were among the boldest of the evening. “If I can rant for just one minute here,” he began before nodding to Baldwin. “You’re a great sport. You have a great sense of humor — unlike the social-justice warriors who are going to be out there tweeting that all the jokes are problematic. You people can [expletive deleted], you [expletive deleted]! This is a goddamn roast! Comedians need a place where they can be offensive without your bullshit fake outrage, you hashtag heroes! You already ruined the Oscars! You’re all woke and no joke! So if you were offended by anything said tonight, please give a reach-around to your emotional-support dog and shut the [expletive deleted] up! This is our safe space, [expletive deleted]!”

Now there's a comedian who doesn't isn't afraid of the social justice mob.

*The language above has been cleaned up a bit. However, to see the original quote click here or here.

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4:50 PM 9/14/2019

Will Ken Burns ruin country music?

There's a TV show that reruns on truTV called "Adam Ruins Everything" in which Adam Conover "ruins" some popular theory by debunking any myths about it that can be ridiculed. Meanwhile, he bores the audience with over-explanation.

I'm reminded of that TV show by the promotions by PBS NewsHour and C-Span of Ken Burns' upcoming series called Country Music, a film by ken Burns.

In both the PBS "news" segment and the C-Span interview Burns goes directly to the feminist movement with remarks about how liberated Loretta Lynn was back in the day.

My reaction, as someone who grew up listening to that old country music, is that it looks like an east coast progressive going out into the sticks to do a documentary about those weird people who inhabit that wilderness out there. The documentary isn't meant for country music fans, it's meant to entertain the progressives on the coast -- like a wildlife show, or maybe more like Adam Ruins Country Music.

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5:07 AM 9/14/2019

Fox Friday 9-13-19 -- flashback five years

The neighborhood foxes have migrated to some other locale where, hopefully, they are enjoying cooler climates and better food.

So here's a Fox Friday flashback. This photo was taken on 9/11/2014 around 6AM.

Old Crooked Tail stood tall.

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2:22 PM 9/12/2019

Texas prosecutors decline to enforce marijuana possession laws after hemp legalized

They didn't see this coming. This year, Texas passed a law legalizing hemp. It also has prosecutors dropping hundreds of marijuana cases. Simply put, if a defendant claims it's legal hemp, prosecutors don't currently have the means to disprove that claim.

More here: After New Hemp Law, Texas Prosecutors Differ On When To Charge Those Arrested For Marijuana.

Because of a new state law, prosecutors across Texas have dropped hundreds of low-level marijuana charges and have indicated they won’t pursue new ones without further testing. ...

“The distinction between marijuana and hemp requires proof of the THC concentration of a specific product or contraband, and for now, that evidence can come only from a laboratory capable of determining that type of potency — a category which apparently excludes most, if not all, of the crime labs in Texas right now,” stated an advisory released by the Texas District and County Attorneys Association last month.

But wait a sec. Governor Abbott says prosecute anyway if the possessor doesn't have a hemp shipping certificate. See Abbott Orders Texas Prosecutors to Enforce Marijuana Laws. Excerpt:

“If a person is transporting hemp but has no certificate, you may now prosecute that person for the offense of failing to have a hemp certificate,” the memo reads … before going on to state that such certification does not yet exist: “If they have a certificate, which the Department has yet to promulgate, then it’s a fake – which is a felony.”

Alrighty then.

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2:48 PM 9/11/2019

New Texas Gun Laws -- Not as scary as Democrats might want you to think

The state of Texas has some new gun laws effective as of 9/1/2019. And while pundits are still exercised about the recent mass shootings, knee jerk reactions could easily be anticipated. Politico kindly clears the air by advising readers about those new laws in Hours after shooting rampage, Texas gun laws loosened. Here's a summary of Politico's summary of some of the new laws:

HB 1143 Prevents schools from regulating how guns and ammo are stored in vehicles on a school parking lot.
HB 1387 Removes limitations on the number of faculty and staff that can be designated as armed school marshals per campus.
SB 535 Churches must give notice if guns are banned on their premises.
HB 1177 Citizens who are not prohibited from having a gun can carry without a license for a week after a disaster declaration and shelters must accommodate them.
HB 302 Residential lease agreements can't restrict lawful possession of a firearm.
HB 2363 Guns in foster homes can be stored together with a trigger-locking devices.
HB 121 License to Carry holders can simply leave a property prohibiting guns if asked.

