Weather or Not

Severe Outflow by R. Edwards

CBS News’ Journalistic Persecution

by Leave a Comment

I’ve heavily criticized journalists here and elsewhere when they show bias and misbehave ethically, but also, heavily supported them when their constitutional rights go under attack. This is a little different.

CBS, in the middle of a spate of layoffs common to their (and other news organizations’) failed business models, surprisingly included noted investigative reporter Catherine Herridge in the ranks of those unceremoniously shown the door. [She had dealt with unconstitutional governmental persecution before as well.] That’s not all. She was investigating the Hunter Biden laptop story, among other topics uncommon to a mainline network reporting operation. Topics that could bring heat upon a corporation from very high places in both government and advertisers…

Traditionally, when reporters leave a news outlet, they get to take their belongings, files, sources and information. It’s a time-honored journalistic tradition, and it makes sense. With CBS, she still had a lot of her confidentials from Fox (info, sources, etc.). CBS instead seized her belongings including files, computers and most importantly, information on privileged sources — including those not just from her CBS work, but Fox too.

According to legal analyst Jonathan Turley, who also used to work for CBS as a contractor and knows Herridge, “A former CBS manager, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said that he had ‘never heard of anything like this.’ He attested to the fact that, in past departures, journalists took all of their files and office contents. Indeed, the company would box up everything from cups to post-its for departing reporters. He said the holding of the material was ‘outrageous’ and clearly endangered confidential sources.”

The union representing the reporters stated, “CBS News’ decision to seize Catherine Herridge’s reporter notes and research … sets a dangerous precedent for all media professionals and threatens the very foundation of the First Amendment.” The House Judiciary Committee has launched a probe into the incident also, not that it will amount to anything, since most such probes are theatrical politics.

What is CBS trying to hide? Who are they trying to protect? These are valid questions in the face of unprecedented actions.

Scattershooting 231216

by Leave a Comment

Scattershooting while wondering why it’s been so long since I wielded the scattershooting arsenal here!

HOW to LEARN HOW to DRIVE: I cut my driving teeth in the Metroplex in the ’80s. This turned me into an “assertive” city driver in a hurry. My version of defensive driving: the best defense is a good offense. It was survival of the fittest, amongst (in any particular order): lost/confused northerners turning left from the right lane and vice versa, hyper-aggressive natives driving 95 in 55, tin-can Datsuns cutting you off then stopping on a dime for no apparent reason, illegal drivers from across the border going at random angles with respect to the road, blue-haired old ladies with bad vision puttering along at snail’s paces while leaned way forward almost to the windshield, wrong-way drunks, green-light sitters who’d wait 5-10 seconds to go, red-light runners at any stage of the cycle, johns on the whore corners looking at women instead of the road, street racers at any hour of day or night, low-rider Lincolns bouncing hydraulics and booming loud music while crawling at 5 mph, 18-wheeler “rulers o’ the freeway” who didn’t care at all about the concept of right-of-way, insurance fraudsters who would try to back into you on purpose at stoplights, crotch-rocket jockeys weaving between cars and lanes at dizzying speeds, gangbangers with .22 & .38 pistols sometimes raised, and other gauntlet obstacles to arriving alive and well. Gives one perspective, makes one adaptable and tough. Ahh, the memories…

RETAIL VACANCIES — A VERY COMPLEX ISSUE: Norman, like a lot of cities and towns, has had a sizable population of long-empty stores and restaurant spaces over the last decade—more lately. It’s easy and devoid of critical thinking for someone to blame “greedy landlords”, as I’ve seen and heard many times. Look deeper. The variables involved are many, and often related to local policy—such as the vacancies created on Ed Noble Pkwy by stores flocking to the University North Park TIF district starting about a decade ago. Others—such as profit loss from theft off already slim margins (in their case, also combined with a gimmicky pricing scheme) can doom a tenant, as appears to have happened with the Cost Saver store on Lindsey & 12th, in an increasingly blighted area. Other times, large tenants or small businesses (most of whom don’t last more than a few years anyway) pull out due to profit-margin analysis.

