This even astounds me

· 04/15/2009 07:26 PM by Steve Gigl

Thousands attend tax-day protest in Madison, Wis.

It’s a promising headline. No point of view here, right? The AP is totally objective, after all…

Speakers at a sometimes angry rally Wednesday accused Gov. Jim Doyle and lawmakers of smoking crack cocaine, said government spending was ruining the country and called for the ouster of all elected Democrats.

[emphases mine] Do you suppose any of the liberal protests over the years were labeled as “angry” by the AP? Even though I’m sure at least as much—or maybe orders of magnitude more—anger was on display at those rallies… I doubt it.

Doesn’t fit the storyline, dontcha know.

One sign in the crowd compared President Barack Obama to the anti-Christ.

Again, do you suppose that a single sign that said something terrible about Bush in the various anti-war rallies was reported like that? Oh how I wish I had Lexis-Nexus and a couple of hours to waste.

A small group of well-dressed counter protesters held up signs that said “Save the Rich” and “Don’t Tax My Boss’s Yacht.” The purpose was to argue for a fair tax system that appropriately taxes the rich, said Scot Ross, one of the protesters and leader of the liberal group One Wisconsin Now.

Perfectly objective descriptions there, right? Apparently all of the righties were dressed like slobs.

Do you suppose the reporter had any interest in finding out what the purpose of the tea party protest was?

Oh, and later you get a little bit of context: the crack statement was indeed a joke, and a bit of a repeated metaphor, not the literal accusation mentioned in the first paragraph. Shocking, I know.

This is interesting:

Capitol police on the scene would not provide a crowd estimate and said it had to come from the state Department of Administration. Department spokeswoman Emily Winecke said the department would not issue an estimate. She did not immediately reply to messages to explain why.

‘round here it’s always the police who provide the estimate, isn’t it? I wonder why they didn’t?

(I have a feeling it wasn’t because they were too busy tasering, pepper-spraying, and beating back ornery protesters. Just a guess. Mitch can probably confirm that.)

UPDATE: Edited to make it seem less like it was written in 30 seconds (it was). Also: boy, these people from the St. Paul protest sure seem ANGRY, don’t they? Badly dressed though, for sure.

UPDATED AGAIN: Wait, who is angry again? Conservatives, or liberals in the media who would rather not hear from conservatives? Do you suppose she was outraged when President Bush was compared to Hitler in protests every other week for 5 years?

Another UPDATE: After the CNN cameras stopped transmitting, a woman took that “reporter” to task like her colleagues in the studio should have. Too bad it didn’t go out live too.

Last UPDATE I swear: Huh. Apparently, the media malpractice over the tea parties is just the thing to get me back into politics.

Category: Media & Entertainment
Scope: National

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Date night?

· 03/25/2009 04:07 PM by Steve Gigl

Assuming we can arrange babysitting, we’re hoping to be there:

We are having a benefit for our niece, Halley Anderson, who received a life-saving liver transplant in November. Halley lived in the hospital from August through November, and the financial difficulties due to Halley’s condition have been very hard on her family. She has an account set up at TCF called the Halley Anderson Benefit Fund. We will be doing a concert at the VFW on Osborne Road in Fridley to raise money for this fund. Please come help us and enjoy an evening of fun and music!! Tickets $20.00 and can be purchased in advance or at the door. Silent auction starts at 6, show is from 7-9PM.

Category: Music
Scope: Local

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Open letter to the Star Tribune

· 03/25/2009 09:37 AM by Steve Gigl

(Because I know they won’t do anything with the email I sent to their Corrections address.)

Context (heh) here, original nonsense here.

Hello,

You have done Michele Bachmann, but much more importantly your readership, a great disservice by stripping her remarks on WWTC of context and parading them in front of readers as if they were controversial or dangerous. Just because she has a reputation of getting carried away when talking to the media (one reason I’m not her biggest supporter), do you really think you have license to make this comment:

“I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us ‘having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,’ and the people – we the people – are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States.”

into this?

“WASHINGTON – Rep. Michele Bachmann is mad about taxes and she wants taxpayers to revolt.

But don’t reach for your gun yet.

According to a spokesman in her office, the Minnesota Republican was speaking metaphorically this weekend when she said in a radio interview that she wants ‘people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back.’”

No one would read or hear her full statement and think she was speaking in any other mode than metaphorically. So why is it that the Star Tribune decided to make it seem as if that was even possible, and then strip the context out entirely to make the lie seem plausible? I could go through a big list of possible reasons, but frankly you’ve heard them all already, and dismissed them all without an ounce of self-reflection.

And sadly, I no longer expect anything better from journalists, so I’m going to throw this out to you and on my blog, and then not even bother to check for a correction that won’t come. And throw this on the pile of evidence that context is like Kryptonite to most media that claims to be objective.
—Steve Gigl
Crystal, MN

(A Sunday subscriber, but only as long as Lileks remains in print.)

