Comment Archives: stories: News: Pith in the Wind
Re: “Whose Faith & Values Is The Tennessean Covering?”
Dorothy Morrison, an Important Spiritual Figure, has a cash flow potion for sale on her website for $10.95. Bury it outside and you'll be amazed at the results! You can't make this stuff up.
Re: “Whose Faith & Values Is The Tennessean Covering?”
"Dozens" is exaggerating by quite a bit (here's the search results: http://www.google.com/search?as_q=Bob+Smie…)
However, Betsy was criticizing the entire Faith and Values page, not just one columnist.
Re: “Hey, Gov. Haslam — CEOs are Accountable to Shareholders, Right?”
California is a fantastic example of why too much direct democracy is a bad thing.
Re: “On TV News, Sweeps and Sensationalism”
How about reposting Ferrier's breathless tweets? I think if anything reeks of Sweeps Month sensationalism, it's that.
Although, to be fair, Ferrier always reeks of Sweeps Month sensationalism, whether it's actually Sweeps Month or not.
Re: “Hey, Gov. Haslam — CEOs are Accountable to Shareholders, Right?”
By the way, Xray, California's direct democracy system IS the primary reason they are having problems. You can deny that all you want, but if you need to pass a 2/3 majority in the legislature, have the governor sign off on it, and get the citizens to approve it, it is practically destined for failure.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/…
Or as another commenter put it: "To begin with, the state's government and political system are designed to malfunction. A series of ill-conceived constraints and incentives have created weak and unaccountable public officials, even as they have set California on a course to fiscal disaster. In the state legislature, for example, a two-thirds majority is required to pass a budget. The original law creating this requirement was passed in the 1930s, and invoked the two-thirds rule only for budgets that grew by 5% or more over the prior year. But that qualification was dropped in the 1960s, and the two-thirds majority is now an annual necessity. Because California's political districts are thoroughly uncompetitive (in 2004, 153 state or federal legislative seats were up for election, and none changed parties), members of the legislature tend to come from the parties' ideological poles. And since this static landscape also leaves each party short of a two-thirds majority, budget negotiations inevitably devolve into a Mexican standoff."
Re: “Hey, Gov. Haslam — CEOs are Accountable to Shareholders, Right?”
Look, we can all find various lists of various topics of different states and post endlessly about them. If your idea of "quality of life" is just low taxes, than yes, you should be living in only red states. There are other factors though and I've met many people in blue states, and socialized European countries like Sweden for that matter, who love where they live. I was traveling in South America several years ago and talked with a guy from Sweden who has been to the U.S. many times who would never trade his country for ours. I worked with a guy from Seattle who couldn't stand Tennessee and moved back several months ago. I know several Californians who are dying to go back to that state. Everyone has a point of view and to each his own. Blue states have higher taxes. Red states are less educated and less healthy. Blue states may have more debt (although that's debateable). Red states tend to have less access to healthcare, more crime and more environmental problems. Blue states have more governmental services- and they pay for it more. Red states take more back from the federal government than they pay in, than do blue states. Most blue states have vast portions of them that are actually red. Most red states have major pockets of blue (like Nashville). I live in Nashville because it is a blue island in a sea of red. Many people wouldn't be caught dead living here, would rather live in the more homogeneous suburban counties. I could go on and on. It's all about perception and what you value. We should stop beating people up about things like this. But, at the very least, we should be willing to see both sides of the coin and stop letting our prejudices and confirmation biases dictate how we interact with others.
Re: “On TV News, Sweeps and Sensationalism”
"It ain't necessarily so that TV stations practice shoddy journalism during sweeps. It is true, however, that the pressure to produce grabby, promotable stories during sweeps is enormous."
Obviously sweeps periods are enormously important to stations. If not, why would they also give away throusand of dollars to viewers only during these times?
Re: “Whose Faith & Values Is The Tennessean Covering?”
Bob Smietana is the guy Betsy is criticizing. He's written dozens of articles about Middle Tennessee's non-Christian community for The Tennessean. Type his name and any faith in Google and you'll see that this is the truth. This criticism just doesn't hold up to the facts.
Re: “Whose Faith & Values Is The Tennessean Covering?”
Not to quibble tooooo much but Mormons are NOT Christian: they are a polytheistic religion which uses Christian terminology.
Re: “Hey, Gov. Haslam — CEOs are Accountable to Shareholders, Right?”
WOW, xray/zoombah/gastthedead/vladthevulgarnakedmonkey, looks like AnglRdr served you a sh*t supper.
The Cato Institute, founded as the Charles Koch Foundation, has a definite prejudice for free market, small government, libertarian POV's that even Ayn Rand would shy from. It is not a viable source.
As for who's to blame for Wall Street failures, why I'm sure it's poor people, they cause ALL the world's woes, don't they?
