Life and Hard Times Free Press

Just who is the "scumbag"?

2011-01-20T14:13:00.005-05:00

At a time even the wackos at PMSNBC are at least giving lip service to the cause of civility, are at least giving lip service to the need to speak moderately, the "editors" and, indeed, the publisher of the Times Free Press continue to publish hate.

For example, in the issue of Sunday, 16 January, in (as usual) the lamentable Perspective section, in (as usual) the despicable "TheRant" feature are these vicious and ugly and -- worst -- anonymous comments:

ANYONE who says Sarah Palin's Facebook "cross-hairs" postings had nothing to do with the Arizona shootings is a liar.

SARAH PALIN might not have pulled the trigger in Arizona, but she sure enough pulled the strings.

BOY! THIS week has really shown that right-wing loudmouths can dish it out, but can't take it. Typical of bullying nature. (This from, remember, an anonymous person.)

HEY RUSH, big boy, are you doing a dancing jig this week on your show? (Honest, sic.) (No, I don't know what it means, either.)

SCUMBAG SKILLERN and Conniving Coppinger. What a duo! We truly have sorry excuses for county commissioners if the others go along with this dirty pair. (Fact: Fred Skillern had been chairman of the county commission and by law was set to become interim county mayor. Mr. Skillern has a son undergoing some serious and ongoing medical procedures so Mr. Skillern is having to manage the son's business. He felt [reasonably in my opinion] he could not do that and be available for his son and be county mayor; so he resigned the chairmanship position and someone else became county mayor. All this was done in broad daylight, was announced beforehand, and nothing sneaky or dishonest was done, not that such facts -- or, apparently, any facts -- matter to anonymous Ranters.)

So back to the title question: Who is the real "scumbag"?

I suggest it is the editing and publishing personnel of the Times Free Press who allow, nay, who encourage such vicious vitriol -- such anonymous garbage -- in the pages of an alleged "news" paper.

Double standard? Or just bigotry?

2010-12-05T20:25:00.002-05:00

Under the heading "Palin has history of being a quitter" is this really rather stupid letter to the "editor": Referring to the fact some people in the Tea Party movement and in the Republican Party endorse Sarah Palin, a writer claiming to be Scott C. Wilson asks, "I wonder if it has occurred to them that they're supporting a person who has a recent history of being a quitter."
Yep, it's a fact that every time she has been elected governor, Sarah Palin quit. Every time. That is quite a record.
The alleged Wilson went on to conclude, "I might be a bit old-fashioned, but when you commit to something you're supposed to finish it. ..."
Now let us hold our breath and wait for the alleged Wilson to note Barack Obama quit his Senate seat with four years to go. (Of course, he actually wasn't often there in that seat even while holding the office, but that's another discussion.)
My number one question on the Sarah Palin matter is this: Why is all the opposition so filled with animosity? Why does no one say "I oppose Sarah Palin because she believes this, or that, or the other"?
No, it's always animosity, very seldom fact based. Sarah Palin is subject to personal attacks that are usually half-baked or hypocritical.
But that's just right for the Times Free Press Perspective.

Vulgarity reigns supreme

2010-12-05T20:04:00.002-05:00

Once again "TheRant" demonstrates the small- and dirty-minded character of whoever edits the Perspective section of the Times Free Press.
On Sunday, 5 December, is this: "SARAH! Cause it's about time we have a president we want to see naked."
Besides the general lowness of class, it is moronically broad -- that is, general. I performed an unscientific survey and asked a very intelligent colleague, "Would you like to see Sarah Palin naked?" I was told in no uncertain terms, "Absolutely NOT!" And she also me told not to bother her any more.
Sure, there are lots of people, even otherwise taste-challenged Democrats, who lust after Sarah Palin, at least in their hearts, but is this really family "news" paper material?
By the way, we have had a president apparently many people -- mostly female people -- did see naked, some not at all willingly, according to reports.
While it might not really say anything about the country or society, it certainly does say a lot about the so-called "news" media that someone of that small caliber can be elected to any office.

Big bad Wolfe, little worse editorialist

2010-11-10T20:21:00.004-05:00

While the "news" paper can't seem to find any room, or qualified reporter, to report on John Wolfe's views or positions on any campaign issues, it always finds room to mention some failing.
In the Saturday, 30 October, issue, is a big mention on his campaign's not having its filings up to date, and a mention that his 2010 campaign is running with money left over from a previous campaign.
Really important stuff.
But what does John Wolfe stand for?
For that matter, what does any candidate in this or, really, any other race stand for?
Even the allegedly endorsing editorial -- Times editorial endorsements are just knee-jerkily for Democrats -- takes time for a sneer:
"John Wolfe may be fighting a losing battle in carrying the Democratic banner -- again -- in the District 3 race, but he is easily the best informed candidate around." Which is sheer nonsense, of course.
However, in the "debate" mentioned previously, Mr. Wolfe did show more knowledge about foreign policy than the two others who showed up.
However, Mr. Wolfe is woefully lacking in knowledge about, for example, economics, about the Constitution (even though he is a lawyer), and about the nature of human rights.
Come to think of it, that also, and better, describes the editorial writers of the Times.
I guess, if I had to choose between the Times and Mr. Wolfe, I'd take the latter. He, as evidenced by his late radio talk show, is at least willing to listen to other opinions.

Editorial points out a shameful fact

2010-11-10T20:13:00.002-05:00

Despite the millions of dollars and tens of thousands of hours spent by candidates and campaigns, Tennessee again had a low voter turnout.
There are, of course, many reasons for that, including generally lousy, even terrible "news" reporting.
Another reason is the difficulties placed on ballot access by Tennessee election laws.
Still another is the lack of quality candidates and, in some races, the lack of any opposition to entrenched incumbents.
At least six legislative positions were not contested.
It is not possible to have good government -- if there even is such a thing -- without broader citizen participation.

No surprise: More bad reporting

2010-11-01T20:59:00.002-04:00

In its continuing lousy coverage of the Third District race, this is a paragraph from a story on Sunday, 31 October: "Also running are tea party independents Savas Kyriakidis, co-owner of the Acropolis restaurant in Chattanooga, and businessman Mark DeVol, of Oak Ridge, along with several other independents."
Two gross errors: Mr. DeVol lives in Andersonville, not Oak Ridge, and three of the other independents have withdrawn and endorsed Mr. DeVol.
Only Don Barkman has not withdrawn, but he has campaigned almost not at all.
Normal people might think a "news" organization would know this.
And perhaps a genuine news organization would.

More TFP schizophrenia

2010-11-01T20:49:00.003-04:00

Only slightly surprising, the Times has editorially endorsed John Wolfe for Congress.
We expect a knee-jerk endorsement for every Democrat, even Democrats who have not campaigned and who are almost totally unknown. (However, apparently strangely, the Free Press often endorses Democrats, at least locally, and it might prove some kind of open-mindedness missing from the Times editorialists but the Democrats so endorsed are nearly always terrible legislators.)
Here is the schizophrenic part: The "news" department continues its mistreatment of Mr. Wolfe (who is an elitist and fascist, but otherwise a nice guy).
In the Sunday, 31 October, edition is this "news" story: "David Wasserman, who follows U.S. House races nationally for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, ... said ... there's no contest in Tennessee's 3rd Congressional District. He said Republican attorney Chuck Fleischmann, of Chattanooga, is the heavy favorite over Chattanooga attorney John Wolfe, a perennial Democratic candidate."
Harold Stassen was a perennial candidate. Nelson Rockefeller was a perennial candidate.
John Wolfe ran in 2002 and in 2004. He did not run in 2006 or 2008.
"Perennial candidate" is, of course, a pejorative term, a sneer.
And about what we expect from this rag of a paper.

No answer from new editor

2010-10-26T16:33:00.003-04:00

This is the kind, courteous, concerned e-mail I sent to J. Todd Foster, the new executive editor, who has, naturally, already offered and broken promises to improve the TFP.
Despite so far three attempts to e-mail him, I have yet to receive an answer:

Dear Mr. Foster,
Recently a tele-marketer called to try to sell me on the Times Free Press.
I laughed at the notion of subscribing and told her why.
First, I do get the Sunday paper, and every week I find one particular feature to be a shameful pile of garbage.
Again, this past Sunday, your very biased and/or dishonest editors allowed into your paper some anonymous filth no decent and honest editor would pass:
"The only difference between the tea party zealots and the KKK is that one group wears white cone heads."
"I took someone's advice and listened to Glenn Beck. Well, he's even crazier than I thought."
Sir, you're new here (or at least new in your position) and you might be forgiven for being ignorant of this fact: Just on the edges of the TFP circulation, three black candidates were endorsed by the Tea Parties in their respective districts.
You should know, but the "news" media have been shamefully ignoring of the fact, that black speakers and black members have been at many Tea Party events.
Your other editors, though, have been told this previously, yet this filth continues in your paper.
If you don't understand why your circulation is dropping, and will drop further, this is part of the reason.
A very few weeks ago, I sent e-mails to every editor listed on your Web site, and to several reporters, inviting them to an event with a syndicated columnist. I sent it twice.
Not one person -- actually one, who was courteous enough to send his regrets because of a funeral -- had even the simple courtesy to reply. And of course no "news" people attended, probably because the speaker's opinions did not fit the apparent prevailing bias of your staff.
Sir, even if you don't try to get honest news reporting, you could at least end the disgrace of anonymous garbage in "TheRant" each Sunday.
In the meantime, I'm trying to talk my friend into dropping it completely. Delivery has already been cut to weekends, but that kind of anonymous filth is not welcome in the homes of decent and honest people.
The only real quality there is the circulation department. Your carrier has been perfect.
Too bad about your news and editorial departments.
Yours sincerely,
Michael Morrison

Credit where it's due

2010-10-26T16:16:00.002-04:00

As mentioned here previously, several times, the worst feature of a bad opinion section in a very bad paper is the execrable "TheRant."
But when, maybe two or even three times a year, someone manages to get in an intelligent comment, I must give credit. (Though I wonder how it got past the "editor.")
This was in the 24 October edition: "Two weeks before the election and the TFP sure touted the GOP bashing editorals and letters to the editor last week. Coincidence, I'm sure."
One of the very few credits to the TFP is the presence of two different editorial pages, the Times on the left and the Free Press on the right, in both senses.
Yet the Sunday Perspective section is always rather heavily weighted leftward, even though Steve Barrett usually makes sense and both Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams columns are usually featured on the Free Press editorial page.
The foul, hate-filled Clay Bennett cartoon sits prominently on the front page of the section and the racist Leonard Pitts, Jr., at the bottom of page 3.
But usually there is at least a pretense of presenting two sides -- itself a picture of part of what is wrong with the "news" media, that the media don't realize there are many more than two sides.
However, as The Ranter said, the previous week, every "Rant" and every letter was biased to the left, the Democrats.
The new executive editor, J. Todd Foster, invites readers to write him at jtfoster@timesfreepress.com ... but he has never answered me, so good luck.

'Journalism' reaches a new low

2010-10-20T20:45:00.003-04:00

Candidates for Congress in Tennessee's Third District, some of them, were invited to a "debate" by a local Tea Party organization Saturday, 16 October.
Three showed up, not including the Republican nominee, Chuck Fleischmann. By the way, please note that is a two-syllable name, properly hyphenated between the h and the m. An explanation follows.
So, appearing were independents Savas Kyriakidis and Mark DeVol, and Democrat John Wolfe.
According to the alleged reporter, Jessie Gable, who either slept through most of it, or who stepped out for a smoke, it "was pretty much a free-for-all against Republican nominee Chuck Fleis-chmann, who wasn't there to refute the attacks." Sic. Sick. As I have pointed out before, obviously no one reads the thing, so errors abound uncorrected. (The TV magazine has, for two weeks in a row, had some computer glitch that puts question marks alternating with every letter and space in one feature. It looks something like this: I?t?l?o?o?k?s?s?o?m?e?t?h?i?n?g?l?i?k?e?t?h?i?s? Even for the TFP that is incredible.)
"Democratic congressional nominee John Wolfe and independent Mark DeVol used the debate at Woodland Park Baptist Church to criticize Fleischmann."
Of course they did, among many other things they said.
"Wolfe referred to Fleischmann, who has stayed away from most multicandidate events, as the 'coward of the county.'"
Yes, Mr. Wolfe did, as he has before, noting that was a line from a country song (by Kenny Rogers?). I might not know who performed it, but even I know the source, and the "reporter" implies it's a gratuitous insult.
Mr. DeVol said Mr. Fleischmann was "up in Washington, D.C., picking out his furniture." That is a line Mr. DeVol has also used before, meaning, clearly, that the GOP nominee feels he has a lock on the seat, a feeling Mr. DeVol disputes.
The two independents "emphasized their conservative credentials to the audience of 100 or so people." There were many more than that.
"Indepent candidates Don Barkman, Gregory C. Goodwin, Robert Humphries and Mo Kiah were not present."
Candidates Goodwin and Humphries both dropped out long ago and both have endorsed Mark DeVol. I alerted another "reporter" about that fact, weeks ago, but apparently no one at the TFP talks to anyone else while they're not reading their rag.
Mr. Wolfe gets dismissed this way: "Wolfe stumbled over the words 'Iraq' and 'Iran' in his answers. A group of his supporters clapped after almost every answer, although the audience was asked at the start to hold its applause."
Also not true.
The TFP has always disliked Mr. Wolfe and published lots of inaccuracies or criticisms over the years, and even the knee-jerk Times editorialists have not endorsed him. Mr. Wolfe just laughs it off, not expecting any accuracy or simple decency.
Fact is, though Mr. Wolfe has extreme and, in my opinion, often wacky, left-collectivist beliefs, he also had a lot of facts at hand, and he expressed his ideas and intentions to a much greater degree than he expressed criticism of Mr. Fleischmann.
And that was true of the other candidates, too. They spent their time telling us in the audience what they thought was right, was needed.
Only one other "news" medium even showed up ... well, one-and-a-half. Channel 61 "news" is run by Channel 9 "news." Saturday night, though, Channel 61's broadcast, because of some sporting event, appeared on Channel 53.
After a very superficial story, about like the TFP's, another story followed in which "major races," governor and Congress, were mentioned, but only the names of Wolfe and Fleischmann were reported! Incredible incompetence and/or dishonesty is obviously not limited to the paper.
As I had told the TV reporter, that Chuck Fleischmann did not show up has been beat to death. Every forum and broadcast talk show in the district has harped and harped on the fact.
No, the story was what those attending candidates said, what they promised, what they believed and intended.
Tennessee has the second-lowest voter turnout in these United States. One reason: Because of slovenly "news" reporting, the voters don't know they have more than the usual lousy two choices. (Tennessee has very restrictive ballot access laws, and while Tennessee men and women are risking their lives in Afghanistan "to bring democracy," we don't have "democracy" here.)
Independent candidates get next to no coverage, except for a couple Internet fora and the radio talk shows, which, in Chattanooga, are almost the only open news outlets.
Despite promises by the new TFP executive editor, nothing is improving; everything is still terrible and apparently getting worse.

Times editorial page 'editing' continues to degenerate

2010-10-13T19:57:00.004-04:00

"Editor's Note" to a letter, published Monday, 11 October, that endorsed Mark DeVol for Congress uses a cliched and erroneous term.
Letter writer Jim Sims, of Red Bank, endorses Mr. DeVol at least in part because the candidate "is for eliminating Congress' retirement program."
Mr. DeVol, who also favors term limits, stresses that members of Congress are supposed to be public servants, that they are being honored enough by being elected, and that the huge benefits and perquisites cost the people too much and are not deserved.
"Urban myths" is what the "editor" calls that. Even if it were an error, it is not an "urban myth," which is a particular class of erroneous beliefs.
Then, though the "editor" deigned to try to contradict the Sims letter, no answer is given to a really stupid letter from Ann Benton of Signal Mountain.
Among other nonsense, she says, "... corporations are buying Republican politicians."
Fact: More corporations gave money to the Democrat national convention than to the Republican national convention.
Multi-billionaire George Soros has decided not to fund the Democrats this year because, he said, he doesn't "want to stand in front of an avalanche." But you know his heart, even if not his money, is with the Democrats.
She said Republicans want to "Demolish Social Security and Medicare."
Where is any editorial rebuttal to that garbage?