Category: Media & Entertainment
Scope: Humor

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Consumer alert

· 12/30/2008 10:11 AM by Steve Gigl

I have an HP 5510 all-in-one printer/scanner/fax, and for the most part, despite some bulky software, I like it. Or I did, until I started getting “Print Cartridge Error” messages on it.

I tried the suggestions from HP’s website (cleaning contacts and ink nozzles), but nothing helped. Then my mom suggested setting the date back on my PC to see if HP was building obsolescence into all of their cartridges.

Worked like a charm when I set it back to December 2007. Jerks.

Just so I’m being clear, the cartridges are physically fine and have ink. HP, in their infinite wisdom greed decided that you aren’t allowed to use the same print cartridge for longer than X months, so they built a timer into their printer that throws an error and stops you from printing when you haven’t spent a crapload of money on a new print cartridge recently.

Oh, I am so going to find out how to defeat this. And HP has guaranteed that they won’t see another dime from me on cartridges if I can avoid it; even if refills suck, I will be refilling from here on out.

You’re shooting yourselves in the foot, HP. My next printer won’t be one of yours.

UPDATE 2/23/09: (long-awaited, I’m sure): There is indeed a solution for this, but if you want your printer to stay under warranty, skip it and buy a new cartridge.

But if you, like me, are not under warranty and don’t really care whether your printer lives or dies (bonus if you still won’t buy another HP printer or cartridge ever again), there is a way to get around this “feature.” It is somewhat explained at the end of the “best solution” from LeWillie here. I basically broke the connection to the battery, then wired the two ends to a switch that I mounted on the case of the printer. So any time I need to clear the data from the printer’s memory, I can just switch it to “off.”

Not a task for the faint of heart, obviously, but my printer is up and running again, at least for now.

Category: Technology
Scope: National

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Sheesh

· 12/09/2008 10:26 PM by Steve Gigl

I know this isn’t the final word, but I’ve been half-predicting this for years:

There is evidence, however, that avoiding nuts makes children ultimately more likely to be allergic to them. A study of 10,000 children in the UK, reported earlier this year in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, found that early exposure to peanuts reduces the risk of peanut allergies.

Grrr. Public health studies seem more and more useless every year. At this point, anecdotal evidence almost seems better.

Category: Food
Scope: World

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Mistakes

· 12/07/2008 05:16 PM by Steve Gigl

The only bigger mistake AM1500 could make than putting Mischke on early afternoons would be… to let him go. Way to go, guys.

UPDATE: Mischke apparently liked the daytime hours better, which I can understand. But I still miss the nighttime vibe that only he could provide (and I don’t mean the weird shows that got all the press, just the nightly calm talk and great callers).

UPDATE the 2nd: More, better, and more immediate from Mitch.

Update III: The Final Frontier: As much as we make fun of local blogs attempting to take over newspapers, there is a reason that they keep cropping up while the newspapers die. They actually follow and report local stories sometimes, like David Brauer has been doing with the Mischke firing. I love physical newspapers more than most, but when is the last time they’ve followed a local story—not related to sports—even close to when it happened?

Category: Media & Entertainment
Scope: Local

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Conversation of the century

· 11/29/2008 03:36 PM by Steve Gigl

“There he is, making his new funny face . And dripping drool all over the place.”

“Want to rhyme some more?”

“I ran out of ’-aces.’” [Pause as child does his scream thingy again.] “Ok, here’s one: can you discipline a child with mace?”

“Not if you spray them in the face.”

Category: Home-Family-and-Kids
Scope: Personal

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Hope and (pocket) change

· 11/05/2008 05:53 PM by Steve Gigl

Yeah, I’m feeling a little snarky for a lot of reasons, only one of which is political.

But it doesn’t matter much how I feel… how does the business world feel about our President-elect? Let’s check today’s industry news:

1. AMD lays off 500 people worldwide
2. IBM’s chip unit cuts temp workers
3. Anadigics cuts 15 percent of workforce
4. Intersil to cut 9 percent of workforce

Oh.

OK, what about stocks?

The blue- chip index ended at 9,139.27, off 486.01 points, or 5.1%.

Unfair? Yeah. But not nearly as unfair as pinning the subprime mortgage crisis on Republicans, who were the only ones sounding warnings about them several years ago.

UPDATE: Forgot one: Cadence cuts 625 jobs

Category: Politics
Scope: National

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Quote of the day

· 10/30/2008 10:14 PM by Steve Gigl

Via Rand Simberg, by John Hood:

Government is not charity. It is not persuasion, or cooperation, or sharing. Government is a fist, a shove, a gun.

[Surprise surprise, the next sentence is: “Obama either doesn’t understand this, or doesn’t want voters to understand it.”]

Category: Politics
Scope: National

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R.I.P Dean Barnett

· 10/28/2008 07:46 AM by Steve Gigl

I didn’t know him, but I admired him..

Also: what he said, and pretty much what they said.

Category: Media & Entertainment
Scope: National

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