Sleepless in Midland

MSM aiding and abetting Democrat lawfare assault on Rick Perry

Some Democrat consultant on Fox News yesterday predicted that the news of the indictment of Rick Perry was going to hurt him because come election time all voters will remember will be the headline. He's probably right. Elections are decided on things like name recognition, headline recollection, and Saturday Night Live jokes.

The main stream media is helping the Democrats -- no surprise there. Take a look at the front page of yesterday's morning paper here in Midland, Texas. There's the headline, but it's not just that. Anyone who reads down into the article sees that the victim of Governor Perry's alleged illegal veto threat was not just a drunk driving District Attorney. She was head of the division that obtained the conviction of Tom DeLay.

Here's the rest of the story. Tom DeLay's conviction was overturned on appeal. That's an extremely important part of the story suggesting that the whole effort was politically motivated, just like Tom DeLay said all along. But that part was omitted from the article. News like that was so under-reported that even the Associated Press doesn't know it. So how in the world is the low information voter to know about it?

The Democrat on Fox News was right. The headline is the only thing that matters.

Mollie Hemingway -- Media ignorance is too common

A super smart friend of mine always rolls his eyes whenever I try to talk about someone being not so knowledgeable, so I'll just let Mollie Hemingway do it this time. She generalizes a bit, but she primarily targets a few high profile liberal writers. Read it at Media Ignorance Is Becoming A Serious Problem.

One target was Zach Carter, The Huffington Post‘s senior political economy reporter. Here's Hemingway:

I don’t mean to pick on Carter, who was a good sport. If anything, I give him credit for sticking through the entire interview [with Hugh Hewitt]. But it speaks to a larger problem we face with our media, which is that they frequently are not well read and, more importantly, they do not realize it. ...

Remember how President Reagan once quipped, “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so”? Yeah, well, I think the ignorance may be turning into a problem.

Yes it is. The problem really shows when the electorate reflects that same ignorance.

MRT needs to do its homework before calling out citizen group for not doing their homework

It wasn't too awfully long ago that the morning paper's editorial board seemed gung ho over the Energy Tower -- the downtown skyscraper that was slated to occupy the space where the empty courthouse now sits in Midland, Texas. The newspaper folks have always had their ear to the ground and seldom strayed too far from the general consensus on issues. But this time and were a little slow coming around.

This brings us to Voice of Midland, the grass roots organization telling truth to power and giving the average citizens a much needed voice in the whole thing.

As recently as last March the morning paper editorial board was chiding VoM for its campaign to petition the city council to reverse the decision. The MRT.com editorializers parroted the city position that it was a done deal and that it was too late to do anything about it.

On March 6, 2014 the editorialists said this about Voice of Midland:

However, their effort to gather signatures to force a charter election to stop public assistance for the Energy Tower project appears to be flawed. According to a city official, a charter election cannot invalidate existing contracts or commitments properly executed by the city. On the surface, it appears the Voice of Midland didn’t do their homework before taking its message and protest to Midland. It could be an opportunity lost considering how much opposition Energy Tower has in this community.

Emphasis mine.

VoM's petition was addressed to the city council requesting that it call for an election to amend the city charter to stop the project. The MRT editorial dutifully relayed the city's answer, but that answer addressed something else entirely. Was there really an "existing contract" that bound both parties instead of an agreement to agree? Was the Energy Tower arrangement a done deal? Apparently not.

The MRT itself said the other day that the whole thing could be scrapped by the city council. See headline below:

So who didn't do their homework? Voice of Midland did theirs.

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Editor's note: How disrespectful. How would you like it if someone pointed out all your mistakes? -- Robo-ed | I'd hire them! -- Sleepless.

National Science Foundation doing trade group work

Listeners to local radio stations during the off-peak hours here in Midland, Texas, get to hear a lot of those ads paid for with taxpayer money. And while they probably shouldn't be used to judge all government spending, they do provide a glimpse into the thinking behind the process.

For example, there's an advertisement from the National Science Foundation explaining the results of a study. Researchers have determined that caffeine can improve a person's memory for as long as 24 hours.

Links: Johns Hopkins University press release; National Science Foundation press release.