It must be asked again: Stupid or dishonest?

2010-09-29T19:21:00.002-04:00

In a not very good paper already, quality takes another bashing with the continued presence of the garbagey "TheRant" each Sunday.
Even the new executive editor hasn't seen fit to get rid of it.
I hope everyone will write him, jtfoster@timesfreepress.com, and urge either new editors or a new feature. Frankly, either would be an improvement.
In the edition of Sunday, 26 September, is this shameful trash: "The only difference between the tea party zealots and the KKK is that one group wears white cone heads."
And this ugliness: "I took someone's advice and listened to Glenn Beck. Well, he's even crazier than I thought."
If "TheRant" has published any hatred like those aimed at the left-collectivists, I have never seen it. And even if I had, I would say the same thing: No quality "news" paper would publish such anonymous garbage. No decent, rational editor would allow it.

Asking for help with an adjective

2010-09-28T19:32:00.002-04:00

Self-righteous hypocrite is not quite the right terminology (and I'm serious about needing help finding the right word or words), although it might come close, for describing the author of a column in the edition of Sunday, 26 September.
Somebody named Garrett Gruener writes, according to the headline writer, "I'm rich -- and I don't mind if you tax me more."
There is an effrontery and, frankly, a dishonesty that would, of course, appeal to the left-collectivists of the "news" media and other Democrats, but which is highly offensive to working and producing people.
Mr. Gruener claims to be an entrepreneur, though I must admit I've never heard of him, or if I had I've forgotten.
Regardless of his fame or lack thereof, what is so irritating about that claim is this: If he really wants to pay more money to any government, all he has to do, especially since he is "rich," is write a check.
No, what he is actually saying is "I want you to be taxed more."
In fact, whenever you hear a "news" person or academic or other Democrat say "They voted to tax themselves," you know it's an untruth. What people voted for was an additional tax on others.
Anyone, rich or not, can always carry money or write a check to any government or governmental body, if they really want it to have more.
Decent people, including even the occasional Republican, but apparently not any Democrat office-holder, believe people ought to be allowed to keep their own property, their own lives, and even their own money -- even "rich" people, a term which keeps being defined downward during these Obama years.
Mr. Gruener, whoever you are, please keep your sticky hands out of my pockets, and Times Free Press "editors," please learn something about economics, about history, about honesty, and about morality. Please.

Amazing: TFP publishes front-page story on Libertarian Party candidates in Georgia

2010-09-26T18:34:00.005-04:00

So-called "news" media usually bend over backward to avoid mentioning any new party or any candidate falling outside the narrow guidelines of the media's own preferences or the even narrower guidelines of the media's knowledge.
But on Saturday, 25 September, the TFP not only acknowledged the existence of the Libertarian Party of Georgia, it treated the party almost as if it were credible.
Naturally it had to find two "experts" who said the LP had no chance, that kind of self-fulfilling prophecy "news" media are so good at and good with.
Here is the rather telling lead: "Though Republicans and Democrats catch almost all of the headlines, John Monds, the Libertarian candidate for Georgia governor, sees factors lining up so his party can make a historic run in the Nov. 2 election."
The fact that Monds is honest and capable could help with the voters, IF the voters can learn of his candidacy.
The Republican has a real problem with ethical questions, at least some of which were brought up by his primary opponent.
The Democrat was already governor once and lost his re-election bid, having angered several constituencies.
The TFP is to be honored for doing its job. If the "news" media just had the decency more often to give voters the facts, the truth, our country might not be in such a mess.

Perfect, easy solution

2010-09-06T21:19:00.002-04:00

Thomas Sowell, in his column published 5 September, says the federal government, specifically the State Department, has used taxpayer dollars to send the imam of that proposed New York mosque (which is NOT at “ground zero”) on a diplomatic visit to the Middle East.
Being thoughtful and sensitive, I have thought hard and come up with the perfect compromise that should satisfy everyone, or at least other thoughtful and sensitive people: Let the New York Muslims build their mosque, and let us close down the federal government.

Still more evidence

2010-09-04T22:28:00.003-04:00

In the edition of Sunday, 29 August, is a story about black re-enactors of the mis-called "Civil War."
One of the participants was quoted as saying re-enacting was a calling. "It just kept calling me when I discovered the history, because this was never taught to us."
Another said, "My teachers didn't know that black soldiers fought in (the war), so they didn't teach us that."
"New scholarship" is credited, as well as the movie "Glory" and "Ken Burns' PBS documentary" on the war.
However, there was a man named George S. Schuyler who had previously written on that subject. Alas, he had also written his autobiography and called it "Black and Conservative," dooming it to obscurity in the left-collectivist controlled media and academia.
His autobiography can be found at Amazon.com.
At Amazon, you can also find several versions of "Black Phalanx," a history of black soldiers from the Revolution onward. Highly recommended to serious historians and anyone just curious about that generally ignored aspect of history.

More evidence of left-collectivist racism

2010-09-04T20:48:00.002-04:00

One more reason John Monds, Libertarian candidate for governor of Georgia, gets left out of "news" coverage: John Monds, Libertarian candidate for governor of Georgia, is black.
To rational people, his skin color is totally irrelevant.
To "news" people, though, it matters.
It matters because black people who stray off the reservation, black people who think for themselves, black people who don't follow a party line -- that party line promulgated by the "news" media -- are ignored, are treated as if they don't even exist.
Thoughtful humorist, and Georgia resident, columnist Ron Hart said, in 2004, "A recent Pew Trust poll told us what we already know: The major media in America are very liberal. They are out of touch with mainstream citizens and their reporting is agenda-driven."
He also said, "The major media are dying because of their lack of objectivity and their desire to use the news to achieve their agenda."

Remember November -- and forget "news" media

2010-09-04T16:03:00.003-04:00

Unlearned (which is nicer than "ignorant") people might not be aware that, come November, the American people will have an opportunity to rectify a mistake made two Novembers back.
One mistake the people need to avoid this year is heavy reliance on the "news" media, perhaps especially the Times Free Press and definitely especially The Associated Press.
For example, in the TFP of Sunday, 29 August, there was a story of the three-way debate with the candidates for governor of Georgia, Republican Nathan Deal, Democrat Roy Barnes ... and, oh, yeah, Libertarian John Monds.
"Oh, yeah," because, as usual, the AP story barely mentions his name and, as usual, the points he tried to make during the debate get left to the bottom of the story which any local paper is likely to cut.
That happened to a candidate I was helping in 1998. Walker Chandler was running as a Libertarian for Georgia attorney general. In the debate, which Georgia public radio broadcast, the Republican and the Democrat just made fools of themselves, and resorted to some childish mud-slinging.
AP, as usual, mentioned the Libertarian as being present, then put his argument at the bottom of the story.
Next morning, when we couldn't find his name in the AP story in the local paper, Walker Chandler got angry at the sorry, dishonest coverage for the first time in the campaign.
I talked to the assistant managing editor and asked why. She said she had been in charge of laying out the paper that night. She also said her paper ordinarily moved that bottom-of-the-story mention of Walker Chandler to the top, since he was a local boy making good.
Alas, that night, being by herself laying out the paper, and being rushed, she didn't see his name, and the story remained in the lousy, dishonest format AP sent it.
Papers usually just clip the story where the space ends, and information at the bottom, no matter how important, just gets left out.
That, gentle reader, shows you how much "news" papers, including the Times Free Press, really care about content.
And that, gentle reader, shows you why "news" papers lose circulation every day, why "news" papers are being relegated to the dustbin of history as people seek their information from better, more immediate, more varied sources.

Surprise: No word from "anonymous"

2010-08-20T21:16:00.002-04:00

But I will make one more comment.
Among the attempted insults was "your three readers."
Actually I have about seven: I, the two anonymouses, and three or maybe even four others who have commented.
We're open to the public, but we do have standards.

Anonymous name-calling

2010-08-16T15:07:00.003-04:00

Recently some apparent coward wrote me a bit of hate-filled name-calling. I didn't read it all and obviously haven't published it -- not for the reason the person seems to ... I won't say "think," but feel.
No, I didn't publish it, not because it is an attack on me, but because it was anonymous and too general to respond to.
If the person had been paying attention, he or she would have seen a previous anonymous attack but with a specific point. Granted, some people thought I had made it up because it failed so miserably to hit its target, but I didn't.
This current attacker called me a "bully," which would be laughable, I guess.
I well remember my first encounter with a bully, two really big kids, monstrous fourth-graders. I was a scrawny little second-grader, so "monstrous" is relative, of course,.
After entering the boys' room, I was accosted by the bullies who demanded I say "yes, sir" to them. I said, "No, sir."
I got my head banged against the wall a few times but never said more than "no," dropping the "sir."
Maybe the bell rang, but the episode ended with my never acquiescing.
I have my name on this blog, and anyone who has paid attention knows my primary political doctrine is the ZAP, the Zero-Aggression Principle. I do not initiate force. By no rational definition can a sane person call me a "bully."
Here, on my blog, I can state a fact or opinion and someone can respond. If it's relatively civil and without obscenities, a response will be published -- IF it is signed.
Let me return to those school days: In junior high one day I shoved the school bully, who responded with a shocked look and almost tears in his eyes: "Why did you shove me?"
Like all real bullies, he was a coward and my little display of anger and even physical response so unnerved him, he never bullied me again.
So I know, from real life, what bullying is.
Bullying includes a government's telling individuals to live a certain way, or else.
Bullying includes threats, which governments are fully capable of carrying out.
Bullying includes intimidation.
How my stating facts and even opinions can be called "bullying" escapes my understanding.
So if this anonymous name-caller wants to write a third time, signing his or her name, and now I need some kind of proof, too, I will be more than glad to publish all three comments.
This is Monday, 16 Aug. By an interesting coincidence, I had planned to post this comment today replying to the anonymous hate post and found the second one sneering that I hadn't posted the first.
Well, here is why. If you have any courage, please respond. But I won't hold my breath.

Logic in "The Rant"

2010-08-02T18:43:00.002-04:00

Out of many bad features in the TFP, "The Rant" is the worst, generally even worse, more ignorant or hate-filled, than the Times editorials.

For thoroughly fouled-up logic, consider this gem from 18 July: "People complain gripe and hate our government but seldom offer any solutions. Remember what nine years of war has cost our nation." (sic)

And this one, which has become one of the Democrat Party's talking points: "George Bush cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans, and 15 million people lost their jobs to pay for those tax cuts."

Perhaps the new editor will use some thought and eliminate this moronic anonymous garbage.

Two funny comments

2010-08-01T20:39:00.002-04:00

In the usually abominable "Rant" of Sunday, 1 August, is this: "Overheard while giving out free U.S. Constitutions at Pops in the Park: A woman replied 'No Thanks, I'm a Democrat.' "

Almost as funny, if it weren't so sad: The TFP apparently has a new executive editor. His name is J. Todd Foster. "And I will share with you a pledge I made July 3 ...: We will give the news impartially, without fear or favor ..."

Yep, we've been seeing that same joke for many decades now. Originally it was on the Times, and was less true than even now.

OK, Mr. Foster is new. We'll give him a chance, but we're not holding our breath.

Inside look at behind the scenes

2010-07-16T17:23:00.002-04:00

Following is a slightly redacted e-mail sent from a TFP reporter to candidates in a certain congressional district race.
I'm leaving out the reporter's name and anything else that serve to identify individuals.

Gang,

As you can see from this e-mail list, there’s quite a few of you running for the (redacted) Congressional District of Tennessee. My name is Red Acted and I’m going to be doing my best to cover each of you fairly in the run up to the election. (Yes I know it’s a bit late to send this, but I’m new here. Doing the best I can.) A couple of housekeeping notes.

Please give me a good number to reach you the night of the election. By this number, please include your name, age and party affiliation. I know that’s redundant, but with so many of you in the race it will make it easier for me to keep track of things.
A number of you have come in for editorial board meetings over the past few weeks and more than one has said they would release their IRS forms (I’m thinking specifically of Mr. X and Mrs. Y, but I wanted to expand this opportunity.) Any candidte that wishes to provide their most recent tax returns may e-mail them to me here or fax them to 423-668-5039.

Good luck to all of you and I look forward to working with you.

Of the candidates who told me about this, some wondered if the person was really a reporter, considering the poor writing style and spelling. I assured them that, yes, that is par for the course at the TFP.
Some also questioned the reporter's wanting to see their Infernal Revenue returns; so do I.
There is not, to my knowledge, any legal requirement for such a declaration. If there is, there shouldn't be; and if there is, it would be unwise, I think, to send it to a stranger.

Good point foolishly attributed

2010-07-09T16:34:00.002-04:00

After some e-mail communication about the horrors of "The Rant," those frequently incredibly stupid and often just nasty anonymous short pieces, apparently the editors of the Sunday TFP are exercising a little more care.
But not much.
For example: "Thomas Jefferson said, 'Seventy percent of the people want free enterprise, 30 percent don't. So why is the 30 percent in charge?' Sound like today?"
It is a very good point ... but it is NOT something Thomas Jefferson ever said.
Any knowledgeable newspaper editor -- of which apparently there isn't one in the Tri-State area -- should know the term "free enterprise" was not in use then.
And that mythical editor should know that, at the time of Mr. Jefferson, mostly it was the free-enterprisers who were in charge.
OK, by no means one of the worst errors in this error-filled section of this error-filled publication, but another example of carelessness that calls into question every word in it.

Phooey on the people, raise them taxes!

2010-07-09T16:21:00.003-04:00

Perhaps it would be like Adolf Hitler's declaring the Sabbath to be a holy day for the Chattanooga Times editorial page to support a rational economic policy (after all, it considers Paul Krugman to be an economist), but its editorial of Sunday, 27 June, is certainly one of its most fascistic and cynical.
In a time of high unemployment, high foreclosure rates, and general consumer worries, its editorial, "Fiscal reality begs tax hike," surely hits a new low even for these economic illiterates.
Chattanooga's mayor, Ron Littlefield, called for an outrageous tax hike, so outrageous that a recall was promptly initiated.
Even the members of the silly council objected ... but only to the outrageous amount, not to the horrible premise.
Still, the big government addicts who write the "down with the people" and "down with freedom" and "up with more government" editorials couldn't or wouldn't see the evil.
The Times will support big government under probably any circumstance.
And what is worse, calling the insanity "fiscal reality" really adds insult to the injury.

He is but a man

2010-06-06T21:03:00.004-04:00

No columnist, no economist, no thinker, no substitute talk-show host in the world stands higher in my estimation than the great, the extraordinary Walter Williams.
Despicable as the Times Free Press is, I still look forward to Sundays because most Sundays, Dr. Williams' column appears, right beneath one by Thomas Sowell.
On 23 May, though, I was reminded of the pageantry of a victorious general leading his troops into Rome to be greeted and adored. He would be riding in a chauffeur-driven chariot pulled by gleaming white horses, and right behind him would be a slave murmuring into his ear (in the King James Latin), "Thou art but a man ... thou art but a man ..."
Just in case your senses have been dulled by too much reading of the TFP, the point was to keep the general's feet on the ground, to keep his head from swelling, to remind him he was a mortal, not a god.
Alas, Walter Williams is but a man. His 23 May column is titled "Immigration and liberty," but, double alas, he doesn't present his usual impervious argument in favor of liberty ... nor in favor of immigration.
He begins, "My sentiments on immigration are expressed by the welcoming words of poet Emma Lazarus' that grace the base of our Statue of Liberty: 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.' Those sentiments are probably shared by most Americans and for sure by my libertarian fellow travelers, but their vision of immigration has some blind spots. This has become painfully obvious in the wake Arizona's law that cracks down on illegal immigration. ..."
Then he blots his copy: "There are close to 7 billion people on our planet. I'd like to know how the libertarians answer this question: Does each individual on the planet have a natural or God-given right to live in the U.S.?"
No one is asking such a silly question.
It is a straw man.
Worse, it deviates sadly from Dr. Williams' usual position that an individual is self-owned, that it is the individual that counts.
Such a question begins, instead, with the premise of the nation-state, with individuals being merely components thereof.
Even more worse, his last sentence begins, "Most importantly ..."
As I have told clients and students, "importantly" is nearly always wrong. Correct use of "importantly" might be in this example: "President Obama strutted around importantly."
Walter Williams remains one of the greatest minds on Earth, however he is but a man.