How retail spaces get vacant is messy. How they stay vacant is, too. Oftentimes, landlords are caught in a vise between commercial lenders and the rent/lease levels of supply and demand. Since most landlords don’t own their facilities outright, mortgage-free, they are beholden to banks and other lenders, who can dictate minimum-rent rates above prevailing. This leaves stores vacant and costs landlords a lot of money, which they have to make up elsewhere, else sell properties or go bankrupt. Not as simple as “greedy landlords” or even “greedy banks”. These are all businesses—not charities! This article summarizes the issue really well—even if it is coast-centric. [One of the glaring biases of elite corporate journalism is treating the coasts with greater importance than areas between. For another, see below.]

JOURNALISM PHOTOS as PROPAGANDISTIC PSYOPS: The strong leftward bias in journalism is self-evident to anyone who reads stories critically for keywords often used by one side but not the other. “Homophobia”, “climate crisis”, “social justice”, “his husband”, “transphobia”, and similar leftist words appearing in stories are dead giveaways of that bias, of course. That goes without saying; it’s so obvious. The bias is simply a manifestation of the political leanings of the profession, wherein self-declared Democrats outnumber Republicans 4-1. [And if you think the “Independents” are evenly split, I’ve got prime land 20 miles east of downtown Miami to sell you.]

This article from the BBC straight-up admits journalistic psyops via choice of images. A shorter word for such a practice is: propaganda. And yet members of the profession wonder why revenue is down and layoffs are rampant. Part of the problem is outdated business models in the tech age. Another part is destroying any notion of objectivity (and therefore credibility) through editorializing, and propaganda tactics such as freely admitted in this “story”. Journalism is supposed to be about reporting the facts and only the facts, remaining sociopolitically neutral, and letting the audience decide their implications and meaning for themselves, not practicing emotional manipulation of readership, nor using subjective editorial words like “crisis” that are mathematically immeasurable. Yet reporters consistently, arrogantly, think they should make up readers’ minds for them. [News flash: based on the poor quality of stories overall, this reader — who has taken courses in journalism and has read daily news since age 6 — thoroughly overwhelms the vast majority of reporters on total awareness of large numbers of issues, vocabulary size, and writing skill. Try me.] The story is about climate, but that’s not my concern here; the issue could be anything controversial. It’s that the propaganda tactics and lack of neutrality are so culturally ingrained in journalism now that they don’t even try to hide the biases anymore. Treat the stories you read accordingly, and with a more critical and skeptical filter than ever.

PLAGIARIST HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT: Of all people, the president of an (increasingly disreputable) Ivy League university should lead by example with a sterling clean academic and professional record, utterly free of plagiarism. Yet here we are. Meanwhile the NY Times tries to obfuscate and impart false nuance by excusing her academic dishonesty as “degrees of plagiarism” (paywalled, thus no link). This is rich, coming from the (increasingly disreputable) newspaper that employed Jayson Blair, among several more who have passed off others’ work as their own. But isn’t it always about goalpost-moving progression when “our side” does it? This follows a recurring pattern, obvious to the observant:
1. Denial: “No plagiarism happened!”
2. Minimilization: (oh s**t, optics optics!, PR damage control on aisle 4, we have to back off some): There was a little bit of plagiarism. And it wasn’t that bad.
3. Bad is good (per Isaiah 5:20): “Multiple instances of plagiarism occurred, but here’s why it’s fine.”
4. “Systemic oppression by the capitalist patriarchy forces the subjugated class to resort to plagiarism, as an act of resistance. Stick it to The Man!”

[We’re stuck stage 2 with the current Plagiarist in Chief. Journalism quit there, then in a dereliction of duty all too common to the sycophantic Fourth Estate, ignored the past in hopes it would be forgotten. It largely was, except by those of us old and aware enough to remember.] Notice the increasingly unhinged irrationality at each step. Instead, how about this: Thou shalt not lie. End of story.

PORNOGRAPHIC SODOMY in the SENATE FACILITY: With the behavior of the politicians in Congress seemingly reaching new lows by the month (example), is it any wonder the staffers follow suit? Recently came news of an unsurpassed absurdity that epitomizes the level of cultural moral decay in DC. What kind of deranged morons would have butt sex in the Senate hearing room at all, much less make a pornographic video of it?!?!?!? This is truly diabolical, pathological behavior, and entirely unbecoming the traditional dignity of the chamber. Get your favorite version of the story (Fox, CNN). I won’t direct link the main story from the Daily Caller, which broke it, due to nasty, grotesque, NSFW imagery, even in blurred-out form. The staffer (of Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin) tried to portray himself as some sort of victim of bigotry against “love”. Unmitigated bullshit! You don’t have sex of any nature, nor film porn, in a federal office facility! Simple as that. Not only has he been fired, and should have been, but may (and should) face criminal charges.

