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Feherty Falls Victim to Ye Olde Double Standard

May 11, 2009 By Trey Garrison 8 Comments

As Tim reports, David Feherty is in danger of losing his CBS gig because of a joke he wrote in the print product in the magazine where yours truly is one of the contributing editors.

Ahem.

But this video clip below is OK, where even Mr. Obama guffawed, I guess since the target was on the right side of the binary line.

(I guffawed, too. Sykes and Feherty were funny. So the Always Indignant on both sides can suck it.)

Filed Under D Magazine, FAIL, Media Driven Panics

Thursday Roundup: You’re Soaking In It

May 7, 2009 By Trey Garrison 5 Comments
  • City council candidate John Jay Myers has the quote of the (yester)day regarding the latest foot-stamping, holding my breath ad from the astroturfers at RIP Dallas: “We want! we want! we want!” They sound like spoiled children. Go out and do, and stop trying to force me to buy you a hotel.” As Wick Allison notes today – it’s just a piss-poor deal for a dead-end industry..
  • If you doubt that government, by its very nature, is a bit of a shady enterprise — a protection racket where some are more equal than others — then take a gander at this.

Filed Under City Owned Boondoggle, Media Driven Panics, Politics, The DFW, Zombies

Proposed Daytime Curfew — Who Are You Kidding?

May 6, 2009 By Trey Garrison 10 Comments

I’ve mentioned the proposed Dallas daytime curfew for those under 18 during school hours. Even though police already have the power to take truants into custody, this new curfew would criminalize them and — big surprise here — slap a $500 fine on parents. I’m sure it has nothing to do with Dallas’ budget crisis. Anyway, here’s more on the issue from the Citizens Against a Daytime Curfew. Take it away, Laurel Allen.

——————————————————————————–

Is the proposed daytime curfew necessary?

According to the Texas Education Code, police are already fully empowered to take any child seen in public during school hours into custody in order to determine if they are a juvenile in need of supervision, or if there is probable cause that they are in violation of the compulsory school attendance law under Section 25 of the code. In the process of making that determination, they have the ability to intervene in a manner that requires the involvement of the child’s parent or guardian, the courts or juvenile board, and the school district.

JUMP FOR MORE.

[Read more...]

Filed Under Liberty, Media Driven Panics, Politics, The DFW

Wednesday Roundup: Taste the Creamy Filling

May 6, 2009 By Trey Garrison 2 Comments
  • The corporate mandated pot-stirring from Belo for the People’s Hotel is bad enough — read any of Steve Blow’s bought and paid for house advertorials? — but is it so bad that writers aren’t putting their bylines on their assigned hit pieces?
  • DUI checkpoints a-comin’ unless they get derailed. “Your papers, citizen.”
  • Coinciding with the posting of my Star Trek movie review, there’s this bit of awesome — the instruction manual for the USS Enterprise.
  • Yes, but what about the local anchors now that the Great Hamthrax Panic is over? Won’t someone think of them?
  • ph2009050403123Finally, U.S. Rep Pete Sessions, R-Oh God It’s Dallas, has been partying it up at Tao in Las Vegas. Here’s the billboard for one of the GOP venues — “Always a Happy Ending.” (h/t Ed Cognoski.)

Filed Under City Owned Boondoggle, Fort Awesome, Humor, Media Driven Panics, Novelty Cake Toppers, Politics, The DFW

Monday Roundup: Out, Out Damn Spot!

May 4, 2009 By Trey Garrison 4 Comments
  • I’m glad they got a voice of reason into this look at how the Lege is stomping all over both parental and teenager rights. Because who cares more about a kid — a mere parent, or some semi-pro political tool? (And what a surprise to find State Sen. John Carona‘s fat fingerprints all over the worst of the bills.) Of course, the unintentional (or is it?) effect of all this is to raise up young adults who think their every decision as an adult is subject to permission from elected. Which, now that I mention it…
  • I missed something in Tanya Eiserer’s story on Friday that Grits certainly didn’t miss: “Eiserer’s story concludes with an especially fascinating account that suggests Sundquist’s lying wasn’t just malfeasance by a single officer but actually part of a pattern attributed to his entire unit.”
  • This is going to be fun. After all, if the product isn’t intended to cross state lines in manufacture, sale or us, how can the federal government justify regulating it under the interstate commerce clause? (I think you know what product I’m talking about.)
  • Stupid Flu Reactions: This weekend the softball team waved instead of high-fived. Cashiers at Kroger wore rubber gloves or lathered in hand sanitizer. No surgical mask sightings. What did you see?