Golden oldie reminds us

2010-06-06T18:32:00.004-04:00

Looking back to Thursday, 6 November 2008, we can see a glaring reminder of just why so many reasonable individuals believe the Times Free Press to be a miserable excuse for a "news" paper.
In the Metro&Region section of that day the "journalists" and editorializers (so often the same people) were still basking in their accomplishment, there appeared this headline:
"Voters still relishing Obama's victory."
Bear in mind that the circulation area of this rag voted pretty overwhelmingly against Barack Obama and you will surely wonder what was going through whatever passes for a mind in the layout department.
Well, of course, some voters relished that victory, apparently including a large segment of the "news" media generally, but certainly including some pretty second-rate headline writers at the TFP.

Defending the indefensible

2010-06-06T17:31:00.005-04:00

Following a post quite some time ago, "Racist Stulce endorses racist Bennett," I got an anonymous comment, to which I replied, and then I got this anonymous comment (also printed at the original post):

Anonymous said... I will apologize for my actual errors seeing as how I'm an engineer in the navy, not a writer like yourself. But, what I refuse to apologize for is my accusation of you personally attacking Bennett. If you reread your last paragraph, and can't see any attacks, you must be blind. To someone who knows personally that Clay is one of the most anti-prejudice and unbigoted men I've ever met, that looks like an attack. Yes, our CIC is black, so Clay draws him as a black man. That's the closest he's ever come to being a racist. Honestly sir, if you falsely accused me of being a racist, when all my friends and family know that I do everything possible to eliminate any racism or bigotry in my life and workplace, you'd get a good old fashioned military ass-chewing. And in mine and Clay's eyes alike, that is an attack.
Oh, by the way.. I'm remaining anonomous to save my family from any further personal attacks, thank you. I have the iron and resolve of a true american sailor, so please, don't challenge my courage.
MMFN MP

I have no idea what those letters on the bottom line mean, but I left everything just as it was written. Let 'em hang themselves.
Apparently poor Anonymous doesn't really grasp English, judging not only by his spelling but by his complete failure to understand what I said originally, and in my reply to his first anonymous comment.
He tells me "don't challenge my courage," as if joining the Navy (note the capital) is conclusive proof. No, conclusive proof would be his signing his name and standing proud for what he believes, whatever that might be.
Certainly a lot of brave people have joined the military, although I knew a man in Arizona who joined the Navy to stay out of the range of North Vietnamese bullets ... and was made into a corpsman [which is NOT pronounced "corpseman"], was assigned to the Marines, and got wounded three times!
Again, I don't attack Clay Bennett, except as a lying and vicious racist cartoonist. He is a racist, as I have explained several times, apparently to no avail, not because he draws Pres. Obama "as a black man," but because he ignores black people who don't buy into the same vicious, fascistic, racist viewpoint he does.
A friend told me she thought Anonymous's first comment was a hoax, a put-on -- in fact, she accused me of making it up -- then on re-reading just decided that, if that is an example of Clay Bennett's friends, he doesn't need any enemies.
However, even if he doesn't need any enemies, he keeps creating them, with every new cartoon attacking honest people, attacking people who prefer freedom to his desired racist, fascist system.
I, though, will not be an enemy of Clay Bennett, the person. I am not an enemy of much of any person, although, alas, there are persons who consider me an enemy, and there are persons who want to make me some type of political peon, me and every other individual.
But Clay Bennett, cartoonist of hatred, racism, fascism, and, yes, dishonesty, will definitely continue to be a target, though not an enemy.
By the way, why does Anonymous think being an engineer is an acceptable excuse to be semi-literate?
P.S. It is possible, although highly unlikely, that Mr. Bennett draws his vitriolic cartoons at direction from an editor or publisher or somebody. But it probably won't save his soul.

Why does Times publish falsehoods?

2010-04-21T18:54:00.002-04:00

Again the question: Incompetence or Dishonesty?
Please see the link at the top of the blog.
Someone has a book and a film titled "Not Evil Just Wrong."
The nice people producing them believe, and want us to believe, the "global warming" scammers are not intentionally telling us falsehoods, that in fact the "global warming" proponents do also believe what they are saying, but are, simply, wrong.
Is that what we should in turn believe about the people who produce the Times editorial page?
That they believe their hogwash, but are just uninformed? Or dumb?
On said page for Wednesday, 21 April, there is a letter with this sentence: "Rep. Randy Neugebauer called Rep. Stupak, a leading right to life advocate, a 'baby killer' while Stupak was addressing Congress."
What Rep. Neugebauer said was, in fact, that the bill was a baby killer, and he explained that and apologized to Rep. Stupak, and some "news" organizations did report the facts.
Now if I, a very limited consumer of "news," can know that fact, why can't the editors of this alleged "news" paper know it?
And if they know it, why do they allow a falsehood into print on their editorial page?
Yes, I realize it follows their tradition of allowing their cartoonist and their syndicated columnists to call Tea Party people "racist," when any honest or sane person knows that also is a falsehood. (To repeat, just in Memphis and in Mississippi, there are three Tea Party candidates who are black, a fact easily knowable to "news" people in Chattanooga.)
The mis-called editors botch the heck out of grammar and punctuation and change well-written and accurate letters frequently. So why can't they correct genuine errors, why don't they avoid falsehoods?
The same letter continues the apparent falsehoods about some congressmen being called racially disparaging names, although no one has offered any proof, and at least one person who was with the alleged victims said it didn't happen.
Why, to ask again, though expecting no answer, why do the editors of the Times editorial page continue to publish blatant falsehood?
Letter writer John Bratton, of Sewanee, might be blind and honestly ignorant. He might have an excuse to write such inaccurate garbage.
The editors have no excuse. They must know they are publishing falsehood.

Time to reign in incompetent editing

2010-04-12T21:22:00.005-04:00

Yes, I know what my headline says, but the "editor" for letters to the Times, Wednesday, 7 April, apparently doesn't recognize homonyms.
His letter head reads "Time to reign in wild spending."
The otherwise intelligent letter contains the same mistake, though it was not necessarily the writer who did it, but a real editor would have caught the error.

Dat ol' debbil weed

2010-04-11T22:03:00.003-04:00

Straight from watching scenes of "Reefer Madness," Lee Anderson editorializes on "Crime and 'medical' marijuana" in the 29 March edition.
"A common argument in favor of legalizing marijuana is that legalization would reduce the big profits available from illegal sales of pot and therefore reduce drug-related crime.
"That claim appears to be on shaky ground in numerous states:
* Armed men recently broke into a Colorado site where "medical" marijuana was being grown legally. They bound the people inside, rifled through their belongings and made off with marijuana and guns.
* Three days later, five people invaded the home of a legal marijuana grower near Seattle and tried to rob him of his supply. The owner and a suspect were wounded in a shoot-out. But police say the victim, whose operation has been targeted for theft eight times, had nearly 400 marijuana plants -- far more than the 15 he is permitted under Washington's "medical' marijuana law. Ironically, four of the suspects are believed to have been smoking pot when they hatched the robbery plan.
* Another Washington man was beaten to death when he confronted a trespasser on land where he legally grew pot to 'treat' back pain.
* Meanwhile, California police have documented seven slayings linked to legal 'medical' marijuana in a one-year period, plus dozens of other crimes. In one case, a security guard was gunned down as he stood watch at one of Los Angeles' hundreds of 'medical' marijuana shops.
"'Whenever you are dealing with drugs and money, there is going to be crime. If people think otherwise, they are very naive,' Scott Kirkland, police chief in El Cerrito, Calif., told The Associated Press. 'People think if we decriminalize it, the Mexican cartels and Asian gangs are going to walk away. That's not the world I live in.'
"It seems the marijuana business and the crime associated with it are alive and well even in places where it is now legal."
Mr. Anderson is making the same mistake so many illogical people who are motivated by irrational religious prejudices have made: Ignore all other evidence and point to the bad stuff I don't like however nebulously associated it is.
People rob liquor stores, too; people hijack tobacco trucks.
Heck, people even steal newspapers, although that certainly is petty theft.
Do we, in those other cases, blame the stolen object?
Mr. Anderson's petty habit of putting quotation marks around the word "medical" in reference to marijuana just emphasizes his ignorant prejudice.
Even cocaine has medical uses.
Last I heard, the federal government, the very picture of schizophrenia, was giving marijuana to about half a dozen glaucoma patients.
A man I met several years ago told me he had been in a federal experiment testing whether marijuana would help his epilepsy. Parkinson's patients are given, in federal hospitals, a THC-derived medication.
Lots of things are bad for people and lots of things are bad for some people and not bad for others and there is no place for government to be involved.
Heck, it is very bad for one's health to read stupid and fascistic editorials. Should those editorials or editorializers be outlawed?

Down with "corporatist" politicians

2010-04-11T21:38:00.003-04:00

Letter writer Amos Nance, of Jasper, Tenn., is one of those eagle-eyed, alert citizens whose vigilance will save us.
Editors put the head "Reform shows GOP to be corporatist" on his letter of Saturday, 3 April.
Mr. Nance wrote, "America will now find out that the health care reform bill was not the monster under the bed that Republicans said it would be."
That's an interesting comment considering that no one yet knows just what IS in the bill.
But Mr. Nance concluded, "The health care bill can help expose them for what they are -- corporatist."
Yep, I have here a report on how many corporations donated to help the slimy Republicans hold their national convention in 2008: 50!
See? Fifty greedy capitalist pig corporations gave money to the greedy Republicans.
The good guys, the common-people-oriented Democrats were given money by only 75 corporations.
So there!

'Fact or fiction?' headline for fictive article

2010-04-03T21:10:00.002-04:00

Emily Bregel continues propagandizing for nationalized health care.
Her front-page article on Wednesday, 31 March, is headlined "Fact or fiction?" and piles more fiction onto the piles she has already shoveled out for us.
Her very first sentence echoes her previous piles: "From the debunked 'death panels' rumor over the summer to a politician's prediction of 'Armageddon,' overstated or outright false statements about the impact of reform are drowning out legitimate concerns over changes in the nation's health care system, some local health industry leaders worry."
Naively thinking, or hoping, that Ms. Bregel just didn't understand the English language, I wrote her some months ago about her terminology:
Dear Emily (this was my second e-pistle; she finally answered my first one after I made three attempts),
Here is the way I heard it, many years ago: A congressman from Asheville, North Carolina, would stand up in the House to give a speech, but would first wink at his co-conspirators and say, "This is for Buncombe," which, as you know, is the county in which Asheville sits.
Then he would proceed to pile up a bunch of ... well, buncombe.
"Bunk" became the shortened form of "buncombe."
Here is what Wikipedia says:

The American Heritage Dictionary traces the passage of the words bunk (noun), debunk (verb) and debunker (noun) into American English in 1923 as a belated outgrowth of "bunkum", of which the first recorded use was in 1828, apparently related to a poorly received "speech for Buncombe" given by North Carolina representative Felix Walker during the 16th United States Congress (1819–1821).^[2]

The term debunk originated in a 1923 novel Bunk, by American novelist William Woodward (1874–1950), who used it to mean to "take the bunk out of things."

Often the term "debunkery" is not limited to arguments about scientific validity. It can also be used in a more general sense at attempts to discredit any opposing point of view, such as that of a political opponent.

So, as you see, "debunk" is a pejorative term and not really suited to the use you gave it. It would be acceptable in an opinion column or editorial, but it is out of place in what is supposed to be a non-partisan, objective news story.
Yours,
Michael

Naturally, she didn't have the courtesy to reply; and, perhaps also naturally, she continues to propagandize, to "report" dishonestly, or at least inaccurately,

Surprising accuracy in editorial

2010-04-03T21:03:00.003-04:00

"Chattanooga not 'OK Corral'" reads the lead editorial in the Free Press for Tuesday, 30 March.
Lee Anderson was referring to a string of shootings over a very short period of time, and at that he was a little anticipatory: There were more shootings before the ink was dry.
However, Mr. Anderson was, accidentally, correct: Chattanooga is not the O.K. Corral.
The O.K. Corral, in Tombstone, Arizona, had only one shooting.

Bregel strikes, part two

2010-03-29T21:18:00.003-04:00

Included in the advocacy piece masquerading as Emily Bregel's "news" story is commentary from the Orwellian-named outfit called the Tennessee Justice Center (sic) in Nashville.
Gordon Bonnyman is identified as the executive director and apparently his idea of "justice" is being able to tap into other people's money.
The new Robin-Hood-Nanny-State law is welcomed by Mr. Bonnyman as a huge relief, according to Ms. Bregel.
"Those reforms, I think, are just fundamental to making the insurance system work right," Mr. Bonnyman is quoted, meaning he too is tickled other people will now be forced to hand over their money to spend as he sees more fit.
Frankly, I now need to see a stomach doctor because of the treacly approach by this terribly partisan "journalist."
She does, surprisingly, manage to bury some not-so-palatable facts in the bottom of the story relating that, surprise, surprise, insurance premia will have to rise, but I'll bet Ms. Bregel still has too little sense of both economics and morality to understand.

Bregel strikes again

2010-03-29T21:02:00.005-04:00

She wears a costume as "Socialized Medicine Woman," but her secret identity is mild-mannered reporter Emily Bregel.
Ms. Bregel is, if not the official TFP point woman for nationalized health-care, at least the semi-official one, the chief "news" page advocate.
In the Sunday, 28 March edition, she has a front-page story headlined "Opening for those locked out of coverage."
Her centerpiece is a woman who had had treatment for breast cancer. Bregel sort of quotes her: "I think the (health care) bill's really flawed, but we all know that pre-existing conditions (protections) are a must-have."
In other words, she's saying, I'm tickled there is now a law forcing insurance companies to hand me money.
Well, now I want to go to my insurance agent and say, "Sorry, but I wrecked my car yesterday, and so now I want to add full comprehensive and collision to my policy."
Let's be serious: I need my car; therefore someone must pay for it. I can't. And, heck, insurance companies have lots of money, so, Q.E.D.

Trever does it again

2010-03-23T20:10:00.003-04:00

Albuquerque-based cartoonist par excellence John Trever originally published the below art 19 February, but it appeared in the Free Press on 22 March, still very appropriate.
Mr. Trever is one of the best cartoonists in the history of the medium.

Selfishness helped health-care nationalization pass?

2010-03-23T19:37:00.005-04:00

Why did that monstrosity of a bill pass? Here, from the front page of the Monday, 22 March, edition, is one explanation.
Identified as a "Medicare enrollee" and, worse, "UTC professor" -- which implies some level of education or knowledge (or should, anyway) -- Sonia Young cheered the passage of socialized medicine with this explanation: "My feeling is it's not the best bill possible, but it's better than nothing. I have a selfish interest in it as a senior and a mother of a cancer patient."
Now ordinarily "selfishness" is a shibboleth of the leftists: They denounce us with that epithet when we try to forestall their attempts at furthering their fascist welfare state.
Because we want to keep the fruits of our own labor, because we want to make the decisions governing our own lives, we are "selfish."
However, for years I have been trying to tell everyone that greed and envy are the bases of the support the left has among the population.
The left-collectivist politicians have a lot of success buying our votes with our own money.

Who's the moron?