Sixty Years of Secrets

by Leave a Comment

JFK, 22 Nov 63, Dallas

Sixty years ago this date, on a cold and sunny Dallas day, the world changed forever. All of us have been affected in some way, even if distantly or indirectly – rather profoundly, in my case. I’ll tell it short (for me), and intersperse some personal connections.

Books and long-form essays aplenty have been written about that day and its aftermath – some reliable and evidence-based, others rife with wildly speculative and unsupported conspiracy theories by the hundreds, and everything in between. Countless movies and videos have been made, from Oliver Stone’s controversial “JFK” to cheap, low-budget films, then untold many YouTube clickbait videos. Whatever your preferred scenario, there’s a theory to support it, with highly varying levels of actual, tangible evidence. Here’s a summary of what I do understand after decades of both osmotic and proactive learning, in Dallas and since, skipping numerous details!

A motorcade cruised west on Main with an open-air convertible limo seating President John F. Kennedy, glamorous First Lady Jackie (looking adoring and adorable, but suffering secretly through her husband’s marital indiscretions covered up by mainstream “journalists”), Texas Governor John Connally, and his wife Nellie. Passing cheering throngs dozens of rows deep alongside each street, minutes before world history redirected forever at the pull of a trigger.

My dad was on a Main St. hotel balcony above the motorcade, taking advantage of the view from a visiting friend’s room, a couple blocks east of Houston St. He didn’t care much for Kennedy as a President in some ways, and had voted for Nixon, but nonetheless respected both the office and JFK personally, especially for his military service and courageous, principled stand in the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was there to show that respect and witness history, among many thousands of others.

West on Main St. they went, out of his sight, then one block north on Houston St. Then the limo turned left onto Elm, toward a grassy knoll and past an unobtrusive six-story brick building with an innocuous purpose, destined for eternal infamy: the Texas School Book Depository. My dad retreated back to his buddy’s room.

On Elm St., about 150 feet downhill from the turn, a rifle bullet blew John Kennedy’s head open, snapping it in recoil and spraying his brains visibly into the air. Connally was hit too, non-fatally. Jackie, in understandable shock and panic, crawled out of her seat and onto the trunk. “X” marks the spot, still today.

My dad heard the shot(s) and their echoes unseen through the urban canyon and recognized them instantly for what they were, hoping against hope it wasn’t what he feared. As it turns out, his dread was justified, as the wail of sirens from speeding police cars drowned out remaining crowd noise, then went away. The radio in the room crackled with awful news. One by one, those remaining in the thinning crowds fell silent and stood in horrified stupor as the word spread. Soon, the city was the most deathly daylight quiet it will be until, perhaps, next year’s total solar eclipse.

The limo sped the short distance northwest up what’s now I-35E, Stemmons Freeway, straight to Parkland hospital, where the already-dead President was declared so. The blood-and brain-splattered limo arrived a few floors below the “poor folks’” maternity ward where I was born 3-1/2 years later and a little over a year after he married my mom, who did not yet know my dad in late 1963, and who was not downtown.

Instead, by her account as I recall it, she was in front of a radio when the news hit, then a TV. She cried for hours, from then into ensuing days and weeks, mourning over what happened to JFK, her childhood city, this nation, and the world. Five years after divorce from her first husband in Houston, and with no one else yet in sight, her world and that around her seemed like it was descending into a long, cold winter, literally and figuratively. The awful memories would send her quivering with tears again as she recounted them to me in the ‘70s. She was not the crying kind in my experience: a compassionate yet steadfast, easygoing and hardship-overcoming presence, always seeking joy and looking at the positives amidst ever-present hardships. This was different and troubling on another level.

That day in ’63 gave my dad (who had met Jack Ruby and spent time at his bar) an experience he’d only discuss reluctantly, curtly, rarely, a reaction I saw quite unlike any other from a typically open-book and unrestrained storyteller, free and flowing with his opinions on anything, a towering figure of physical strength to a little boy, rife with his own endurances, tough as Texas. Strangely, his recounting of witnessing his own brother’s murder just a block away from that hotel and at another, while hard for him, was more matter-of-fact. This was different and troubling on another level.