Many Democrats want more control over anyone who might own a gun, but they'll have to wait, at least in Texas.

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3:17 PM 9/10/2019

Quote of the week -- Neil Gorsuch on a living constitution

The idea of a living constitution seems to accompany the adherence to progressive ideology. But a living constitution basically says whatever a judge thinks it should say, not what the constitution actually says. The quote of the week comes from Justice Neil Gorsuch: Why Originalism Is the Best Approach to the Constitution. To wit:

I suspect the real complaint of living constitutionalists isn’t with old laws generally so much as it is with the particular terms of this old law. The Constitution is short—only about 7,500 words, including all its amendments. It doesn’t dictate much about the burning social and political questions they care about. Instead, it leaves the resolution of those matters to elections and votes and the amendment process. And it seems this is the real problem for the critics. For when it comes to the social and political questions of the day they care most about, many living constitutionalists would prefer to have philosopher-king judges swoop down from their marble palace to ordain answers rather than allow the people and their representatives to discuss, debate, and resolve them. You could even say the real complaint here is with our democracy.

Well said, Justice Gorsuch. (Bold added for emphasis.)

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2:20 PM 9/8/2019

FERC is inviting comments on whether to publicize names of utilities that violated rules to protect power grid against cyber attacks

Should we know which utilities haven't complied with Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rules regarding protecting grids against cyber and other attacks?

Turns out the agency has received a number of FOIA requests for the names, so it's inviting public comments. If exposing the foot draggers in public will spur them to take the necessary actions to protect their power customers from the nightmare of a blackout resulting from sabotage, then do it.

Some helpful links:

Comments Sought on FERC/NERC Staff White Paper on CIP Standards Notices of Penalties
Regulator Weighs Disclosing Names of Utilities That Violate Grid Security Rules
NERC Coverup Investigation Report

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1:59 PM 9/8/2019

Finally, some potentially good news about EMP protection

The prospect of an electromagnetic pulse attack has kept anyone who read William R. Forstchen's book, "One Second After" nervous for almost a decade. And those of us who hoped the people in charge would ramp up protection were left in the dark, so to speak.

But president Trump was prescient enough to issue an executive order that might stimulate those people who could actually make a difference. See Trump orders historic plan to thwart EMP, warns attack would be ‘debilitating’ from earlier this year.

The Electric Power Research Institute issued a report in April that suggested an EMP attack might result in as much damage as had been predicted.

But some steps could be taken to minimize the problems. The article Scientists Are Zapping Fake Electrical Grids to Help Us Survive an EMP Attack tells us some of the ways they might do it. Here's an excerpt:

The results showed that although some parts of power lines and transformer equipment were damaged by the pulses, they weren’t as drastically affected as some predictions presumed. And with the control houses, some structures held up better than others — namely the ones made with mostly metal, not concrete. The conductive qualities of metal make the control house act like a Faraday Cage, absorbing and dissipating the incoming energy so none reaches the electronics inside. While the modern-day metal control house designs weren’t totally EMP-proof, they did have better shielding qualities than their concrete counterparts.

The concept of a Faraday Cage has been with us for a long time. And if protecting the control houses actually works, then more power to them. But, it's probably too soon to stop worrying, especially with since cyber attacks would be so much simpler for an adversary to pull off.

P.S. That EPRI report is not without serious criticism. See EPRI EMP Report: Selling Snake Oil to America.

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4:33 PM 9/6/2019

gun control reality -- prohibition isn't working in Mexico

Gun law expert Dr. John R. Lott, Jr., is the founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center, and their website always contains some interesting information about the relationship between gun laws and gun related crimes. And this particular headline jumps out at the reader: Mexico’s murder rate is twice the US rate, but only about 1% of Mexicans are legally licensed to own a gun.

Simply put, if laws against gun ownership are intended to take guns out of the hands of outlaws and reduce crime, those laws don't make a heck of a lot of difference. Outlaws can get guns. The Odessa shooter was a good example. He wouldn't have been able to purchase a gun legally. But he obtained one anyway.

It's been long believed by gun owners that the gun control movement's ambition is less about safety than about control.

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1:24 PM 9/4/2019

Vox Journalist does Emily Latella impression with outrage over Trump proclamation

This proves how liberals will criticize Republicans for doing the same thing Democrats do. This is just the latest example, though by no means the worst. The guiding principle is that Donald Trump gets criticized for everything he does. Never mind that Democrats did the same thing.