2010-03-21T15:33:00.003-04:00

As badly assembled as the TFP is, honesty requires us to mention that not all the nonsense and stupidity and dishonesty originates there. Some of it comes to the TFP via syndicates and other sources, including the shameful Associated Press.
But in the Friday, 19 March, edition of the FYI Weekend insert is something even an alleged "editor" of the TFP should have caught.
Each Friday, the last inside page is called "Punch Lines," and sometimes there are funny jokes and stories and comments.
For some reason, each edition contains some of the garbage known as "Dave Letterman's Top 10," though it is almost never funny.
Now remember this edition comes just after we changed our clocks ahead one hour for the "Daylight Saving Time" imposed by the federal government.
This is titled "Top 10 dumb guy ways to use the extra hour (sic) of daylight saving time," with a note these are the "winning entries in online contest." (God save us from the losing entries.)
Here are a few:
10. Watching "60 Minutes" twice.
5. Try to make VCR blink 11:00 instead of 12:00.
4. Lose an anxious hour of sleep wondering what to do with the extra time.
Granted, the stupidity came from those people guilty of the Letterman show, but surely SOME person at the TFP should have read the dumb things and found something a little closer to real life, something aware we LOST an hour Sunday morning.
But, as I have noted several times, obviously no one actually reads the stuff before it goes to the press.

What's yours is mine

2010-03-21T15:28:00.004-04:00

Headline on a Friday, 19 March, letter from someone using the name "Rachel Wheeler": "Propaganda halts health care bill."
(Actually, it is only propaganda, propagated by the "news" media, that has allowed it to get this far.)
I question that "Rachel Wheeler" is the real name of the letter writer because surely no person would use a real name to make such dumb comments.
Here is the topper: "Why allow providers of essential services and products to accumulate great wealth?"
In other words, precisely because you have something I need -- or want -- you should hand it over for free.
Is "Rachel Wheeler" not obviously a product of the Dr. Spock generation?
And no doubt also a dedicated reader of the nonsense so prevalent on the pages of the Chattanooga Times.

Is this blogger the only one who reads TFP?

2010-03-18T19:43:00.003-04:00

As has been suggested before, if the Obama administration starts handing out "stimulus checks" to "news"papers, we need to hope the TFP will hire some copy editors.
As has been mentioned before, apparently no one at the TFP office actually reads the thing before it gets printed.
Other than the editorial pages, the worst "edited" part is the shameful TV Times, which seems to be made up of scattered bits and pieces just thrown together.
Example, from the Feb. 28 - March 6 edition: In the TV Trivia quiz, Question 1 is "On the NBC series 'Suddenly Susan' who was Susan Keane? (a) Brooke Shields (b) Kathy Griffin or (c) cancelled after the first season?" (sic, honest).
Oh, and to make it really difficult, beside it is a photo of Brooke Shields.
Question 4 asks which soda was "Radar" O'Reilley's (sic) favorite, with one of the answer choices being "Dr. Pepper." Well, OK, I once worked with an "editor" who kept a can on his desk constantly and he spelled it wrong, too. He was just bad enough to have qualified for the TFP. (For anyone who doesn't know: There is no period in "Dr Pepper.")
In the SneakPeek (upcoming film releases) of the Jan. 24 - 30 edition: "Edge of Darkness (R) Wide Release - Centers on a veteran cop Thomas Craven (Mel Gibson) whose only grown-up child (Novakovic) is murdered on the steps of his home. The cop unearths his daughter's secret life and discovers a world of corporate cover-ups and government collusion. When his only child, 24-year-old Emma, is murdered on the steps of his home, everyone asumes that he was the target. But he soon suspects otherwise, and embarks on a mission to find out about his daughter's secret life ..."
In the edition of Jan. 10 - 16: "The Book of Eli (R) Wide Release - A lone warrior (Denzel Washington) who must fight to bring society the knowledge that could be the key to its redemption. Oldman has been set to portray the despot of a small makeshift town who's determined to take possession of the book Eli's guarding.. (sic)"
And it's like that every week.

Columnist Dowd needs remedial English, as well

2010-03-18T18:41:00.002-04:00

New York Times columnist Moron Dowd was one of the first to point a scurrilous finger and call the Tea Party people "racist," with, of course, no evidence (not that that has ever stopped or even slowed her down before).
Moron Dowd has long been in need of remedial study in logic and ethics, but her mess that ran Sunday, 14 March, in the Chattanooga Times proves she needs some refresher also in English.
She wrote of wanting to go to Mecca but, being both female and non-Muslim, she wouldn't be allowed to make the trip.
"And that's when the paradox sunk in ..."
Sure, the wrong tense has crept into American (and I don't know about English; it's mis-spoken in the United Kingdom, but I don't know if that verb form is botched over there as it is here),
The Disney people (and don't we miss Walt nearly every day?) heaped coals on the heads of grammarians with "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids," but Moron Dowd is supposedly a professional writer.
And those "editors" at the vaunted, but obviously over-rated, New York Times are supposedly professional, too.
But apparently none of them and only this Hillbilly blogger does pay attention, or care.
The word, Ms. Dowd, is "sank"; and, Disney people, your word is "Shrank."

Brace yourself: Here is a compliment!

2010-03-18T18:26:00.003-04:00

So, OK, nobody is perfectly bad. Even the Times Free Press has one local writer who got it right: Steve Barrett.
His column of Sunday, 14 March, is a gem of good writing and common sense and even good reporting, all of which are in very short supply in the TFP.
A current issue in Chattanooga is the alleged "gouging" of people who ignore "No Parking" signs and get their cars towed -- and then owe big bucks to the towing company.
Chattanooga city government office-holders are wanting to pass a law putting a cap on prices the towing companies can charge.
Mr. Barrett talked to tow company owners to get some facts about their costs in being in business, and about their potential liabilities.
It's worth noting, too, that the towees have broken a law, and have usually blatantly ignored signs saying they could be towed and would be liable for costs.
Mr. Barrett even talked to the board involved and found a member who is quoted regarding the tow companies' costs, costs beyond those normal to being in business: "That point has never been brought up, and that's a very valid point."
The second part of his Sunday commentary concerns "The Security Myth," and a quote I've never seen before is worth repeating: "Security is mostly a superstition," said Helen Keller "on the nature of reality."
His next paragraph quotes The Associated Press: "The trustees project that the Medicare fund will be depleted by 2017."
Those trustees are the same people, government people, who run the Social Security System and will run the new nationalized health care scheme.
Thank you, Mr. Barrett.

No surprise: Front-page advocacy in TFP

2010-03-10T18:08:00.006-05:00

Probably it's more than a coincidence the headline on the front-page story says "Numbers count for federal aid," with a sub-head reading "Results mean $1,480 for every person recorded in community."
Then, in great, objective journalist style, the story, bylined Dave Flessner, begins, "A postal milestone is coming to your mailbox, starting this week, and your response will be worth millions of dollars to local governments across Southeast Tennessee and Northwest Georgia."
The "news," already announced by tens of millions of taxpayer dollars in advertising, including even an obscenely expensive ad during the Super Bowl telecast, is "the Census is coming."
Here is where the non-coincidence comes in: That very day, Tuesday, 9 March, USPS brought me a letter, very personally addressed:

Dear Resident:
About one week from now, you will receive a 2010 Census form in the mail. When you receive your form, please fill it out and mail it in promptly.
Your response is important. Results from the 2010 Census will be used to help each community get its fair share of government funds for highways, schools, health facilities, and many other programs you and your neighbors need. Without a complete, accurate census, your community may not receive its fair share.

Below, in six different languages, is the instruction to "Go to 2010Census.gov for help completing your 2010 Census form when it arrives."
In the U.S. Constitution are these words regarding the census: "Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons."
That sentence has, of course, been seriously amended, but the next is operative and relevant to the census: "The actual Enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as they shall by law direct."
And that's it.
"Enumeration" means a counting, an ascertainment of how many people there are so that representation can be determined.
Those very intelligent and knowledgeable people who wrote the Constitution never intended to create a structure for redistributing assets, for handing around the produce of working people to others.
To reiterate: The Census was meant solely to count people in order to know about proper congressional representation.
Today, though, it is being sold as another "share the wealth" scheme, a "get your share of other people's money" arrangement.
Frankly, I'm looking forward to the opportunity to throw my Census form into the garbage.
And by the way: Wouldn't it be better and simpler in the first place just to let me keep my own $1,480 instead of promising me someone else's?

Racism wins again

2010-03-08T16:57:00.006-05:00

Semi-professional columnist (he gets paid but does a lousy job) and professional racist Leonard Pitts, Jr., made some interesting points in his Sunday, 7 March, outpouring, and some of the points he didn't intend to make.
First, let me note a few facts that won't be found in the TFP, or much of any other "lamestream" media.
Essayist and thinker Glenn Harlan Reynolds wrote in a column, "What I Saw at the Tea Party Convention," of two people in attendance who intended to go home to Mississippi and run for office.
They, like so many others there, were not experienced in politics, but were moved by the evils being perpetrated in D.C. and other seats of government.
The two Mr. Reynolds named were (gasp) black!
All right, that's reality. Reality and truth have never been known to stop such people as Mr. Pitts (or cartoonist Clay Bennett).
No, Mr. Pitts insists on seeing racism even though it isn't there.
Sometimes seeing what isn't there is an ocular problem, but often it is a mental problem.
Now, as if Mr. Pitts himself didn't already have credibility difficulties, he begins his column quoting the clinically insane Keith Olbermann of MSNBC.
"A few words on the meaning of tea.
"They are occasioned by a recent commentary from Keith Olbermann of MSNBC. The commentary -- you can find it on YouTube -- scores the tea party movement as the outcry of people who haven't yet made peace with the fact that their president is black.
"Everything else, said Olbermann, is euphemism. Taxes? Socialism? Budget deficit? No, he argued, when you strip away the pretenses and rationalizations, 'it's still racism,' and they hate the president only because he is black."
Now Mr. Pitts is apparently not as loony as Mr. Olbermann: "My point is not that Olbermann's argument is wrong," and of course we would never expect him to disagree with the MSNBC house crazy, "but, rather, that it is incomplete.
"Yes, race is obviously a component, and a major component at that ..."
Well, it goes on, and just further proves Mr. Pitts should be at least an outpatient.
MSNBC reached one of its nadirs when some of its screechy commentators were nigh fainting over a video showing part of a body that was armed and, worse, armed at an appearance of President Obama.
The MSNBC hysterics just couldn't accept that some obvious racist, and probable Klansman, would DARE appear in the crowd of a black president (their words) wearing a firearm. What a horrible sight!
Fortunately other, and genuine, news organizations also had video footage of that man with the holstered weapon. And the other organizations showed the whole person -- who is (gasp) black!
Well, Mr. Pitts, who is also black, obviously makes a pretty good living -- a better living than he deserves -- playing that proverbial race card.
But Mr. Olbermann, who is white, obviously reported on too many football games without his helmet (to paraphrase Harry Truman on Gerald Ford).
His rants are so beyond the pale, I can't understand why even Mr. Pitts would bother to quote him.
"Liar" is a word I hate to use, but Mr. Olbermann is either willfully blind, meaning dishonest, or perhaps just so incredibly stupid that he actually can't and doesn't see what is in front of him.
What is equally blind, stupid, and racist is the editorial policy of the TFP that every week prints a hate-filled and either dishonest or at least very inaccurate column by Leonard Pitts, Jr.

Columnist Magee joins the mad rush

2010-03-05T15:05:00.003-05:00

David Magee was blessedly gone from the pages of the TFP for some time and no one I know or know of missed him. Alas, he's back, further polluting the pages of an already dismal paper, causing the deaths of countless innocent trees, and joining the throngs of economic and constitutional illiterates in the media.
Since his return as a regular columnist, his work has been boring but generally innocuous.
His column of Thursday, 4 March, while still boring, is not innocuous. He echoes the call for nationalization of health care.
"Health care costs are rising faster than inflation," he wrote, apparently ignorant of the causes of inflation, or, probably, even the meaning of the word.
His last paragraph shows his total disdain for the plight of the working and producing people, as well as his ignorance of both moral and economic consequences: "Sure, the fix may not be exactly right. It may not even be halfway there. Anything, though, is better than the current situation, which does not add up."
His attitude, similar to that of President Obama, is also similar to that of the Nazis toward the end of World War II: They knew the Allies were winning; they knew they would not have time or opportunity to kill all the Jews, but they were willing to kill as many as they had in their power.
Mr. Magee, Pres. Obama, and so many of the other unthinking left-collectivists know they can't completely socialize these United States; they know the coming elections will throw a lot of them out of office; but they are willing to collectivize as much of the economy as they are allowed, and destroy a lot of lives doing it.

Editors offer divergent views

2010-03-04T19:38:00.003-05:00

As most educated readers know, editorial writers are generally the fuzziest thinkers and dullest wordsmiths even in the generally fuzzy and dull world of journalism.
In the edition of Wednesday, 3 March, the leftist Times editorializer hewed to the demagogic party line that the evil Senator Jim Bunning is grabbing food and medicine out of the mouths of starving widows and orphans:"Sen. Bunning's cruel hold."
The rightist Free Press ditto titles his editorial "Senator calls Congress' bluff."
Mr. Anderson's position is "Sen. Bunning is now being denounced for blocking federal spending. Instead, he should be praised for proving that Congress' supposed 'pay-as-you go' rules are really 'pay-as-you-borrow-and-tax' rules."
The Times demagoguery contains such garbage as "Party of No" and "their blatant obstructionism," winding up with "... they don't seem to mind how many innocent Americans they hurt in the process."
In all the long years the Times has been proclaiming big, intrusive government -- and that's all the years I've been aware of its existence -- "innocent Americans" have seldom been the concern of its editorial writers ... or its "news" reporters.
"Innocent Americans" are the working and producing people whose money is forcibly taken to allow the demagogues to buy more votes ... and to make the economy even worse by excess regulation and red tape and taxation.
If editorialists really cared about "innocent Americans," they'd call for more actions such as Sen. Bunning's and for repeals of laws and restrictions.
They'd call for a free market that would create jobs and let people work.

Editor misses point of campaign finance

2010-02-05T19:55:00.002-05:00

Jumping on the bandwagon of complaints about political campaigns and money, editor Lee Anderson (Thursday, 4 February) expresses his worry about "huge sums of money from corporations, labor unions or any other organizations that may be able to concentrate enough money to improperly 'buy' election decisions."
As is usual in this discussion, Mr. Anderson is worrying about the smallpox spots rather than the disease.
If politicians and office holders would simply obey the Constitution, if they would simply restrict themselves to creating laws that protected the rights of people, then there would be no problem.
The problem, the possibility of moneyed interests either buying elections or influencing legislators or bureaucrats, would not even exist if governments, politicians, and bureaucrats had not just taken, illegally, immense power and powers unto themselves.
Many interests give money to buy favors, and others give money to prevent further harm.
Chop down the size and scope of government, and the money question ceases to exist.

Astonishing! A clever 'Rant'

2010-02-01T18:31:00.002-05:00

Mirable Dictu! There is one intelligent TFP reader who wrote to "Rant" and got a comment published:
They say Obama, Reid and Pelosi spend like drunken sailors. When I was a drunken sailor, I quit spending when I ran out of money!
It becomes even better when one realizes it was published the day before the record-shattering Obama budget was announced.

"Moral" headline is right ... almost

2010-01-30T11:41:00.004-05:00

"Care labeled a moral issue" is a headline on a story in the Metro & Region section of the Saturday, 30 January, edition.
A so-called "medical ethicist" named Larry Churchill is subject of the story because he is scheduled to speak (barring several inches of "global warming" keeping the roads closed to him -- essentially Tennessee has been shut down by a major storm) Sunday.
His topic is "What is Really at Stake in Health Care Reform" (sic).
In the story, bylined by the notorious Emily Bregel, apparently the TFP's primary advocate of a socialized medical system, he is asked "What is the greatest barrier to health care reform in the U.S.?"
Naturally, this academic, who doesn't have to live in the real world, cites the fact that a lot of people make their living, or, as he says, "a very good living," providing medical services.
Mr. Churchill, who as a Vanderbilt University Medical Center employee, makes a very good living, makes a heck of a lot more money than, even, Emily Bregel, but he still feels superior enough to tell the rest of us we are -- and of course I'm extrapolating here -- "selfish."
He would probably say "racist," too, since that's the current buzz word, the most-used trendy word to denounce us non-elites, us proles who dare to disagree with our betters.
Still, the headline writer got it right, though unintentionally, I'm sure: It is indeed a moral issue and the elitists, who won't forgo a penny of their income (forced from the pockets of working and producing people), are not only willing but eager to coerce all us proles into complying with their version of a moral code.
It is so strange to watch those elitists throw up their hands in horror if a high school valedictorian wants to say "Thank you, God": That, they say, is imposing a religious viewpoint, and that's a no-no.
When those elitists, though, decide on a moral code, it's more than all right to impose it since, after all, it was created by those elitists, those highly educated -- actually merely schooled -- superiors who are, by definition, our betters.
At least by their definition.