A simultaneous, scarring disturbance in the space-time fabric of life somehow independently brought both to their limit of restraint and composure. What? How could something have such disparate yet similarly dark effects on them both? I had to learn more.

It led to countless hours of reading and study at the library downtown. [And you thought I only visited for Dewey Decimal 551.5 (the weather section)!] Yes, I read hundreds of microfilmed newspaper and magazine articles …about both tornadoes and the JFK killing…strung up and projected all the movie reels of the 1957 Dallas tornado, over and over and over of course, but also, a first-generation copy of the Zapruder film that somehow found its way to the then-new library’s Texas History Collection in the early ‘80s. I wonder if it’s still there, even after digitization.

As a kid, and into my twenties, I read dozens of books on the assassination, until it seemed I had exhausted all there was to learn, factually and speculatively. There’s probably not a conspiracy theory I haven’t read. The Warren Commission offered the official company-line version of events in its report. I don’t think it’s total B.S., but it was heavily sanitized, with a lot missing pieces, some self-contradictions, and far too much unjustified certitude.

Missing pieces…if any event in modern lifetimes (even if before mine) still has the most of them it’s probably JFK’s murder. I don’t discuss it much, not because of any personal trauma, but because it’s too vast, uncertain, wayward, ridden and riddled with dead ends and bad leads. Following old clues stretches one too thin, leads everywhere and nowhere all at once. What I do know is redundant and banal by now. What I don’t is maddening. So I haven’t revisited that realm much of late. Today takes me back, as does every November 22 to some extent. The cycle is ingrained and has been since each anniversary’s editions of the local newspaper arrived at the childhood door – newspapers I read daily, year-round, with strong interest in many issues. This one was among the most interesting and frustrating.

Since those teen library days and age-twenties books, some missing pieces (but far from enough!), in the form of declassified documents, have trickled out in small chunks. They added minor, tantalizing insights, unfortunately often adding fuel to hitherto idle speculation from conspiracy mongers about deep-state involvement. At some point I couldn’t dismiss all of them as cranks anymore (just most of them). With known enemies foreign and domestic, or at least “people in high places JFK pissed off” like J. Edgar Hoover and Allen Dulles, what dark outcomes and speculations can be definitively ruled out? Fewer and fewer it seems, with each meager release.

So many questions…indeed, I’ll wager that no killing of one man in world history, outside that of Jesus Himself, has been the subject of more study, attention, speculation, hyperbole, legend, and influence in terms of the path of history altered permanently. Directly and by domino effect, it left a legacy of mistrust, overseas war, social turmoil, and perhaps most sadly, a collective, civilizational loss of innocence. No murder mystery ever penned can rival this one for intrigue, and not one single competent mystery writer ever would leave so many loose ends.

Who put Oswald up to it and enabled him, if anyone? Why? How and why did Ruby get downstairs and kill Oswald right in front of all those cops? These are among the greatest controversies of all time. The answers exist. I could ask dozens more questions.

Sunshine really is the greatest disinfectant, especially of untrue conspiracy theories. Want to knock out almost all conspiracy theories, even if it takes confirming parts of some? A lot more openness would help – namely declassifying *all* JFK assassination-related documents, which presidents from Clinton through Biden have pledged to do after the Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. By omission they all have failed, stonewalled, broken those promises. By law, all were supposed to be released by 2017. The law is being broken daily right now, and has been since. I don’t have the answers, but I want them. All of them! I’m not alone. Thousands of pages remain classified, against the law. No one is being held accountable.

We the taxpayer paid for the Kennedy files, and in the interest of full disclosure six decades later, we therefore are entitled to see them, declassified and fully unredacted. It’s 2023, not 1963.

If you agree, tell your representative or Senator, in certain terms. Let’s get as much of this mystery solved as possible, even if the truth is ugly. Even if the truth hurts. Even if the truth isn’t what we thought. Even if the truth is dismissed as more lies. Even if the truth worsens mistrust of previously respected institutions in government, journalism, academia, and corporations (that mistrust now is planted deep anyway, so what’s the difference?). None of that matters anymore. We deserve to know the truth still concealed by those whom we have elected to represent us, for decades.