Was this a good use of taxpayer money? The findings are interesting, but they won't cure cancer. And the whole project sounds as if it might have been more appropriate for a coffee trade group to fund than for taxpayers. Worse, maybe it was the trade group lobbyists who finagled the NSF grant.

So as a person lies in bed wishing for sleep, he/she can thank the caffeine consumed that day for being able to dredge up all those memories.

On a related note, Fox News reports that the NSF has funded "a climate change-themed theatrical production" to the tune of $700,000. The NSF needs to drink a few cups of coffee so maybe they'll remember that they're supposed to be funding scientific research.

Instapundit sure has MSM's number

Boy, can he call 'em? Yesterday, April 30, 2014, he had this short post:

DEMOCRATIC SENATE BLOCKS FEDERAL MINIMUM WAGE BILL. See, I can do the MSM headline thing when I want. . . .

The link went to a Fox News item about the defeat in the Senate of a measure that would advance a bill hiking the minimum wage. The vote was 54 against and 42 for the measure, and lacking the 60 votes need to go forward, it went down in defeat. Whose fault was that? For Democrats, it was the Republicans' fault. And sure enough, just as Instapundit anticipated, this morning's paper provided us with this headline:

GOP blocks minimum wage try in Senate

You have to read down into the article to see that Harry Reid himself voted against it for purely political reasons. But the narrative is that it's the Republicans fault even though the Democrats hold a majority in the Senate. Never mind that a minimum wage is a bad economic idea, and a hike is an even worse idea. You can't go against the narrative.

Anyway, back to the point. Instapundit nailed it to the wall.

Midland Reporter Telegram has a Pauline Kael moment

The other day the Midland Reporter Telegram (MRT.com) had it's own Pauline Kael moment in an editorial about the bulging bond debt that burdens the residents of the county and city of Midland, Texas. The bond debt is huge, no question about that. Texas Comptroller Susan Combs has done a great job of opening voters' eyes, although so far it hasn't had much of an effect.

Anyway, here's where the morning paper became Pauline Kael. In the editorial Midland doesn't care about debt they say this:

The bond debt issue is one we have put out there for our readers, usually to the sound of crickets.

They don't know anyone who is concerned about the debt. Poor Pauline Kael suffered the same condition. She's the New Yorker film critic who said after Richard Nixon won the presidential election, “I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.” (See this for the actual quote.)

Much like Pauline Kael's rather special world, the MRT brass' special world is one in which no one is concerned about the mountain of debt created by the local taxing entities. Their world is inhabited by the folks who promote, not oppose, the bond proposals. See, for example, how they heap praise on them.

If they could step out of their cloistered world they might hear a different side. Captain Watchdog Jason Moore could give them an earful. Currently, a small group of people who really want a bond passed can get it passed with a tiny percent of the registered voters in an election with a light turnout. Moore made an excellent suggestion that bond proposals shouldn't be allowed to pass unless a certain percentage of registered voters vote for it. He hears more than crickets when he speaks.

Charles Murray was right. We congregate with like minded people. There's nothing wrong with that unless you're trying to lecture people outside your circle.

The morning paper lectures conservatives, again

The other day the morning paper editors were busy lecturing conservatives about how many of them went to the defense of Cliven Bundy. And in their effort to bolster their point that conservatives fall in love the wrong kind of people they made a remarkable statement. To wit:

We saw it in the 2008 presidential election when John McCain took a chance with a virtual unknown -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin -- as his running mate. While she was quick to inspire many with a convention speech for the ages, she showed a lack of depth on issues Americans should require of their leaders.

See what they did there? "[S]he showed a lack of dept on issues American should require of their leaders." The media were so busy hammering Palin that they forgot to vet Barack Obama the first time, they ignored his lack of depth on issues Americans should require of their leaders both times, and they got him elected twice. That's what love will do to you.

And as if to prove that lack of depth, on the same day on another page we get a headline that says this:

US efforts have exposed vast differences in Mideast

The Palestinians and Israelis have differences. Who knew? Apparently we all do now, because the Obama administration has exposed them. That's something one might expect to see in the Onion.

Meanwhile, for a better take on the media and Cliven Bundy, see News Media Ambush Cliven Bundy where Edward Cline chastises conservatives for turning tail when the media uses their old tricks on them.

Editor's note: If the morning paper disappoints you so much why did you pay $208 for a full year's supply? Robo-ed. | It's a bargain when you think of it as a source for material. Sleepless.

