Archive for the ‘opinion/news’ Category

The Sentinel & Entrprise Chooses sides

Posted: February 7, 2010 by datechguy in local stuff, opinion/news
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And they choose the right side in the Planned Parenthood Fight:

It may be difficult, despite the sustained and growing public outcry, to prevent the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts from opening a branch on Main Street in Fitchburg, or somewhere else in the city.

But that should not prevent city officials from trying, particularly if the non-profit organization sticks with its plan to open on Main Street, something we have said is a terrible idea for a city trying to lure more upscale businesses and Fitchburg State College students to the downtown.

They apparently share the same opinion of the city solicitor that I have:

We find Ciota’s suggestion that city officials could open themselves up to a lawsuit if the City Council passed this resolution laughable at best.

To suggest that Planned Parenthood could successfully sue city officials because the City Council passed what is essentially a non-binding resolution that carries no legal weight — if that’s what Ciota is suggesting — is absurd.

This is America, and if the City Council wants to pass a resolution saying its doesn’t want Planned Parenthood opening up in its city, more power to it.

and they let the mayor have it:

And we were also surprised that Mayor Lisa Wong did not attend the portion of the City Council meeting dealing with Planned Parenthood, and believe that she had a responsibility to tell residents how she felt about the issue. She later told us she’d rather see the agency locate somewhere else in the city.

The paper knows that this fight isn’t over. The people need to know that too.

Still unclear on the “Media you suck” concept

Posted: February 7, 2010 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news
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When Andrew Breitbart said these words:

“It’s not your business model that sucks, it’s you that sucks.”

he was referring to the media method of not doing it’s job.

And today at Politico we have an excellent example:

Three former allies of the National Tea Party Convention are planning a guerrilla press conference near the convention hall Saturday afternoon to highlight what they contend are the organizers’ efforts to hijack the tea party movement.

Three! Count ’em Three! And the story that three people are protesting the tea party convention gets how many comments on the Politico site?

353

But hey, we are the mainstream media, we report on what is actually going on! Jim Hoff comments further:

The media reported that a group of a National Tea Party Convention counter-protesters were going to flock to the Opryland Hotel for a showdown.

But only 4 people showed up.

The mainstream media, of course, swarmed them.

Of course they swarmed them, of course in comments they are declaring the tea parties irrelevant, of course they are attacking Palin saying that she is the beginning of the end for tea parties.

The problem is that all of these things can only work if they are the gatekeepers of information, and that title no longer exists. In fact when a MSNBC and a CNN viewer is able to watch a Palin speech and Q & A unfiltered it makes it a lot harder for their commentators to spin it…

I know what you think you heard but here is what you ACTUALLY heard…

Sorry media, not only do you suck but under 24 hours after it was said you decided to prove it.

Answer: Expecting Charles Johnson to issue a correction

Posted: February 7, 2010 by datechguy in opinion/news
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Question: What is the ultimate expression of wishful thinking?

Ah the people at Breitbart’s Big Journalism prove that mindless optimism is not confined to myself and Lt. George:

While it is true Mr. Johnson did not use the precise phrase “white nationalist convention” as was noted in Weigel’s article, he said something very similar in the comments of his blog. In this case, Mr. Johnson does not attribute his claim that O’Keefe attended a “meeting of white nationalists” to anyone.

We hope that Mr. Johnson, an influential presence in the blogosphere, will issue a retraction without playing the semantics game with the words “meeting” and “conference,” but just in case, from dictionary.com:

In addition, his claim O’Keefe was “a friend” of Marcus Epstein is false. In an interview with BigJournalism.com, James O’Keefe denied Mr. Johnson’s claim, which, again, is unattributed. As was hashed out here, there is no factual basis for Johnson to imply a close link between O’Keefe and Epstein:

They did manage to notice that the action at Charles’ blog is often in the comments, not in the articles.

Meanwhile Pam Geller (who looks incredible in a Fedora) knows what the score is:

This is what Johnson does. He has gotten a great deal of publicity for his announcement about how he parted ways with the Right, but the real story of Charles Johnson is not even that he changed his mind or his politics. Little Green Footballs today is not a political site. It’s an attack site. He has set about to destroy the most effective voices on the Right. But in fact, he destroyed himself.

Then again that mindless optimism post from Jan 6th was about the fact that Scott Brown’s chances weren’t all that good so you never know.

Fun with statistics

Posted: February 7, 2010 by datechguy in oddities, opinion/news
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You know the most interesting thing I found concerning the case that Planned Parenthood was making about coming to Fitchburg was the “need” argument.

According to Planned Parenthood’s testimony the teen pregnancy rate is 49 per 1000 in the State of Massachusetts.

Also according to that testimony the teen pregnancy rate in Fitchburg is 17.1 per 1000

That is over 65% below the state avg.

Let’s put that in perspective: We will make the rash assumption that the books are not being cooked and the federal unemployment rate is 9.7%.

If Massachusetts’ unemployment rate to the Federal government’s had the same ratio as Fitchburg’s teen pregnancy rate does to the state of Massachusetts, the state unemployment rate would be below 3.39%.

That leads to some interesting common sense questions:

1. If my business was to address unemployment would I operate in an area with 3.39% unemployment or an area with 9.7% unemployment?

2. If I was giving out a government grant to address a problem such as unemployment would I give a grant to operate in a city with a 3.39% unemployment rate when the national avg is 9.7%?

3. If my business was dependent on a government grant showing a need for my services (say unemployment), and the place where I was opening had an unemployment rate 65% below the state avg. Would it be in my interest for the unemployment rate remain 65% below the state avg or would it be in my interest for that rate to rise to “demonstrate” the need for my services.

Just askin.

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