Unca Darrell

JULY 16 / And the Ted Baxter Award literally goes to . . .

. . . SEAN Hannity.

Nancy Pelosi is literally gonna get in there and rip their arms out of their sockets . . . .

JULY 11 / The Economist on Texas and California

I'LL COME back soon with a review of the contents, but the cover art for this week's Economist ("America's future: California v Texas") is too good to hold for later.

JULY 3 / Silence on silencing

IN 2006 the New York Times said NASA was attempting to gag Dr. James Hansen, the agency's inhouse cheerleader for the man-made global warming thesis. The Houston Chronicle waxed indignant, but mildly so.

JULY 3 / Krauthammer on Obama's compulsion to find fault with his own country

LEFTIST JOURNOS (but I repeat myself) typically ignore July 4 or use it as a day to find fault with America. What better day than July 3, then, to do a preemptive takedown by recalling this fine Krauthammer column about our apologizer-in-chief: "Obama Hovers From On High," Washington Post, June 12, 2009. 

JULY 1 / Uncreative destruction in Cambodia

WHILE the Obama administration was working out details of how to bulldoze urban neighborhoods to save them, Unca D helpfully listed a couple of other leaders who fundamentally transformed their counties with similar programs -- Nicholae Ceaucescu in Romania and and Julius Nyerere in Tanzania. 

"Good entry," wrote one reader, "but . . . .

JUNE 26 / The WSJ takes down Chronicle editorialists' favorite state, California (along with New York and New Jersey)

PRESIDENT OBAMA has bet the economy on his program to grow the government and finance it with a more progressive tax system. It's hard to miss the irony that he's pitching this change in Washington even as the same governance model is imploding in three of the largest American states where it has been dominant for years -- California, New Jersey and New York.

JUNE 25 / The Texas Watchdog story you've been hearing about

HOUSTON MAYOR Bill White was informed nearly a year and a half ago that a nonprofit arm of the Houston Airport System was heavily involved in building and running airport facilities in several other countries, records show.

The rest of the story . . .

JUNE 25 / One-by-one, some journalists will admit the obvious. Here's one.

PHIL BRONSTEIN, "Bronstein at Large: Love or lust, Obama and the fawning press need to get a room," sfgate.com, June 8, 2009:

This guy [meaning President Obama] is good. Really good. And, frankly, so far, we [meaning the press] are not.

JUNE 24 / UPDATED: There's right. There's wrong. And there's wrong and darn proud of it.

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal today published a good analysis of how hard it is to estimate the number of uninsured people in America: Carl Bialik, "The Unhealthy Accounting of Uninsured Americans." 

The Census Bureau estimates that the number of uninsured amounts to 45.7 million people. [Unca D: Note: It's "people," not (as the Chronicle would have it) "Americans."] But the agency might be overcounting by millions due to faulty assumptions. Another problem: That 45.7 million figure includes undocumented immigrants, even though they aren't likely to be covered under new laws. [Unca: The number also includes millions of documented immigrants.] 

NOW BACK to our regularly scheduled rant:

As I have explained four times before, the numbers in each of the following statements from Houston Chronicle editorial are demonstrably false. The Chronicle knows the numbers are false, but repeats them anyway. What does that tell you?

JUNE 23 / UPDATED: Strike the question marks

I ENDED the post immediately below -- click here if "immediately below" does not work for you -- with what I thought was an insult for the mainstream newspaper's editorial drift toward the alt-journalism perspective of the Houston Press.

What's next at the Chronicle?

Sex ads?

Well, scratch that.