Left overjoyed at Census change

That's the reverse headline from what actually appeared at Politico.com: Right outraged at Census change.

Maybe the changes that the White House made to the census really were overdue and the clouding of the before Obamacare and after Obamacare data was a mere coincidence. But this administration has demonstrated time and again that if there's a choice between doing the right thing and making themselves look good, the latter prevails at every opportunity.

Anyway, the Politico headline was very administration friendly. Elect a Republican president and watch the main stream media turn into a watch dog media overnight.

Midland Reporter Telegram confesses code violations on front page

Regular Sleepless in Midland readers know all about the Midland, Texas, city code prohibition against the use of police radio scanner traffic.

So it was interesting to see a front page article in the Midland Reporter Telegram, aka the morning paper, about scanner usage by news media, including themselves. They've been doing it for years in flagrant violation of local code. Meanwhile, their editorial writers serve as public scolds.

To be fair, they say in the article that they're trying to do better and won't actually publish "scanner reports online and in the newspaper." Here's the excerpt:

The Reporter-Telegram’s has a policy against publishing local scanner reports.

“At one time, the Reporter-Telegram was one of the biggest offenders, but this is information that has not been confirmed by law enforcement authorities or journalists, which is why we stopped using scanner reports online and in the newspaper,” said Editor Stewart Doreen.

That doesn't get them off the hook. They seem only concerned with publishing the actual words heard through the scanner. However, if they use the information in any way for their benefit  -- to get a lead, to further a story, to get a jump on the competition, etc. --  they've violated the code.

Here's the actual code language:

6-1-9. Police radio; interception of communications.
No solicitor, or other person, not being authorized by the City, shall intercept any communication and divulge or publish the existence, contents, substance, purpose, effect or meaning of such intercepted communication, and no solicitor or other person, not being entitled thereto, shall receive or assist in receiving any message emanating through the medium of KKA-662, and use the same or any information therein contained for his own benefit, or for the benefit of another solicitor or person.
(Ord. of 3-24-1953)

We've had fun with this in previous blog posts. It's a pretty good example of an antiquated law that no one has the courage to repeal. But the news media maintain a cozy relationship with government. And just like David Gregory gets away with brandishing an illegal rifle magazine on national TV, they know the government won't touch them. Laws are for the little people.

Editor's note: Could this be a prelude to an announcement that the emergency services are going to hit up city coffers for a high tech radio system that bypasses scanners? Robo-ed. | Hmm. We'll have to keep an eye out for that. Sleepless.

Did the TV networks actually say no to Obama?

So said Buzzfeed's Evan McMorris-Santoro. See article.

If this is true, the Obama team asked the TV networks for a free prime time slot so he could announce that 7 million people signed up for Obamacare. And the nets said "no."

Apparently they thought they would lose viewers -- an assumption that was likely correct. President Obama may be in the same situation George W. Bush was when the networks turned on Iraq.

Matt Drudge's 1st quarterly estimated tax payment must have included Obamacare tax

This is an example of why the lefty media has earned so much disdain. As I finished checking my Yahoo mail early this morning the Yahoo default page showed up with a string of panels, each of which is a link to a story. The first one (before I turned off cookie permission) was the one shown in the photo.

Seems that Matt Drudge, as a self employed individual, pays an estimated tax each quarter as the IRS expects all self employed people to do. So he tweeted that he paid the Obamacare tax. Then lefties pounced on that because they assumed he was talking about his 2013 tax return. Here's the link to the Yahoo news item as it appears now.

Drudge's first quarterly estimated tax payment for 2014 will be due on April 15, 2014. Whether he paid an estimate of his Obamacare tax is something only he and his tax preparer know for sure. But since he said he did, we should probably take him at his word.

After all, the instructions for the 1040es clearly contemplate that. To wit:

Health care coverage.
When you file your 2014 tax return in 2015, you will need to either (1) indicate on your return that you and your family had health care coverage throughout 2014, (2) claim an exemption from the health care coverage requirement for some or all of 2014, or (3) make a payment if you do not have coverage or an exemption(s) for all 12 months of 2014. For examples on how this payment works, go to www.IRS.gov/aca and click under the “Individuals & Families” section. You may want to consider this when figuring your “Other taxes” on Line 12 of the 2014 Estimated Tax Worksheet. For general information on these requirements, go to www.IRS.gov/aca.