Racist Stulce endorses racist Bennett

2010-01-20T19:10:00.006-05:00

Being morally and intellectually bankrupt, today's American left is able only to resort to vicious name-calling and denunciations of any proles who dare to disagree with our betters.
In the TFP edition of Wednesday, 20 January, former would-be Democrat candidate for Congress Terry Stulce has a letter to the editor.
In it he joins the finger-pointing chorus (it's not really a mixed metaphor: a vocal chorus is a waste to people who refuse to listen, but even those intentionally deaf might see fingers).
The erstwhile candidate, despite overwhelming financial support, despite spending about 10 times as much as his opponent, despite having the support of the Times editorial and news departments, lost the primary.
Even the other Democrats, at the rank-and-file level, were uncomfortable with his near-Marxist approach. The leaders, of course, were in lock step.
His letter appeared on the one-year anniversary of the reign of the Anointed One, and the new year continues to be as ugly as the previous.
For example, Mr. Stulce, rejected even by other Democrats, writes in support of cartoonist Clay Bennett, about whom a few opposing letters have recently been published.
Mr. Stulce and Mr. Bennett, bigoted and closed-minded to the last, continue to try to foist onto the public the untruth that the Republicans and the Tea Party movement are racist.
Mr. Stulce uses the technique of equating two not-necessarily connected positions to "prove" his own basically moronic point. He says, for example, that people, including the late President Reagan, who opposed so-called affirmative action are also anti-black. Consistently, the two ignore the fact, available to any honest person, that the leading public opponent of "affirmative action" is Ward Connerly, who is (gasp!) black.
Mr. Stulce claims, without a speck of evidence, offering not any proof, there have been "racial slurs" at "Republican rallies by 'tea baggers.'
It would be easy to claim Mr. Stulce is merely a lying pile of garbage, but it is possible that he is merely crazy, or -- to be kind -- merely blind.
Glenn Beck, who is probably the only broadcaster to make the effort, has had at least two programs whereon all the participants were black conservatives and libertarians and at least one anarchist -- anarchist in this case meaning probably "anarcho-capitalist."
There have been many people including speakers at the rallies and protests and Tea Parties who were black, but of course they were ignored by the "news" media, and certainly ignored by racists such as Messrs. Stulce and Bennett.
One of the black speakers, at a rally in Pennsylvania, referred to the previous November election as one where white voters of America showed they were not racist ... and black voters showed they are.
Black columnists Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams, both of whom are frequently published on the Free Press page of the TFP, are vehemently on record opposing the socialist-fascist policies of the Obama administration; how can Messrs. Stulce and Bennett ignore such prominent blacks, who are published in the same raggedy paper as Mr. Bennett's cartoons and Mr. Stulce's silly letters?
Obviously -- there is no other answer -- Messrs. Bennett and Stulce are racists. They are blind to the existence of blacks, those "invisible men" (in Ralph Ellison's words), who don't bow to the elitists, such as, by pure coincidence, Messrs. Stulce and Bennett.

Racist Bennett draws perfect picture of a leftist

2010-01-18T21:35:00.006-05:00

Clay Bennett, who has shown himself to be a racist with his attacks on Tiger Woods (and, after all, he himself said that criticizing a black person can only be for racist reasons), has now given us an honest picture of today's "liberal," who is, these days, usually only liberal with other people's money.
In his cartoon in the Perspective section of Sunday, 17 January, he draws Sarah Palin on a TV screen, with "mute" in large letters and a caption of "Sarah Palin at her best."
Now, we could take that as meaning Women should be seen and not heard.
Or we could take as his meaning that his mind (using the term loosely) is made up and he refuses to be confused with any facts, that he refuses to listen to anything she might say, on any topic, because he has excommunicated her and that's it.
Really that typifies today's "liberal" attitude. Attack personally, but don't deal with any ideas or issues.
Mr. Bennett is a disgrace to any tradition of civil discourse, but he symbolizes both the "news" media approach and the leftist means of dealing with any other belief.

Where stand the intellectuals?

2010-01-13T14:51:00.002-05:00

About 2,500 years ago, an aphorism, translated from the Greek, said something to the effect "There is no idea so stupid that some philosopher won't support it."
Only a few decades ago, George Orwell said to some argumentative Communist, "You must be an intellectual. Only an intellectual could say something so stupid."
The term "intellectual," obviously used very loosely, today includes people in education, politics, and, most loosely, journalism.
It should include only people of intellect, people who deal with ideas.
Unfortunately it means, more often, people who can be and are called "elitists."
In the Sunday, 10 January, edition of the Perspective section is a perfect example of what I mean above: New York Times (and hence Chattanooga Times) columnist David Brooks pontificates that the real divide in the United States body politic is between the educated and the uneducated.
Naturally Mr. Brooks and other Times adherents are the educated (despite the poor quality of their respective papers). Those of us who oppose the various forms of involuntary servitude proposed by those intellectuals are, by definition, uneducated:
"Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.
"The educated class believes in global warming ..." despite record low temperatures, especially the last couple weeks but actually during the last three years.
Brooks, the educated, doesn't mention real weather but goes on to say "... so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise."
Yeah, us uneducated people ought not to pay attention to thermometers, shouldn't look out the window, should, instead, just listen to our betters, such as Mr. Brooks.
He goes on, mostly attempting to trash the Tea Party movement, but by serendipitous coincidence giving a nice lead-in to a column on the other side of the paper by Thomas Sowell titled "Intellectuals vs. society."
The once-again-great doctor says, "There has probably never been an era in history when intellectuals have played a larger role in society. When intellectuals who generate ideas are surrounded by a wide range of others who disseminate those ideas -- whether as journalists, teachers, staffers to legislators or clerks to judges -- the influence of intellectuals on the way a society evolved can be huge."
Intellectuals include, for example, Karl Marx, whose ideas led to the murders of hundreds of millions of people all across the world.
Non-intellectuals, as Dr. Sowell points out, include the Wright Brothers, who gave a lot more to people and the world than the Marxes and Brookses and the Mussolinis -- all of whom, interestingly, were in one way or another journalists.
Dr. Sowell also said this: "Intellectuals generate ideas and ideas matter, far beyond the small segment of society who are intellectuals. Ideas affect the fate of whole civilizations."
Then, next day, Dr. Sowell goes on, in a column titled "Good ideas vs. practical ones." In it he says, "If there is any lesson in the history of ideas, it is that good intentions tell you nothing about actual consequences."
Among the other sins of journalism is that those consequences are not reported as they should be.
We can still point out The New York Times and its adulation of Josef Stalin. That kind of miserable reporting was a good antecedent for its reporting of the most recent presidential election. The Times was just one of the "news" media slobbering (to use the very apt word of Bernard Goldberg) over Barack Obama.
Ideas most certainly do matter, and one of the problems in this modern day is that one idea, that of liberty, seems to have no place in "news" reporting or, apparently, in the minds of intellectuals generally.

Readership declines further

2010-01-06T19:51:00.005-05:00

According to baseball folklore, during an early practice of the New York Mets, a fielder, trying to catch a pop fly, missed, and the ball hit him on the head.
Legendary manager Casey Stengel shook his head and prayed, "Doesn't anybody here know how to play this game?"
Surely the people who own and manage the Times Free Press must be asking themselves something similar: "Doesn't anybody here read this thing?"
I think not.
Here is one reason I thus think, a listing in the lamentable TV Times of 20 -26 December 2009:
A Story of David ** ('60,Drama) Jeff Chandler. DO NOT USE. King Saul unjustly accuses David of seeking his throne ...
Then in the next issue, in the regular feature called "tvtrivia" is this example. There are five questions, and a picture of someone named Katie Cassidy is inset with question 1: Who currently plays Ella Simms 'Melrose Place' 2009? (sic) Answer choices: (a) Katie Cassidy (b) Stephanie Jacobsen or (c) 6416? (sic, again)
Interestingly, the answer is ... Katie Cassidy.
Question 4: Why were Jerry and his pals sentenced in the series finale of 'Seinfeld'? (a) for disturbing the peace (b) a case of mistaken identity (c) or for helping out?
Honest, sic.
Here is the answer: 'Good Samaritan Law.'
Answer: No, nobody here reads this thing.
Maybe if the Obama administration does carry out the threat to shell out "stimulus" money to the "news" media, the TFP will hire at least one copy editor.

Speaking of vicious ...

2010-01-05T14:29:00.003-05:00

For some reason, the first "Perspective" section of the year shows a retrospective of work by hatemonger Clay Bennett, staff cartoonist of the Times. (Interestingly, the editors chose not to re-run his nastiest cartoon, the one in which all us opponents of the Obama administration's collectivist ambitions are portrayed as Ku Klux Klanners.)
To be honest, three or four times a year, Mr. Bennett is not a hatemonger or vicious collectivist, and once or twice is even somewhat humorous.
But he seems to prefer to be vicious. For example, when Sarah Palin's book -- which has sold in the millions, and in fact advance orders forced her publisher to re-start the presses -- a Bennett cartoon showed a couple standing in front of a store with her book on sale, saying, "Shouldn't she read a book before she writes one?"
Now the caricature leftists and hatemongers have of people like Ms. Palin is that they are ... well, if not illiterate, certainly un-read.
Naturally only the elitists, our betters, such as Mr. Bennett, are the truly literate and knowledgeable. (They refuse to believe that Ronald Reagan probably read more books than any other president, of recent times, anyway.)
Ignore that Sarah Palin, to name one, actually has a college degree in ... journalism!
Hmmmm. Come to think of it, after reading such raggedy publications as the Times Free Press, I realize perhaps they have a point. Perhaps we should recognize journalism grads are probably among the least-educated people in American society.
They obviously don't know history, are even more ignorant in economics, seem not to have even a passing acquaintance with ethics and morality, and far too often don't even know grammar, punctuation, or style.
Yet these are the people who act as filters as to what you and I are allowed to learn as "news."
I can't imagine a circumstance in which I would vote for Sarah Palin. She is, after all, a Republican. But, even so, I do wish there were some modicum of fairness, of decency in how she's treated.
Childlike, I guess, I also wish there were more than a modicum of fairness, of decency in "news" generally.
And, while I'm at it, I wish I had a pony.

Viciousness gets uglier

2010-01-05T14:17:00.002-05:00

Perhaps it's because I see mostly the left-oriented "news" outlets, and fewer of the right-oriented ones, though of course "news" media are mostly left oriented, but I cannot remember seeing the viciousness, the ugliness against leftists that I see, on a daily basis, against rightists.
Attacks on Sarah Palin, as noted often, have reached the point of insanity.
I have not seen anyone say "Palin says so-and-so on this issue and she is wrong for these reasons ..."
No, it's usually the kind of garbage Times cartoonist Clay Bennett dishes out: Personal attacks, but not necessarily with any basis in reality.
The left-oriented outlets, though, don't limit their nastiness to spews from only their own staffers. Here are four examples, listed in order in the moronic "Rant" column that worsens an already miserable Sunday opinion section:
Joe Lieberman is greedy, arrogant and vindictive and has chosen loyalty to insurance companies over his commitment to the American people. That's his legacy.
Obama, get a backbone! You're giving in to Republicans. You are being bought by insurance and drug companies. This is not what I voted for.
GOP senators and the right wing media inflating them now have blood on their hands, the blood of millions of uninsured men, women and children.
Jimmy Carter apologizes to Israel, good. Now, maybe he should apologize to the American people for being such a flake!
While at the same time bewailing environmental losses, leftist editors waste the lives of innocent trees with this stuff? And, still at the same time, moan and whine that they don't have room for the important news, that, apparently, they really aren't covering anyway?
Even funnier, they don't understand why people are canceling subscriptions.

Afghan government corrupt? What about ours?

2009-12-06T19:50:00.002-05:00

Surely no rational and honest person doubts corruption exists in governments around the world, especially such governments as Afghanistan. Well, I mean, since the United States "news" media and members of the United States government pretty generally proclaim it as fact, it must be true.
It's obvious why those members of the U.S. government would not want to talk about it, but why are the members of the "news" media so reluctant to point out that the U.S. government is also corrupt?
One reason there is so much corruption is illustrated by the weekly column of the TFP publisher, Tom Griscom, on 6 December.
While bragging about the splendid "news" coverage of the ongoing party primary campaigns and the upcoming primary and general elections, he makes this statement:
"In less than a year, a Republican and a Democrat will face off."
Yes, that is true, but it is only partly true: There will be others seeking those various contested governmental offices.
Since, though, the "news" media bothers to mention only the vested interests of the two old parties, the people, the voters, the citizens, the taxpayers who must foot the bills the victorious politicians run up will, as usual, be cheated of the needed knowledge and information to make proper choices.
That is, since the "news" media make mention only of the two old parties, it will always be a member of the two old parties who takes office.
And that, gentle reader, is exactly why government in the United States, and perhaps especially in Tennessee, is just as corrupt as government in almost any other place in the world, except with less murder (so far).
The corrupt and dishonest "news" media, coupled with corrupt and incompetent government schools, work together to keep us as uninformed as possible; as a result, frequently only the worst even attempt to get elected; and that means the very worst are the usual winners.

Clay Bennett must be a racist

2009-12-06T19:43:00.003-05:00

Times editorial cartoonist Clay Bennett jumped on the demagogic bandwagon, joining the chorus crying "racist" for people who dared to disagree with the anointed one, Barack Obama.
Mr. Bennett even went so far as to call protesters Ku Kluxers in one especially nasty cartoon.
The "logic," or whatever lefties of his ilk use in lieu of, is that anyone who disagrees with the African-American president can't have any other basis for disagreement, so, QED, must be racist.
Well, on Sunday, 6 December, his cartoon attacks the almost equally black golfer, Tiger Woods, showing a golf cart with mud flaps sometimes found on over-the-road trailers depicting the exaggerated form of a female.
What else can we think of Mr. Bennett except he must be a racist, and probably a covert member of the KKK?

TFP cheats readers, and others, again

2009-12-06T19:33:00.002-05:00

With circulation dwindling (gee, I wonder why) and, thus, income and profits, publishers of "news" papers cut every corner and finagle every way they can.
One way the TFP publishers have found is to compress the funnies and slap some advertising onto the "extra" space.
Never mind that making them smaller makes them harder to read, and never mind that certain cartoonists, such as "Doonesbury" artist Garry Trudeau, even have contracts mandating a certain size, half of the front page of the Sunday funnies of 6 December is devoted to an ad for a satellite TV service (with a bargain rate of $19.99 for "over 120 channels") and the entire back page is an ad for a heater.
Never mind, too, that, as often stated here, the funnies are not only the best feature on this or any paper, often they are the only readable part, especially in this paper.
The number of strips has been cut over the years, with budget constraints and retirements ("Fox Trot" and "For Better Or Worse," for example), but this compression is really an insult.

