Category: General

The press has shown a tendency to skew story lines by associating ideas from one person to another, or by equating terms, words or ideas that are in fact not equal. The pair of paragraphs below are an example from a single NPR story using both these methods; it involves a discussion of the origins for a proposed citizenship question on the next U.S. census:

In another July 2017 email, Kobach wrote to Ross that he was concerned that “aliens who do not actually ‘reside’ in the United States are still counted” in census numbers used to determine how many congressional seats each state gets.

Noncitizens have been included in past population counts used for reapportioning seats in the House of Representatives among states ever since the first census in 1790.

A couple of points to note:

1) In the first paragraph NPR is quoting an email written to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. However, someone expressing their opinion to you in an email does not make it your opinion. The fact that Kobach has this concern (as do I) is irrelevant to Ross’s opinion. Why, then, does NPR bring this up? In my opinion the purpose is to associate this concept with Ross, with the goal of creating opposition to him within their readership.

2) The second paragraph asserts a particular fact unassociated with the concern stated in the email, while at the same time trying to make a connection between them. The first paragraph references “aliens who do not actually ‘reside’ in the United States…”, which refers to illegal aliens who are not legal residents of the United States.  However, the second paragraph refers to “noncitizens”, which refers to people legally residing in the United States while being foreign nationals. Big difference; I am not concerned with noncitizens legally residing in the United States being represented in our Congress by the appropriate allocation of Representatives to their region. I am, however, concerned about illegal aliens who should not be here at all being used to inflate the voting power of some districts.

I find this type of reporting to be concerning. What ever happened to simply reporting the relevant facts instead of trying to manipulate public opinion?

… should have been the age difference; the second the term of their relationship:

“The indictment said Wolfe, 58, began dating Watkins — who is in her 20’s — in 2013 when she was an undergraduate student working as a news intern. The indictment said the pair ended the relationship in December 2017.”

“Wolfe’s employment with the committee ended in December 2017.”

When they’re young enough to be your daughter and only date you while you have access to sensitive information… well, you get my point.

From a Fox News article:

“A driver in Maine with a history of DUI convictions was being held on manslaughter charges after driving through an open gate and onto a baseball diamond during a youth game Friday night, sending players and spectators fleeing for safety, authorities said.”

If we apply gun control lobby tactics, this would be tomorrow’s lead story:

“We must ban those evil cars with fully-automatic transmissions, as their only possible purpose in existing is to make it possible to run over and kill as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time”, said Joe Blow, president of the American Society of Sycophants (ASS). “Such ‘assault’ cars”, continued Blow, “should not be in the hands of normal citizens, who might go crazy one day and start ramming people with their front bumpers. Only police should be allowed to drive cars with automatic transmissions.”

Maybe one day we’ll grow some common sense and realize that it’s the operator who is to blame.

Rachel Dolezal Accused of Welfare Fraud After Race Scandal

… why is such a law necessary? Isn’t this just common sense?

Frankly, police officers who can’t figure this out on their own probably shouldn’t be police officers:

New law prohibits Kansas police from having sex with people in custody

From the article:

The bill sprung from a case in which a detective wrongfully accused a Kansas City man of double murder, for which the suspect later spent 23 years in prison. The detective reportedly forced multiple women to have sex with him, and threatened to arrest them or their family members if they didn’t comply, the newspaper reported.

How much do you want to bet that they’re still a police officer…?

The FCC is about to roll back net  neutrality. This will be bad for consumers, and I urge you contact the FCC and let them know that you want them to support – rather than abolish – net neutrality. Some may ask: What is net neutrality? This is a complex concept to explain, but let’s give it a shot.

Net neutrality makes the Internet like a phone. With a phone, you can contact anyone you want by dialing their number. The phone company has no say in who you call, and doesn’t give you a “bad” or “good” connection depending on who you call. Likewise, anyone can call you and each caller gets the same service from the phone company(s).

With a net neutrality based internet, the same applies to network-based services like email, online entertainment, or online shopping. The network provider has no say in who you contact, what movie you watch (or which movie service you use), or which on-line shops you frequent. The network provider cannot favor any content or service over another, or provide better connections for some over another.

Without net neutrality, however, your service provider can favor their own or partner services over that of a competitor. For instance, if your service provider has a paid arrangement with Amazon, they might give Amazon services a high-speed connection to its customers. However, if an Amazon competitor like NetFlix does not have a similar arrangement, services from that vendor might be slow or difficult to reach. In the theoretically extreme, a service provider could block access to services that did not pay or redirect those requests to someone who did.

How would you feel if when you tried to call WalMart you were given a poor connection, or were connected to Amazon instead? How would you feel if your telephone company gave you a list of companies you could call and a list you could not call based on whether or not they paid “protection” to your telephone provider?

Net neutrality is important. Call the FCC and fight for your right to an independent, unrestricted Internet.

While many applaud the FEC action today to allow the use of campaign funds for child care, I disagree with their decision. Having children (a willful act) obligates a parent to their care, and this obligation exists completely independent of the campaign. The law is clear on this subject, and it is not within the purview of the FEC to ignore the law. I covered this well previously here, so I won’t rehash it again (but you should read it if you haven’t).

If you disagree with this new rule (as I do), please contact each FEC representative and let them know how you feel about their decision. They can be contacted through the FEC website (scroll to the bottom).

I don’t know about you, but I think that most people would take the negative endorsement of Gina Haspel (the current nominee to run the CIA) by an alleged terrorist as a reason to approve her nomination. If the terrorists she is to catch do not want her involved – well, I’d say that’s a good thing!

And you thought those DNA tests for ancestry research were harmless:

In Hunt For Golden State Killer, Investigators Uploaded His DNA To Genealogy Site

The Fresno State professor who made crude and mean-spirited comments following the death of Barbara Bush is standing behind a claim of “free speech” to defend her remarks. It pains me to say this, but she has a point. She works for a public university, which makes her position all the more tenable. She has even gone on to brag that since she has tenure she cannot be fired. The thought of someone like her schooling our next generation of college graduates makes me cringe.

However, while I firmly believe that free speech is important to a free society, this does not mean your speech has no consequences. For instance, you cannot yell “Fire!” in a crowded room. And it is unlikely that one can present a crisis hotline telephone number as their own and instruct people to call the line,  thus swamping the hotline with calls for days and preventing those you really need help from getting through. However, this is what she is alleged to have done – and it is this act that may have serious repercussions for our “un-fireable” professor.

She is welcome to express her views, but it is inappropriate, childish, unprofessional and unbecoming of a university professor to use the inflammatory language and tone that she did. But, more critically, her alleged action of referring people to a crisis hotline to vent their complaints was more than free speech – it was a callous disregard for the lives of people who really needed the hotline that night. And for this vile act she should be fired.