Filed Under Creepy Guys in the Park, Guns, Media Driven Panics, Police, Politics, Zombies

Friday Roundup: I’m Going to the Special Hell for Item One

May 1, 2009 By Trey Garrison 17 Comments
  • Yeah, it’s real fun to be the guy who “defends” a convicted sex offender. This is going to make me real popular. But I’m just a little troubled that this guy is facing 10 years not because the law regards what he did as a danger to children, but rather because of a technicality. “John Joseph Stuart…faces a felony registration-violation charge that could send him back to prison for up to 10 years. Stuart, 32, wouldn’t have had any trouble with police if he had disclosed his job at the SAT and ACT Prep Center, which he co-owns with his wife, Frances Stuart.” If a sex offender is an imminent threat he shouldn’t be let out at all, but the sex offender registration laws go way overboard and do almost nothing but make the state pols who pass them sound tough on crime. They’re ineffective mainly because 95 percent of child sex abuse victims know the perpetrator, i.e. Uncle Don, not the stranger in the trench coat with a pack of Smarties on the end of a fishing line.
  • Conflicting reports on how the Richardson city council race for Place 4 is getting a little ugly, which means it’s suddenly interesting to me. In a race pitting a more hardcore conservative against an Establishment country club type Republican, I hear it two ways. Ed Cognoski — the classic example of the guy who can’t believe McGovern lost since “everyone I know voted for him” but who’s been following the races in his ‘burb closely — says the unfortunately named Tom Bache-Wiig is acting all douche-baggy. A trusted friend who is also following the race tells me it’s the other way around: “The ‘Richardson Coalition’ PAC sent a mailer with some really shitty remarks about Tom Bache-Wiig. The RC supports Gary Slagel, the former mayor, and class-A elite jackass. TBW is a true conservative, and quite frankly, his mere appearance in the race scare the country club set to death.” Is this Richardson’s version of Huckabee vs. McCain?
  • Good. Because I don’t care what you think about illegal immigration, national security, the need for a border fence, the environmental impact, or any other issue except this: the government needs to respect private property rights. Period. Full Stop.
  • Finally, from a dear friend Down Under:

    • 1

Filed Under Creepy Guys in the Park, Culture, FAIL, Humor, Liberty, Media Driven Panics, Politics, Swine Flu, The DFW, The Market, Zombies

Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Swine Flu

April 30, 2009 By Trey Garrison 13 Comments

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Special message for those of you wringing your hands and wearing a surgical mask like an asshole…

- A toddler in Texas has died of the swine flu
- Mexico’s infection and death estimates continue to climb
- The World Health Organization has raised it’s pandemic warning from 5 to 6, the top of the scal

These three items have ruled headlines for the past 24 hours.

However here are a few other things that are going on that you may not have heard

- 36,000 people die every year from the regular flu.
- Since I wrote my article on Monday, 1 person in the United States has died from swine flu.
- The tally in the last three days: Swine Flu: 1, Real Flu: 295.

I mentioned in my last update that only 18 deaths had been confirmed to have been from Swine Flu, and that the other figures were estimates. That confirmed total has since been revised downward to 7. To quote Stratfor’s reaction to this data:
“There is still a lack of information regarding the particulars about this new pathogen; but if it has killed only seven people after two months of spreading in a country with somewhat limited health care services, perhaps its virulence is not so harsh after all, even if its communicability is impressive.

Read the rest on Fark.

Filed Under Media Driven Panics, Swine Flu
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