Amazing: Paper does something right -- twice

2009-12-04T12:52:00.002-05:00

As mentioned previously, John Trever is one of the most brilliant editorial cartoonists in the world -- in fact, in the history of the world.
His home base is the Albuquerque Journal, otherwise not a very distinguished paper, but located in one of the greatest places to live in the United States.
In the two-dimensional "thinking" that suffocates U.S. political discussion, Mr. Trever is usually thought of as "conservative."
In truth, he is much more intelligent than that.
As a political thinker, he is advanced far above the herd, and as an artist, he wields a pen in such manner to prove he is genuinely worthy of the term "artist."
Well, lately his work has been showing up in the TFP more often, not, unfortunately, replacing the loathsome Clay Bennett, but supplementing Bennett's work, and enlivening the otherwise deadly-dull Times editorial page -- AND appearing as the chief cartoon on the Free Press page.
Wait. What? Trever cartoons on both pages?
Yes! And, joy to behold, on Friday, 4 December, his work is on both pages -- both pages the same day!
Mark your calendar, and paint the date red. When TWO Trever cartoons get published the same day, it's almost worth buying the thing.
One site to look at: http://www.cagle.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/trever.asp
For the Albuquerque Journal: http://www.abqjournal.com/

Times: More obscenely stupid daily

2009-11-18T19:31:00.003-05:00

As mentioned, a time or two, the Times Free Press has two editorial pages. On the right, in two senses, are the more-or-less conservative views with editorials written by Lee Anderson; on the left, the editorials are apparently written, at least mostly, by Harry Austin.
As is true of newspaper editorials in my experience, the writing is usually stultifying and not intelligent.
The left side also has the work of one Clay Bennett, a vicious, unintelligent and/or dishonest cartoonist.
Sunday, he drew a bookstore with a section labeled "Self Help" and another labeled "Self Serving," stocked solely with Sarah Palin's new book.
Of course Bennett hasn't read the book; perhaps he doesn't know how to read; perhaps it's just that his mind (using the term loosely) is made up and he refuses to be confused with any facts.
Still, it's odd to see "self serving" as his pejorative of the day, this man who signs his name in fairly large letters on each cartoon.
Wednesday, still without reading the book, he makes another dig, this time with a character saying, "I heard she had a ghost whiner."
One must wonder what motivates such ugliness: Fear?
I've never heard of Sarah Palin threatening to throw, say, cartoonists into jail or fining them or even taxing them.
Then why so much fear, and of course not just from such lightweights as the loathsome Bennett. Time, formerly known as a "news" magazine, did its best to trivialize her, and the moron Joy Behar managed to make several untruthful statements in the one paragraph I heard her speak before I clicked on the channel changer.
Would I vote for Sarah Palin? Of course not. She's a Republican. But I would really like to see some sense of decency and proportionality. Even just a little.

SO WHAT IS A BETTER WORD?
In a private e-mail, a Tennessee legislator referred to President Obama as "a socialist," obviously a term seldom heard, and one that must cause trembling in such places as the editorial page office of such rags as the Times Free Press.
Mr. Austin, or whichever robot wrote the Wednesday editorial, says this: "The right-wing myth that President Obama is a socialist ..."
Perhaps Mr. Austin doesn't own a dictionary. Certainly there is much evidence no such book resides anywhere near the news and editorial rooms.
But surely any United States adult should know the word "socialist" means "an advocate of government ownership of the means of production."
How is Mr. Obama not a socialist?
My guess is the socialists, such as likely Mr. Austin, just don't want to admit to ownership of the word, don't want us to realize they are indeed socialists, and sometimes national socialists.
In an otherwise mediocre -- at best -- "news" paper, it also seems the socialists inform the rest of the paper, too.

FRONT PAGE HORROR
"Poll: Americans say rich should pay for reforms"
An Associated Press story indicates the complete failure of U.S. schools and the overwhelming success of the "news" media and academia in gulling the public.
Even though facts show otherwise, 72 percent who responded to this poll said they believe "insurance companies made too much profit."
Greed and envy are now apparently the chief motivating factors of not just the Democrat Party but an increasingly large percent of the public ... at least the ones the AP queried.

Blind faith or superstition?

2009-11-03T19:15:00.003-05:00

While religion, even the majority's Christian religion, gets a battering from the so-called "news" media, members of the media themselves continue to be overcome by superstition and blind faith.
This is a headline on Page 1 of the Tuesday, 3 November, edition: "Stimulus helps save jobs in Georgia, Tennessee."
The sole source of the "facts" in the story? A government Web site, recovery.gov.
Gosh, the lapdog press is so credulous.

Has subject addled "editors'" brains?

2009-11-03T19:03:00.003-05:00

Cable television and Internet connection are being offered by the Electric Power Board, and most people have been looking forward to having competition to the corrupt and incompetent Comcast.
However, just recently it was discovered that EPB will be offering, among its cable choices, (gasp!) so-called "adult" TV, including the Playboy channel.
Naturally, since this is Chattanooga, ire has been raised. (Why do people forget they don't HAVE to watch television, and certainly don't HAVE to subscribe to any cable service?)
In a story Monday, 2 November, further proof is offered that perhaps "stimulus" money should be used to hire at least one capable copy editor for the TFP.
"Critics object to a government-owned utility putting out what they say is pornography. But EPB says it has a free speech mandate not to censure a diverse programming menu ..."
Obviously the word should be "censor."
"David Fowler, a former Republican state senator who now heads the Family Action Council of Tennessee, contends there is no excuse for a government identity peddling porn."
Obviously that should be "government entity."
And it is also obvious there ought to be more opposition to a government's getting into the entertainment business, but the Comcast monopoly has done such a lousy, and expensive, job of delivering cable TV that even many free enterprises have put their principles into escrow for the nonce.

Consistency, thy name ain't Lee Anderson

2009-10-27T18:36:00.003-04:00

As noted here previously, the Times Free Press has a perhaps unique policy of two editorial pages and two editorial policies ... sort of.
The Times has a left-wing fascist approach; the Free Press has a right-wing fascist approach.
Lee Anderson, long-time editorial writer for the right-hand pages, claims to be a strong supporter of the Constitution.
He is pretty consistently against further federal taxes (though he pretty consistently supports additional local taxes) and further federal encroachment ... unless his personal moral code calls for further federal encroachment.
For example, in an editorial on Sunday, 25 October, titled, "Wrong policy on marijuana," he takes to task the Obama administration for what seems to be its very first correct stand on legal matters.
Obama's attorney general Holder has decreed the feds will no longer violate the Constitution by harassing users of medical marijuana, at least in those states that have voted to legalize that particular herb.
Mr. Anderson's last paragraph reads, "Government cannot stop all illegal drug use, but its actions ought not to send the destructive, false message that drug abuse is OK."
Nowhere have I seen that Mr. Holder, or even Pres. Obama, endorses abusing marijuana -- they are too busy abusing taxpayers and citizens and Fox News.
But Mr. Anderson, handicapped by his superstitious Southern Christian background, fails miserably in being consistent, in being logical, in being rational.
To say "We won't throw you in jail because you have a different lifestyle or moral code from ours" is not the same as saying "Yeah, man, let's go wild and smoke that pot."
Forgetting for the moment that marijuana is less harmful than either tobacco or alcohol -- and obviously Mr. Anderson (who was probably there) has forgotten that alcohol once was itself illegal -- let's just carefully read the Constitution ... and we find there is not one word that allows the feds any authority to tell people they can't use marijuana, and especially is there not a word or syllable allowing the feds to override state laws on the subject.
Perhaps a foolish consistency is to be avoided, but it would be nice to find an intelligent consistency.

Doonesbury joins fray

2009-09-29T12:32:00.003-04:00

Garry Trudeau, originator and probably still sometime writer of the "Doonesbury" cartoon strip, has jumped in to the fray with both feet in his mouth.
His strip of Sunday, 27 September, makes the claim that Hitler was the greatest evil in history.
As Al Smith might have said, let's look at the record: Most people believe Hitler killed six million people.
Actually, six million is the generally accepted figure for the number of Jews murdered.
There were at least twice that, counting other religious or ethnic victims.
Yet Stalin and Khrushchev murdered more than that just in (what was then known as the) Ukraine. I believe it was Harrison Salisbury who said the total number of Stalin victims was about 85 million.
Mao and the Chinese Communists murdered between 50 and 100 million!
Why, why, why do the American leftists seem never to admit there is evil on the left?

Terry Stulce still not sane

2009-09-24T14:35:00.002-04:00

One-time would-be candidate for Congress Terry Stulce has popped back out of the woodwork to write a letter to the editor, 23 September.
He would have been better served keeping a lower profile.
Once again, Mr. Stulce, of whom I used to think favorably, acts as the sock puppet to his ventriloquist masters in the Demagogic Party.
He has a letter referring to "the stench of racism," a nonsensical charge even the alleged victim of any racism has pooh-poohed. (As I have said elsewhere, President Obama is standing head and shoulders above his supporters, and not taken that very low road marched down by his boot-lickers and sycophants, especially those in the "news" media.)
Face it: The Demagogues have not a leg of logic, not a toe, to stand on and they must smear their opponents with their handiest brush. (Even Republicans are starting to look better by comparison.)
As I have said elsewhere, and will say again, Samuel Johnson's "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" is way out of date. Today, the last refuge of a scoundrel is "You are a racist."

Foul-minded cartoonist further oversteps

2009-09-18T16:38:00.004-04:00

Nasty and unintelligent, or perhaps dishonest, cartoonist Clay Bennett has joined the caterwauling chorus of leftist lunacy proclaiming the protests are "racist."
He really overstepped any bounds of decency with a cartoon (and he does draw well) of a protest crowd gathered around a burning cross.
Bennett is either a -- and I hate this word and its too-frequent use -- liar, knowing what he draws is untrue, or he is really super-stupid and he actually believes that nonsense, despite the proof to the contrary.
Take a look at this YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LejNkRd-3w
I'll bet Bennett won't even look.
Here's another site: http://www.project21.org/P21Index.html

Response to e-mail

2009-09-18T16:35:00.003-04:00

Reporter Emily Bregel has answered my e-mail, very cordially, too. (See "Tempest" post below.)
She does, though, persist in her belief her reporting was not partisan and she persists in her belief that her use of "debunked" was both not partisan and accurate.
I have replied to her nice note and hope she will continue our correspondence.
If she gives her permission, I will pass on what she said.
Cautionary note: Despite her courtesy, her cordiality, her attitude and her knowledge, or lack thereof, and that of other members of the "news" media, continue to hold our nation in peril.
Their firm belief that they know best, when in fact they don't know much at all, will likely be the downfall of our republic.

Argument by intimidation

2009-09-04T14:22:00.005-04:00

Lacking any relevant evidence to the contrary, Times editors recently responded to an intelligent question with what must be considered, among other things, a foolish non sequitur.
An intelligent, but naive, letter to the editor took the Times robots to task for continuing to publish the columns of Paul Krugman: "How many letters do you need to get before you realize this guy is not an economist, but a left-wing extremist."
The crushing rejoinder from the Times editorial page editor: "Editor's note: Princeton economist Paul Krugman was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics last year."
Wow, there is certainly no comeback for that.
Q.E.D. Proof positive that every thought of Mr. Krugman is gold.
Yessir, there, right in front of us, is just further evidence of why newspapers are fast going the way of the dodo.
Oh, the letter-writer's naivete is that he seems to believe the Times would cease publishing something just because it is wrong and full of garbage. Hah!
That's the raison-d'etre for the Times.

Who's "mean-spirited"?

2009-09-04T14:15:00.002-04:00

Not too many years ago, one of the pet smear words of the left was "mean-spirited," meaning, essentially, anyone, especially Republicans, who didn't go along with the latest trendy collectivist notion, and, worse, even dared to take a public stand in opposition.
Well, today "mean-spirited" is so very apt for the media left generally and, especially, for Clay Bennett, the nasty and not very intelligent cartoonist for the Times.
On Wednesday, 3 September, his pithy observation is a simple pair of snakes slithering around, one saying to the other, "Yeah, Dick Cheney makes my skin crawl, too."
This kind of mean-spirited hate doesn't really do much for civil discourse, doesn't add a thing to any kind of public discussion.
I wonder, often, how people like Bennett can sleep at night, and I'm sure he must have a beard because how could he look at himself each morning to shave?

"Tempest at town halls"

2009-08-31T15:05:00.004-04:00

In the Sunday, 30 August, edition, that was the headline on a typical story. I wrote the reporter whose name was on it:

31 August 2009

Ms. Emily Bregel
ebregel@timesfreepress.com

Dear Ms. Bregel,
You did a pretty good job in your Sunday article on the “tempest” around the so-called health care reform proposals, but you stepped away from reporting into advocacy in one paragraph in particular.

You said, or perhaps an editor made you say, “… referring to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s widely debunked assertion that the Obama administration’s reform proposal would lead to government panels deciding to withhold health care for those deemed ‘unproductive.’”

There are several things wrong in that one partial sentence.

First, Sarah Palin is not the only person to make such a claim. Writings by Pres. Obama’s own medical adviser discusses, even advocates, exactly such a panel. If you need documentation, please let me know and I’ll send it.

In those countries and even states where some government or other controls health care, individual bureaucrats or groups of them are making such decisions even as we sit here.

Of course no one involved would call it a “death panel” and would, in fact, flinch from any such appellation, or even hint of such intentions. And possibly it really is an extreme statement of what is proposed … but it is not completely wrong.

Second, the assertion has indeed been widely opposed and even denounced but not disproved. If you want to talk about ideas that have been “widely debunked,” I offer you the notion of human-caused global warming. Thousands of scientists and philosophers have “debunked” the idea, but the notion still holds sway among politicians and journalists and indeed some other scientists, especially those dependent on government grants.

The terminology itself is not honest journalism. Merriam-Webster defines it thus: “to expose the sham or falseness of.” You, or an editor, take sides with such phraseology.

I spent too many years as a journalist myself to allow such partisanship to go unchallenged.

Finally, let me share with you this story of a government-run health-care system:

Disease vector — Though swine flu has yet to do much harm in the United States, it is not only Mexico and parts south that are suffering. The virus has spread quickly among the tribal villages of far northern Manitoba, accounting for one-quarter of that province’s sick. The urgency of the situation is compounded by many of the affected communities lacking a source of running water, making impossible the hygienic procedures necessary for containing the flu.
As one might imagine, getting vaccines to such remote locations is a daunting logistical challenge, and a demonstration of how poorly suited bureaucratic structures are for tasks such as delivering emergency aid. One might think, though, that the many layers of government devoted to ensuring Canadian health care could at least coordinate an airdrop of a case of hand sanitizer. But healthcare paternalism is way too advanced up north to roll back now; the Toronto Star (June 25) reports that “Health Canada had delayed sending alcohol-based hand sanitizers to some First Nations communities for fear some residents might drink it.”
So here we have a simple and cheap method for dealing with the virus among one of the poorest groups of people in the country, kept at bay by the fear that this method will speed the demise of chronic alcoholics whose lives already have less expectancy than those infected with the flu. The utter predictability of it all is telling; yet another giveaway that healthcare boards have far less interest in the public weal than in the perpetuation of their own power. — Andrew Ferguson

You will please note that this is not an attack on you, nor really an attack on what you wrote, or at least what had your byline.
It is, though, a plea that you try to avoid partisanship in the future, or try to urge your editor to avoid it.
If you have any questions on the subject or any aspects thereof, I will be more than happy to help you find the answers.
Thanking you for your time and attention, I am
Yours sincerely and respectfully,
Michael Morrison

Paper publishes, encourages hate, dishonesty

2009-08-10T13:20:00.002-04:00

Times cartoonist Clay Bennett is either dishonest or unintelligent ... or, to be fair, I guess he could be both.
Obviously he wouldn't have been hired for his position if he weren't a flaming leftie, but even for this excuse of a paper and even for this astonishingly stupid editorial page, Bennett is something of an extremist.
His Sunday, 9 August, cartoon, straight out of the talking points directive from the Democrat National Committee, shows the back of some speaker at a town hall meeting looking at an audience where all the signs say, for example, "Obamacare equals communism" and "Health care reform promotes euthanasia."
The caption reads, "Unfortunately, the town hall meeting was taken over by the village idiots."
One of the major problems with such leftists as Bennett is the unwillingness to grant either intelligence or knowledge or sincerity to their opponents; one of the other problems with such leftists as Bennett is their eagerness to set up straw men, who are, of course, much easier to knock down than the real opponents.
And it is much easier to knock down straw men than to deal with the issues, such as the obscene costs such government intrusion will have, or the total lack of any constitutional authority, or, most of all, the total immorality of such intrusion.
When such hatemongers as Clay Bennett are given access to such a podium, is it any wonder those who oppose further federal interference get angry?
Is such distortion by such hatemongers as Bennett going to help or just further such anger?

Not news: TFP run by incompetent morons

2009-07-05T18:54:00.002-04:00

This is a letter to the editor, Sunday, 4 July:

Have we acquired another tyranny?