Re: “On TV News, Sweeps and Sensationalism”
"I didn't realize that was a controversial statement."
It's not. Not to any viewer with half a brain, anyway. Remember Channel 5's "Islamville" stories a few years ago.
Re: “Whose Faith & Values Is The Tennessean Covering?”
So, David, you are saying the major News Print media outlet of a southern city located in the Golden Buckle of the Bible Belt and staunch good ol' boy patriotism (Wake Up America & Phil Valentine); Capital of a state where the local state legislature (Komedy Klown Kongress) is ruled by The Average White Party (Teabagger GOPhers) and the Gubner (Skippy Haslem) is a dyed in the wool Eaststate rich boy conservative; just down the street from a national laughingstock effort to deny U S Constitutional rights for a place of worship to exist led by a Neo Nazi (IMHO) madwoman (Frau Zelnick) leans a bit toward the Christianist philososphy of freedom for us, not so much for you heathen bastard Non-believer.
Re: “Hey, Gov. Haslam — CEOs are Accountable to Shareholders, Right?”
Bobs, you're a moron. Please go away.
xray, there are a couple of issues with the article. The first one is regarding the tightened enforcement of CRA, and how that "forced" banks to make bad loans. That simply is not true. Most of the bad mortgages weren't made to poor people.
And its conclusion is faulty. What crashed the market was the bundling of subprime mortgage backed securities without fully disclosing to the investors what the risk was, or, in many cases, flat out lying about the risks.
Re: “On TV News, Sweeps and Sensationalism”
Nashville is a great, interesting, diverse city. But it cannot fill 3 hours of morning news, an hour of noon time news, 90 minutes of evening news, and 30 minutes of 10pm news.
That's why we get people like that woman (I don't know what to call her since she's definitely not a reporter) on WSMV's morning news showing us on Google Earth where the Mexican border is in relation to McAllen Texas, using the telestrater app to show that it is 20(!!) miles from McAllen to the border. And she's so breathless about it, as if it actually matters for something about the story.
And the other channels are the exact same drivel. The personalities on WSMV are the least offensive to me, though.
Re: “On TV News, Sweeps and Sensationalism”
Could the solution be to deny advertising on a stations newscasts and require the stations to produce newscasts IF they have a certain % viewership? Would removing the profit motive from public media affect positively the quality of such? Or should the advertizing rates in a market be set by the FCC for ALL stations!
Re: “On TV News, Sweeps and Sensationalism”
When I started in television news (1977), local news was not widely viewed as a profit-making venture. It was an obligation imposed on stations by the FCC in order to retain their license to broadcast on the public airways.
Somewhere along the way, newscasts became enormous profit centers for local broadcasters. Because stations control 100% of the commercial inventory during their own news programs, and because they have more control over the quality (and presumably the level of audience) during those programs, it became possible for local news programs to generate a disproportionate share of the station's revenue. It was at about this time you started to see morning news, noon news, hour-long evening news, etc.
When local news became a potential profit-monster, it increased the pressure on all stations for news ratings, upon which the advertising prices are based. Consultants like Magid and Audience Research & Development began to troll the country with sample five-part series on tape, urging their clients to duplicate successful series from other markets during sweeps months.
It ain't necessarily so that TV stations practice shoddy journalism during sweeps. It is true, however, that the pressure to produce grabby, promotable stories during sweeps is enormous.
Re: “Hey, Gov. Haslam — CEOs are Accountable to Shareholders, Right?”
@Jim Collins: Find one factual error in the link from the Cato Institute. You can't. You won't. Of course you didn't read it and won't read it because you're lazy. You're still wishing all the idiocy about Wall Street was true. Most of the Wall Street blame traces back to Democrats blowing smoke to obscure the roles played by Dodd and Franks which most of the news media refused to air - didn't fit their agenda. And gee whiz, why don't you still live in good old California? Tennessee wouldn't miss you at all. There is nothing that links California's problems to their referendums. As far as ranking the states, you do have a source for your own financial rankings, right? Oh, you don't? Why am I not surprised? Why do you bother to argue when the facts make you look like an idiot?
Re: “Whose Faith & Values Is The Tennessean Covering?”
Nonsense, the Tennessean does plenty of stories on Muslims.
Just the other day I saw one about a couple of them set off bombs at the Boston Marathon and one of them left a note saying that Allah told him to do it. Then I saw another one where they were killing Christians by the thousands in Nigeria. There were another couple of stories about a couple of female Muslims convicted of raising funds under false pretenses in Minnesota and sending the proceeds to terrorist organizations.
Re: “On TV News, Sweeps and Sensationalism”
We need a @HuffPoSpoilers for the local news twitter.
Re: “Racist Who Attended Racist Conference in Tennessee Still Being Racist Back at School”
The article was amazing.
I am curious about his claim that the govnerment is committing genocide on white people, though.