In this case, Trump used a presidential proclamation to declare Labor Day. Cue the outrage by some traumatized progresive journalist. Turns out Obama did the same thing. It's reminiscent of the late Gilda Radner's portrayal of Emily Latella making a dumb remark. Then, "Never mind."

Anyway, here's the story: Journalist Deletes Anti-Trump Tweet After Realizing Obama Did the Exact Same Thing as Trump.

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12:45 PM 9/3/2019

Scrutinizing fake news

I ran across a newspaper article that referenced this study, and it might be useful to use some of the suggestions.

The researchers experimented with subjects who were exposed to news items to study how readily accepted fake news might be. Here's an excerpt from the abstract which describes their conclusion and recommendation:

We found that, while users were generally more likely to believe articles that agreed with their point of view, asking users to rate pushed them to think more critically about the truthfulness of the articles. Moreover, once users had been asked to rate some articles, they remained critical of other articles as well, even without the rating prompt.

Article link: Do You Really Know If It’s True? How Asking Users to Rate Stories Affects Belief in Fake News on Social Media.

So first we need to be aware of confirmation bias. Then if we give a piece of news a rating it causes us to be more skeptical. Seems like good advice in this day and age of fake news.

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1:02 PM 9/2/2019

Happy Labor Day

Last week I asked a friend how Labor Day came about, and he replied that it probably had something to do with unions. Bingo! Right on the money!

Here's an explanation from the Department of Labor: History of Labor Day. To wit:

Founder of Labor Day
More than a century after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers.

Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a co-founder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those "who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold."

But Peter McGuire's place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday. Recent research seems to support the contention that Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.

How fitting that just the other day the FBI and IRS raided the home of UAW president Gary Jones.

Perhaps a more appropriate holiday might be "Right to Work" day.

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10:51 AM 9/2/2019

Democrats, not letting crisis go to waste, lost no time bashing gun ownership

I love the title of this article: Democrats Pounce On Odessa Shooting To Boost Their Political Campaigns.

"Democrats Pounce!" Ha ha! It's nice to see a conservative writer use the phrase against Dems. It's usually the other way around as the msm try headline Republicans' reactions to something rather than focusing on that thing.

Anyway, Ryan Saavedra's article provides several examples of Democrat presidential hopefuls proclaiming that guns in citizens' hands are the problem. They've got lots of support for the idea among their voter base. But the rest of us see guns as a deterrent of bad behavior, not a cause.

We don't know why the Odessa shooter went on a killing spree. If there is even the slightest evidence that he was a Republican or a Trump supporter, the msm will waste no time telling us. Too bad they can't address the real problem, and that's the disorder caused by the disconnect that society has with young males.

The more these things happen, the lower the threshold for the next disaffected person to go over the edge.

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1:24 PM 9/1/2019

Local media caught off guard when active shooter struck Odessa

So I clicked on the TV Saturday mid-afternoon in Midland, Texas, and heard on a cable station about an active shooter in "Midland/Odessa." (Actually, the two cities are roughly 20 miles apart. But that's not important.)

My thought was that a local channel would be right on top of it. Nope. CBS7 was the only one trying to cover it, but they were woefully lacking in information. They were getting their information from CNN and New York Times.

Their studio was in an Odessa mall, and at a couple of points they reported that armed law enforcement officers were walking through the mall. That prompted the news readers to go hide. So they went somewhere off screen leaving the audience staring at the empty space they just left. They kept on talking through their wireless microphones, so we knew they were there, somewhere. They were never in danger, but they didn't know that at the time.

But that seemingly forced abandonment of the broadcast desk became news for the cable outlets. The local broadcasters made themselves part of the story without actually doing anything but hiding.

The killing was tragic, but the local media were disappointing.  Their reliance on the major news outlets demonstrated that local news outlets may be able to add drama, but not much else.

Update: This article at OAOA.com was an Associated Press update as of 4:46 am, Sun Sep 1, 2019: 5 dead after man stopped by Texas troopers goes on rampage.

And here's something interesting: "Active shooter incidents were also reported at Music City Mall, Midland Park Mall and Midland Memorial Hospital, but all were false, according to local police departments." Found at Odessa mass shooting leaves 5 dead, 21 injured. How do false reports like that originate?

Meanwhile, local news says the Odessa Police Chief will hold a press conference at noon today.

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9:20 AM 9/1/2019