We are celebrating the independence of our country from England. How wonderful that there were such giants at that particular time. The courage, dedication, selflessness, and wisdom that it took to form our government were phenomenal.
Have we swapped one tyranny for another? It appears so. Without teaching history, how can our young know the true meaning of courage, sacrifice and independence? The government does not make jobs and create income. It doles out transfer payments from producers -- it just seems to come from the government.
To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, we cannot raise up one person by tearing down another. We are saddling our economy and our future with a debt from which we may not recover. We're penalizing our producers to benefit non-producers. We are hobbling our industry with costs and restrictions that our competitor countries are not dealing with. We're raising taxes and costs on people with the economy in recession. We have politicians trying to run bands, corporations and the government who've never even run a candy store.
Let's hope and pray the nation will come to its collective senses. I fear that it will not.
Save energy, paper and money -- get the Green Toolbar.
Don Moon

The incompetents at the TFP obviously don't even read their copy before sending it off to the presses.
And that's one more reason normal people don't read the raggedy paper.
I am trying to contact Mr. Moon to learn his reaction to the morons' adding that advertising line to his letter.
My guess is incredulity.

13th Amendment ignored if not repealed

2009-05-24T17:51:00.003-04:00

In few words, it says, "1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
(Note, by the way, the reference to "their" jurisdiction. The Constitution was still acknowledging that these United States compose a union of sovereign states.)
"Involuntary servitude," in other words, is thenceforth, illegal.
Yet this story appeared in the TFP Saturday, 23 May, on Page A1: "Arrests near for jury-duty dodgers."
"Two Hamilton County residents will be arrested for failing to show up for jury duty, officials confirmed Friday.
"The arrest warrants are the first to be issued since Tennessee's new, tougher jury rules went into effect at the beginning of the year."
So, someone who finds it abhorrent to put another human being into a cage will himself be put into a cage?
Or someone who has been out of town and didn't get his mail is now subject to being jailed?
Or, even more basic, a citizen, a human individual, can be forced into being on a panel that might put another human being into a cage?
And what are the reasons for that caging? Perhaps that human being ingested some substance that doesn't have official approval?
Still, let me re-stress that basic point: How can a country that claims to be free in actuality force allegedly free human beings into servitude -- by definition involuntary servitude?
Jury duty is something an awful lot of people actually fear.
Probably tens of thousands of people across the country never register to vote purely out of the fear of being called for jury duty.
Now, of course, the statists and collectivists use driver license lists as well as voter rolls, and sometimes other lists, to find victims for the conscription.
Finally, consider the ridiculous contradiction of forcing people to be jurists, based on the paradox that the jury system protects freedom.
Probably that part is true: Juries can provide a bulwark against tyranny, as witness some great trials in history when the jurors refused to accept the court's orders, even risking punishment themselves to stand for right.
(I recommend you check into the Fully Informed Jury Association.)
Juries are, and are so told in, for example, Georgia, arbiters of both the law and the facts in any individual case.
But in far too many states, juries are lied to and told they must rule according to a judge's instructions, and phooey on the immorality or irrationality of any law.
Try, though, to volunteer for jury service. Try it.
In most states, if not all, that is not allowed.
Jurors are selected only from a bunch of coerced people who mostly don't want to be there.
Someone defined a jury as twelve people who are too dumb to get out of jury duty.
Very cynical, perhaps, but it is also a truism that lawyers often want the dumbest people possible on a jury.
There must be a better system. Coercion is always wrong.
Maybe someone reading this will offer a more reasonable plan.

Pot suspicious of kettle

2009-05-21T15:18:00.003-04:00

"Morley Safer," reads the headline, "suspicious of the blogosphere."
In the TFP of Thursday, 21 May, in the section called "People in the News" which is usually reserved to stories about show biz folks, is the Associated Press story about the "CBS News veteran" saying "he trusts citizen journalism as much as he would trust citizen surgery."
Safer, 77, "said good journalism needs structure and responsibility."
Most rational and knowledgeable people agree that CBS has been responsible, responsible for some mighty dishonest and biased reporting for a mighty long time.
From my childhood, CBS was known as the "Communist Broadcasting System" for its far-left orientation.
The only thing worse than the CBS bias was the CBS sanctimony when people expressed their belief in its bias.
To this day, the "Rather-biased" Dan tries to insist he believed his obvious forgery about George W. Bush's National Guard service, and swears it's true ... despite all the evidence.
Are there ignorami, paranoiacs, wackos, liars, and propagandists among the blogosphere? Yep. Just as there are among the CBS "news" people.
Which is not to omit NBC and ABC from this charge. ABC, for example, used to carry signs to '60s demonstrations to be sure it would have plenty to take pictures of.
With the blogosphere, though, we have a lot more options and we can make comparisons of some different perspectives we never get from those networks.

13th Amendment Repealed?

2009-05-21T15:00:00.004-04:00

"Truant's parent given jail time," reads a front-page headline Thursday, 21 May.
In a story by the unfortunately named Chloé Morrison (not that there's anything wrong with "Chloé"), we are told a juvenile court judge in Marion County sentenced "the mother of a Whitwell Elementary School second grader to 48 hours in jail for not getting her child to school."
Here is the astonishing news, leading to the headline on this post: "School leaders said they are forced to crack down on parents of truant students because federal law requires schools to have high attendance rates."
Knowing the very low quality of "school leaders" in this part of the world, I suppose it is quite possible they actually believe the hogwash quoted here.
In fact, though, there is not one word in the U.S. Constitution that allows any federal official or agency to "require schools to have high attendance rates."
However, perhaps the gimmick is the one so many of us tried to warn about, the unconstitutional law that says, Obey our orders or we will cut your funding.
"School leaders" across this once-great nation have foolishly, and perhaps criminally, been suckered by the promise of "free money," and continue to pant and beg for it even after they learn about some of the catches, including having to match or more than match that "free money" and, worst of all, unquestioned obedience to the "education czars," although it is far less about education than about schooling.
Ironically, the "No Child Left Behind" concept was accountability, but the actual result has been obedience to educrats, far less knowledge among the youthful victims, and a huge growth industry in layers of bureaucrats among school districts across the country.
Neither the 13th nor the 10th Amendments allow such federal intervention, but the cowardice of "school leaders" has over-ridden the law.

Writers should know correct English first

2009-05-15T22:08:00.005-04:00

Before trying to be cute, reporters and editors really should know the English language, then understand the variations and dialects.
In the fyiWeekend insert, the entertainment magazine published each Friday, there is this sentence in an article about the "Legendary Loretta Lynn," which she truly is.
"When Loretta Lynn sings about whooping a rival after her man ..."
"Whooping" is what certain cranes do, or perhaps partiers, along with "hollering."
What writer Barry Courter meant was "whupping," and if the TFP had any competent editors, that is what the printed article would have said.
There is also some confusion about just when the Loretta Lynn show will be: The final sentence says, "She said fans who come to the show Saturday will hear 'whatever comes to mind and whatever people holler out. That's what happens. We just let it happen.'"
Unfortunately, the schedule, in the inset box and earlier in the copy, says the show is Sunday.
If lots of people show up Saturday, the TFP could have an exclusive scoop, with photos of an angry mob.

Deserved mention: TFP gets TV Times right

2009-05-14T17:33:00.002-04:00

This should have been written sooner. I'm often very quick to point out the errors and stupidities of the TFP, and therefore when it gets something right, I really ought to mention it just as quickly.
Well, after futzing around for weeks, and making the situation worse each time, the people in charge of the TV Times insert finally got the program listings right.
The magazine finally has figured how to keep the number of pages down but still list all the programs scheduled.
It continues with two pages for all the daytime programming but now manages to get in all the movies, such as on TCM and AMC, and other variations, such as at USA.
It took them a while, but By George they got it.

TFP's Department of Redundancies Department

2009-05-14T17:22:00.002-04:00

Newspapers are slowly disappearing from our lives.
I would like to think that one reason is people's disgust with the general sloppiness and poor quality. I don't think it, but would like to.
If, though, the Times Free Press were losing readers because of linguistic incompetence, then it lost another batch with a headline of Wednesday, 13 May. The story is about the mini-city of Ridgeside, which somehow came into existence though entirely enclosed inside Chattanooga.
The headline: "Surrounded on all sides."

Hate surprising even for today's climate

2009-05-04T09:59:00.005-04:00

People like Sean Hannity and Monica Crowley manage to personalize the political arguments and make them difficult ever to resolve.
But the right-wingers, even the most rabid, can't seem to equal in venom, in sheer nastiness the hate-mongering racism of certain leftists, especially one letter writer to the TFP.
In the Monday, 4 May, edition, one Rickey Spivey, Sr., makes this astonishing comment: "All right already, Columnist Thomas Sowell. Black and white folks get that you're the black journalist who doesn't agree with the black president. Uncle Tom would be proud."
This hate-filled ignoramus obviously knows nothing about Dr. Sowell, who is not a "journalist" but a scholar, author of dozens of books, and one of the most highly admired economists in the world.
Dr. Sowell, whom I have severely criticized (see http://morrisonhimself.blogspot.com/2005_06_01_archive.html, "Sowell sells out" and http://morrisonhimself.blogspot.com/2005_09_01_archive.html) started life in segregated poverty, and pulled himself up by his bootstraps, making himself into a highly educated and brilliant scholar.
Rickey Spivey, Sr., whose shriveled soul is destined for a place even hotter than a Chattanooga summer, concluded his screed with this paragraph: "You mentioned witch hunt and people being 'demonized' for disagreeing with the Homeland Security paper. Didn't Bush and the boys demonize people who disagreed with the war in Iraq? Now will be a great time to have a federal police force to keep those stay-at-home terrorists and you at bay."
Childish writing, fascistic ideology, and psychotic rhetoric all in one letter -- another reason the TFP is having to cut back on pages and staff.

What? Defending the TFP?

2009-04-26T18:23:00.002-04:00

No blog, probably no single public voice is as critical of the "news" paper as is this one right here, but, look, right is right, wrong is wrong, and blind stupidity is, yes, blind stupidity.
A letter to the editor, published Thursday, 23 April, is headlined "Slanted cartoons a daily onslaught." One might think it's a reference to the house editorial cartoonist, Clay Bennett, but no, this is what it says:
"I have been a subscriber to your paper ever since I moved to Tennessee. I, along with some other people to whom I have talked, are sick and tired of the daily political conservative slanted cartoons. Enough is enough! If this daily onslaught against our president continues, I will not be renewing my subscription. Not only that, I will be sure to address this issue with all of the Democratic offices in the state. ... When Mr. Bush was in office, you did not put such daily trash in the paper ..."
Ronald C. Merrill, of Dayton, Tenn., is listed as the author and in many ways I feel sorry for him. I mean, I'd hate to have my name in public attached to such ignorant nonsense.
Though it can't take credit for much, the TFP does deserve plaudits for one thing: Each day, and I mean seven days a week (so far), it runs two separate and different editorial pages.
Yes, on both sides, the editorials themselves are usually stultifying, boringly written, and betraying very little intellectual content.
But there ARE two pages, one "liberal" and one "conservative."
Though the Times side, the left page, carries mostly stultifying and dull (and often mean-spirited) columnists such as Ellen Goodman and E.J. Dionne, Jr., the right side will carry the brilliant Walter Williams, along with some not-so-brilliant columnists, too.
The left side has its own cartoonist, the aforesaid Bennett, and also carries the hate-filled Luckovich and others, but the point is this: Mr. Merrill is apparently blind as a bat.

Might makes right?

2009-04-26T18:07:00.002-04:00

With readership and, thus, income dropping, "news" organizations are seeking desperately for SOMEthing to write about, ANYthing.
Except, often, news.
When Texas Governor Rick Perry used the "s-word," secession, naturally the intellects in the "news" media were all a-flutter.
In the TFP of 19 April, an article from McClatchy Newspapers, but with no other byline, was headlined "Secession talk strikes a chord."
A clever opening read, "Texas Gov. Rick Perry appears to have given new life to the state's two decades-old tourism promotion -- Texas: It's like a whole other country."
Here is a paragraph from the middle of the story: "The fact is, the treaty under which Texas joined the union provides that it could be divided into five states. But it is not empowered to leave the union, a question settled by the Civil War."
So forget common sense, ignore logic, turn away from more intelligent and knowledgeable historians and Constitutional authorities and concentrate on one thing: The Yankees had more soldiers, more and better weaponry, and an industrial base from which to wage war like that of Attila and Genghis Khan, destroying farms and homes and burning private and public buildings and looting and leaving homeless women and children by the tens of thousands.
But they won, and therefore must have had God and St. George and all other Right on their side.
That, gentle reader, is what passes for "news" coverage these days.

Dishonesty in advertising

2009-04-24T20:40:00.004-04:00

A full page insert in a recent edition of the TFP shouts, with large red capitals,
"DEFENDING
FREEDOM
DAILY
SINCE 1776"
Right below is a picture of the Constitution (which was written in 1787), beginning "We the People of the United States ..."
This from a publication that on a frequent, if not regular, basis omits needed facts, distorts others, and on one of its editorial pages, and sometimes both, calls for more and bigger government -- is that hypocrisy, fraud, or merely inconsistency?

Doubly astonishing column in TFP

2009-04-24T20:17:00.002-04:00

As noted here before, Leonard Pitts, Jr., is a left-wing racist columnist, but who must get at least partial credit for his column in the TFP Sunday, 12 April.
The headline is "Let's at least begin talking about leglizing" (sic) "drugs in U.S."
Obviously no one read the headline before sending the page to press, and there is probably a good chance no one read the column either since it almost makes sense, especially considering the source.
Naturally, being from Pitts, there is a racial element. Pitts blames the whole "War on Drugs" (also known as "The Insane War on Drugs" and as "The War on Some Drugs") as coming "into being under President Nixon, whose chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, once quoted the president as saying, 'You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this all while not appearing to.'"
Pitts' silly and/or paranoid belief is just one among many, including the belief that William R. Hearst started the anti-marijuana war in order to make sure his forests in Canada would continue to be the prime source of wood pulp.
Another was that, when Prohibition ended, Harry Anslinger wanted to keep some kind of government job so the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was formed to help him.
Regardless of the nonsense from Pitts and the TFP, it really is way past time to do more than talk about "leglizing" drugs.
Look at the thousands of deaths just in Mexico because of the drug war -- NOT because of drugs, but because their illegality makes them so profitable. Even Pitts is able to see the comparison to the era of Prohibition and the resultant rise of organized crime in the United States. (But at least we got Las Vegas.)
My guess is very few people bother to read Pitts' columns any more, but this time he really has said something needing saying.

Correction: TFP did so write on Tea Party

2009-04-16T19:41:00.002-04:00

I do apologize to you the reader and to the maligned Times Free Press: On 15 April, the paper did run a story on the Tea Party to be held that night, on Page B-3, and there was a related story in business, "Tax deadline a yearly ritual."
Well, the paper says it's related.

Finally, TFP sees a story

2009-04-16T15:25:00.003-04:00

"Tax Day Tea Party draws big crowd" is the inane headline on the story of the Chattanooga gathering.
Reporter Adam Crisp's story was pretty fair, but there is this error: "The tea parties were promoted by FreedomWorks, a conservative nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington and led by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey."
In fact, there were probably dozens, even scores, of organizations and thousands of individuals promoting the nationwide tea parties.
Whether it's Mr. Crisp's intent, or an "editor's," making mention of only one backing group terribly misleads the readers and terribly distorts the meaning of the phenomenon.
Otherwise, the too-short article gave a nice overview, quoting local organizer Mark West and some others in attendance.
So why did the TFP not give any advance mention?
Will the rag give future coverage?
We'll keep looking.
ADDENDUM: Mr. Crisp did NOT intend any bias. The lack of good background is not his fault. The "news" media in general can be faulted, and the TFP in particular, but not Mr. Crisp.