Meanwhile, the Yahoo headline is one of the reasons we should be just as skeptical of Yahoo news as with the other left leaning news outlets.

Morning paper discovers open records requests -- so how about looking into that skyscraper project

The other day the Midland Reporter Telegram was patting itself on the back for doing some investigative work in the form of open records requests aimed at our local government.

While it's tempting to say, "better late than never," we won't go there. Instead let's congratulate them and encourage them to keep it up. We've needed a watchdog to keep an eye on the goings on behind the government doors for a long time. And now that we've got a mayor who beat the newspaper endorsed candidate, maybe we'll get one.

While they're at it, may I suggest doing a few open records requests about that proposed skyscraper that's planned for the old court house square? Many citizens were amazed at how that project seemed to come out of the blue, however all the elected officials seemed to have already made up their minds. Were there any secret meetings that should have be subject to the open meetings laws?

Were there any emails or other correspondence among the elected officials or between the elected officials and the building promoters that the public should see? By the way, if some elected official discussed the project on his private email account it was still city business and should be subject to an open records request.

Make us proud, MRT.com, make us proud.

The subtle way newspapers help incumbents

Voters in Midland, Texas, gave a silent cheer when the Midland Reporter Telegram announced that they would no longer endorse candidates for election. But that didn't stop them from doing the things they've always done to help incumbents stay in office.

Name recognition is possibly the most important thing a politician needs for election, especially in this era of the low information voter. The U.S. Representative for Texas District 11, Mike Conaway, has told audiences that he has a person whose full time job is getting him in the news. Hopefully, that person is paid from the huge campaign contributions he gets from the industries that lobby the committees he's on and not by taxpayers. In any event, that person is doing his/her job.

And in the case of the local paper it probably wasn't necessary. See, for example, this space filler photo in a recent edition.  There was no news there.  The newspaper just wanted us to see the incumbent politician at the podium, and to make sure we knew who he was, they identified him by name. That's how the newspaper helps incumbents. No endorsement necessary.

An interesting remark by Bill Gates about raising the minimum wage

It's nice that someone watches MSNBC so we don't have to. Mike Miller at ijreview.com did and reported about it in This Was Not The Answer MSNBC Host Anticipated From Bill Gates About Raising The Minimum Wage. (Via Future of Capitalism .) Apparently Mika Brzezinski, expecting to hear the party line, asked Bill Gates whether he supported a hike in the minimum wage. Gates answered:

Well, jobs are a great thing. So you have to be a bit careful: If you raise the minimum wage, you’re encouraging labor substitution, and you’re going to go buy machines and automate things — or cause jobs to appear outside of that jurisdiction. And so within certain limits, you know, it does cause job destruction. If you really start pushing it, then you’re just making a huge trade-off.

If workers get too expensive, businesses will build robots to do the work or move where wages are lower. Makes sense, but too often logic gets clouded by good intentions.

Maybe someone will coin a cool word to describe this rule: Regulations are always going to have unintended consequences no matter how noble the intentions.

Sidebar: Speaking of Gates and the government, he can't be too happy that the NSA exploited Microsoft's error reporting system.

What is a "meteoric" rise?

A meteoroid is a small solid object traveling through space. One that enters the earth's atmosphere loses its "oid" and becomes a meteor. Once a meteoroid enters the atmosphere the heat produced by the friction will give off a bright glow visible to the naked eye. And most burn up before striking the earth or exiting the atmosphere.

I'm no astronomer, I simply read the definition at this dictionary. But what brings this to the front is the headline in the morning paper:

New data show ‘meteoric’ rise of Texas oil.

And that makes one wonder just what a "meteoric rise" is. Oil production has certainly been climbing of late. But the metaphoric meteor is rather ominous. Most likely, the headline writer simply pulled up a newsy cliche without putting much thought into it.

But if she had thought it through, she might have envisioned a flaming meteor streaking toward the earth, visible for an instant, then either crashing into the earth or simply disappearing. Either way, the metaphor isn't very encouraging to people in the oil business.

Meanwhile, take a look a this chart. What does that look like?

It looks less like a meteor than a needle in search of a balloon.  Chart source.

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.