One more reason it's called a "news" paper

2009-04-16T15:15:00.002-04:00

Probably the biggest domestic story this month is the widespread "Tea Parties" phenomenon.
Until Tuesday, 14 April, the Times Free Press published NOT ONE WORD about it until a letter to the editor made mention of the local party, giving time, place, and date.
Millions of people throughout the country have been expressing opposition, even anger, and thousands of people locally have joined in.
Yet NOT ONE WORD has appeared in the miserable excuse for a "news" paper that is the Times Free Press.
Even some of the more leftish "news" organizations have at least made mention, and even the Fox News Channel -- which went out of its way to avoid mention of, for example, Ron Paul and his presidential candidacy and has bent over backward to avoid mentioning the Libertarian Party -- has broadcast stories leading up to the event.
But good ol' "without fear or favor" TFP has managed to miss the biggest story.

Irony and lousy editing

2009-04-16T15:04:00.002-04:00

On Page 1 of the Metro section, 14 April, there is this sentence: "Ray Diaz, 46, was pronounced dead on arrival at Earlanger hospital after police responded to 1653 Fernwood Circle on a domestic disorder call and found Mr. Diaz laying unresponsive in the front yard."
The story doesn't say what kind of direct object "unresponsive" is, whether it's like a brick or an egg.
Right above, in a story of a fatal traffic accident, is this sentence: "Neither the driver, who was not wearing a seat belt, nor the boy were identified by police."
"Neither ... were" is, of course, more semi-literate writing and/or editing.
Here's the irony: On the back page of the Life section is a story by James Yolles of Columbia News Service; its headline is, "Obsessive about possessive's? Youve got company out there (sic)"
The story refers to, among other errors, the common mistake of making plurals by adding apostrophe s ('s). (You see it a lot in genealogy circles and on mailboxes: The Smith's, the Johnson's, the Jones's. It is, I believe, further evidence the American republic is doomed.)
Apparently SOMEone at the TFP knows the rules of punctuation, and apparently even has a sense of humor.
Too bad that someone isn't given more to do, since obviously the TFP is in desperate need of someone who knows how to edit.

Does anybody read this? Not its "editors"

2009-04-14T21:49:00.002-04:00

Though I've commented before on the waste of space taken up by "late nite laughs" in the TV Times, I want to give you one more example.
From the issue of 5-11 April, here is the entire section of quotes from "The Late Show with David Letterman (Mar 18 09)":
*Friday is the first day of spring. You know it's spring in New York City when the rats come out of hibernation.
*You know it's spring in New York City when the street vendors start putting chlorine in the hotdog water.
*They say in 150 years, when he gets out, the recession will likely be over.
The first two inanities (obviously I'm no Letterman fan) might stand alone, even though they're not very funny. The third, though, makes absolutely no sense.
With so many people out of work, surely the Chattanooga Publishing Co. could find one real editor, someone who would actually read the stuff he puts onto the pages.

Even glucosamine won't help this knee jerk

2009-04-11T20:06:00.008-04:00

Alaska's former senator Ted Stevens was investigated and prosecuted by the federal "Justice" department, and Stevens was found guilty. That decision was announced in time for him to lose the senatorial election last November.
Well, surprise, surprise, the new "Justice" department found all kinds of misbehavior by the prosecutors, threw out the charges, and has said there will be no further action against Stevens.
The Times editorial writer of 8 April said this: "During the Bush years, the Justice Department" (sic) "was known for its cavalier ways. There is much to support that view. ... Politics, not the rule of law, prevailed at that time."
Yeah, yeah. The editorialist apparently missed the fact that Mr. Stevens was himself a Republican.
In the winter of 1976-77, I visited in Tennessee and Virginia and was inundated by snow, three and four times a week.
I got back to California just in time to see the beginning of what became a 10-year drought.
I phoned a local radio talk show to comment, "We never had weather like this until Jimmy Carter got elected."
The host, the legendary Hilly Rose, laughed.
Sad to say, Democrats and other lefties, including in the media, have made similar statements for the last eight years, but weren't intentionally joking.
Such as, we never had hurricanes like Katrina until George W. Bush was president.
Everything bad, storms, plagues, wars, boils, can be blamed on the other party, but it is only mean-spiritedness that allows any blame to befall our side.

Journalist Karl Marx would feel right at home

2009-04-11T19:36:00.004-04:00

Devaluing the individual, submerging individuals into the mass was not exactly invented by Karl Marx. The idea goes back to at least Plato, who liked to say it was Socrates'.
Still none of those ancient people had the additional stigma of being a writer for "news" publications.
The old joke about Karl Marx was that the paper he wrote for is to blame for communism: If it had paid him less, he would have starved to death; if it had paid him more, he would have been a capitalist.
Well, though his flesh is gone, his spirit lives on, in the soul of headline writers and in the scribblings of Associated Press ... uh, journalists.
For example, tighten your upper esophageal sphincter and read this headline in the TFP of 8 April: "Do smokers cost society money?"
The problem begins with two problems: Defining society and accepting as a given that, whatever "society" is, it controls and governs and pays for the individuals, who apparently have no other function than to be a component thereof.
I believe it was a Reason -- either Foundation or Magazine -- writer who first promulgated the notion that smokers actually saved the government -- NOT, note, "society" -- money by dying early and thus not costing Medicare as much as the longer-lived non-smokers.
This AP article, by one Erica Werner, hashes over some of that thought but, of course, phrases it this way: "Smoking takes years off your life and adds dollars to the cost of health care. Yet nonsmokers cost society money, too -- by living longer."
So, according the the obvious collectivist Ms. Werner, whatever you do, smoke or don't, live long and prosper or die early, you ought to be ashamed: You are just a burden.
Funnily enough, though, I'll bet if you met Ms. Werner and tried to lump her in with all the other Obama supporters and the general run of leftist members of the race of journalists (which formerly also included Benito Mussolini), she would be horribly offended and try to defend her individualism.
Sad, though, it is that people like her can't see the rational answer: Quit operating on the collectivist approach to everything. Let a free system operate, and let individuals live their own lives freely.
For those who don't have adequate resources, there are many voluntary organizations who could do a much better job of helping -- and genuinely helping, really assisting -- the needy than any government in the whole sad history of the world has ever done or been able to do.

Lefties of the species more vicious than ...

2009-04-11T19:22:00.011-04:00

"Mean-spirited" was one of those cliches thrown around by the media during the time of Republican ascendancy.
Surely no one, though, has ever matched the left for sheer nastiness.
In the 8 April edition, on, naturally, the Chattanooga Times side, there is a cartoon I haven't in a long time seen matched for ugliness -- or stupidity.
Don Wright, of the Palm Beach Post, writes "Loose lips ... " then writes in, around a toothy open mouth, the names Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michele Bachmann, and "Chuck Norris, etc."
First of all, I'd be awfully hesitant about attacking Chuck Norris. Even though he now qualifies for membership in AARP (born 10 March 1940) and other "senior" groups, he is still in better shape than ... well, especially any editorial cartoonist I know or know of.
Otherwise, of course, the cartoon is right on the money: The man despondent because his wife was leaving killed his family only because of something Glenn Beck said.
The fellow in despair because his employer closed down murdered his family because he had been listening to Rush Limbaugh.
Come on. Seriously. Does any rational person think any of those multiple murderers even knows who Michele Bachmann is?
Especially that poor immigrant in Binghamton?
I know various right-wingers have also used guilt by association over the years, but for sheer viciousness, it's hard to beat this kind of garbage.
The cartoonist ought to be ashamed, but the "editor" responsible for putting this on a TFP page should too.

Racism is racism is racism

2009-03-31T19:14:00.005-04:00

Letter-to-the-editor writer James R. Mapp, no city given, is blamed for an especially egregious pile of nonsense: He urges the election of a particular city council candidate, in the words of the headline, "to avoid loss of black on council."
Many years ago, when I was still a child, but even then smarter than Mr. Mapp, I realized that voting for a candidate because of his skin color was just as bad as voting against a candidate because of his skin color.
Apparently Mr. Mapp accepts the racist notion that "all them blacks think alike."
Ironically, two black thinkers of a very different set appear with frequency on the editorial pages of the Free Press, Walter Williams (one of my particular heroes) and Thomas Sowell (for whom my admiration often palls).
One of the goals we who fought for Civil Rights sought was, as even Martin Luther King sometimes said, a color-blind America, one in which we judged people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.
People like Mr. Mapp, and other racists, however well-meaning they might believe themselves, are setting back that possibility of color-blindness. They are furthering, instead, the cause of racism, and are helping to encourage racism from people of other racial and ethnic connections.
However, I offer this solution to warped-minded people who believe as does Mr. Mapp: Let's have a tri-cameral legislature; let's have a Senate based on geographical boundaries, a House based on population numbers, and a third house (and we need a name here) based on something else.
That third house (oh, what can we call it?) could be created by, say, petition, with people who belong to some group or other, including even racial identity, forming themselves into a bloc and choosing a representative.
We could have, say, blacks choosing a rep, plumbers choosing one, Rotarians choosing one, Presbyterians another, atheists still another ...
Oh the grouping are, perhaps, endless.
The advantages to a tri-cameral legislature are numerous, with the disadvantages being, to my belief, one: More tax money being spent on politicians and bureaucrats.
But, and this is one hope, a third house could slow down the legislative process so that the ultimate result would be far less spending.

Headline writers don't read stories

2009-03-31T18:58:00.006-04:00

Robin Hood not so good? reads the headline, with this sub-head following:
Ancient Brits questioned outlaw, says history professor.
Then the story, on Page 2 of the Sunday, 15 March edition, is about one -- ONE -- notation in the margin of "an ancient history book."
Julian Luxford, identified as "an art history lecturer at Scotland's University of St. Andrews," said "a 23-word inscription in the margins of a history book, written in Latin by a medieval monk in about 1460, casts the outlaw as a persistent thief."
Regardless of what is true history, once again the TFP headline contradicts or ignores the content of the story.
Besides, it's funny to find a story in any way disparaging the legend of Robin Hood when "robbing the rich" is so much a part of the current political miasma which was very much foisted upon us by the lamestream media, as someone calls it.

Here's what's wrong with the country

2009-03-23T13:04:00.002-04:00

Even for Chattanooga and even for the TFP, letter-writer Harry Geller stands out as dumb.
Here is the beginning of a letter published Sunday, 22 March:
"I do not claim any expertise on the economy. I am entitled to my opinion, however ..."
Yep, a glowing tribute to what's coming out of the government schools, Mr. Geller also has this: "I am sick and tired of the oft-repeated phrase 'redistribution of wealth' ..."
Yes, I can understand he would object strenuously to any cold water of facts splashed in his face.
Feelings, emotions, reactions to the demagoguery -- yessir, that's what Mr. Geller and his ilk, including many a "journalist," offer to the conversation.
But, holy cow, learning anything about the subject? Hah!

Can't find a cartoonist with a brain?

2009-03-12T20:06:00.002-04:00

Very few newspapers today have the luxury of on-staff cartoonists.
Because there are, though, plenty of cartoonists, it would seem even a small-market publication such as the Chattanooga Times Free Press, specifically the left-wing side, the Times, could find a cartoonist who knew something besides how to draw.
Maybe the company just hasn't made the effort. Certainly the previous cartoonist, Bruce Plante, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, was sorely lacking in knowledge of economics or political morality.
The current holder of the position, Clay Bennett, knows nothing about economics or how government should deal with the economy, though he is a good stylist.
For example, his cartoon of Thursday, 12 March, shows a burning building, labeled "economy," with firefighters hosing it down, and bystanders saying, "Just look at all the water they're wasting."
As one would expect with the Times, Mr. Bennett has everything backward. A better equivalent would be firefighters squirting gasoline onto a burning building, or pouring water onto someone drowning.
What is wrong with the economy is, in fact, government intervention, government coercion, government spending, government restrictions on a genuinely free market.
If Mr. Bennett is drawing from his own misunderstanding of the world, shame on him; if he is drawing according to orders from his bosses, shame on him and shame on them.
The United States economy could be improved if government, meaning politicians and bureaucrats, would get out of the way, remove the obstacles to starting and running businesses and factories, and let the free market operate, which means grow.
A reminder: Politicians are like cockroaches: It's not what they steal and carry away; it's what they fall into and mess up.

"Truth" advocate manages to mis-lead

2009-03-10T20:50:00.005-04:00

TFP publisher Tom Griscom likes to pretend he is, or was, a Republican, and in one of his Sunday columns, referenced below, he tried to say it was his policy the paper always tell the truth.
Once again, though, he shows why we should hesitate to believe either him or the rest of his writers.
For some reason, there is currently a "controversy" about people, and especially members of the legislature, who are licensed to carry firearms and, more to the point, the public listing of their names.
Here is a sentence from the "truth-teller": The more pressing issue, under the direction of the National Rifle Association, a Washington-based lobbying group, is to approve a series of handgun measures.
"Lobbying group" is a phrase that means "you don't have to think about this slimy outfit; just know it's bad."
For those, though, who are slow, he later adds this sentence: But the issue that has rallied the gun supporters and brought in the well-heeled Washington lobbyists ...
It is always possible, though highly unlikely, that Mr. Griscom is just ignorant or, to be more polite, uninformed.
But the NRA is more than just a lobbying organization. It is composed of about four million members, including probably a few people who are about to cancel their subscriptions to the TFP.
As do many other pro-freedom individuals, I have problems with the NRA; I much prefer the Gun Owners of America and the Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.
But I much prefer the NRA to the TFP, and to any other inaccurate and/or dishonest misrepresentative person or publication.
Whether gun permits are records that ought to be made public is an interesting issue, but one TFP reader made an even more interesting counter-proposal: Make public the records of people drawing welfare or other taxpayer-funded checks.
Obviously the real basis for "controversy" is the neurotic opposition to any ownership of guns.
Here is another counter-proposal: Pass a law that everyone who opposes the individual right to own firearms must post a sign reading "No Guns in this House."

What does it mean?

2009-03-10T20:36:00.003-04:00

Among the many problems at the TFP is the headline writing.
Often it seems the layout people haven't read the article for which they are supposed to be writing headlines -- but then more and more people in the tri-state area are not reading them.
But here is a puzzler: For what is apparently the major story (slow news day?) on Monday, 9 March, under the main head, "Saddling up for safety," is this apparently intendedly cute subhead: "Sheriff's office has 'neigh' old time with new mounted patrol."
The word is pronounced "nay," so I have no idea what is meant.
I hope someone will enlighten me.

Propaganda labeled as "news"

2009-03-10T20:28:00.004-04:00

Probably the most frequent gripe about "news" papers is that they editorialize in what are supposed to be news pages.
Here is an example in the TFP of 8 March. Headline: "Both Parties love big government -- just different programs."
It begins: Strip away the political finger-pointing over President Obama's proposed budget and the fight boils down to a clash of values. Both major parties are really for big government -- just big in different places.
Republicans say they're outraged that Obama would "borrow and spend" his way to a new behemoth government. But they borrowed and spent their way through the '80s and the current decade. And they love big government -- when it's at the Pentagon.
Really there is not a thing a rational observer can criticize, except it is "analysis" and not "news," and should have been so labeled.
Unusually, in the piece there is even a comment from the relatively libertarian Cato Institute.
This article was by Steven Thomma of McClatchy Newspapers.

Look for this reader to stop, too

2009-03-04T15:37:00.005-05:00

Letter-to-the-editor writer Barbara S. Arthur, of Rossville, is likely another soon to drop her subscription.
She wrote a letter titled "Article about Poe had many errors," published 23 February.
Responding to an article titled "University of the South to mark 200th Birth of 18th-Century mystery writer," published 12 February, she says, in part:
Poe was not an 18th-century mystery writer. Mystery writers in the modern sense were unknown in the 18th century and in Poe's day. In his short life, lived entirely in the 19th century, Poe invented the detective story ... Contrary to your reporter's fatuous remark, his poems and stories do not produce in the reader anything so banal as goosebumps, but, at their best, a profound sense of dread. ...
Certainly Poe did not undergo 200 births, yet this is what the headline says. Another poet, Dylan Thomas, said that after the first death, there is no other. Likewise everyone, including Poe, is born but once.
Must the reader of the newspaper point out these things, or is this the duty of the reporter and editor?
Bless her heart, she answered her own question.