Tuesday, August 18, 2009

What are you smoking?

Lesley shot this photo from Jerome this morning. Tons of smoke over in the Verde from the Taylor fire.

Geez, who's running the show today?

In the editor's haste to get this critical midday story (from Sunday!) up on the Website, s/he apparently forgot to think about whether it was intelligible. The reader is left to consider whether this was written by someone at the Courier, or just passed through from the sheriff's report:

. . . deputies where able to located McCracken after he called the cell phone of a witness.

Editorial: Gun-toters hurt owners' rights

As the story of the nutbar with the AR-15 hanging around the Obama venue in Phoenix goes national, further confirming Arizona's reputation for adolescent behavior, the unnamed Courier editor gets it right for once and comes down hard on him and other irresponsible gun owners. Today the editor deserves a big cookie and my full support. (It's a point, though: what else could he do?)

We can hope that this will help inform the future debate on sensible gun restrictions that protect society while respecting individual rights.

Letter: How about 'clunkers' for low-income folk?

Carolyn Wiseman is taking some heat from the commenters, but she has a point: if the goal of the program is to move people into cleaner and more efficient cars, why don't used cars qualify? Given the same mileage differential, replacing an inefficient car with a more efficient used car would cost the government less, giving us more bang for our bucks, and reduce the overall carbon footprint substantially compared to making a new car. But one anonymous commenter is right to the extent that the program is clearly more for the car manufacturers than for consumers or the environment.

Man faces charges after he alleged assaults estranged wife

Today's chuckle: Another pitiful fail by the headline writer and the page editor helps make up for the lame cartoon page. Hint: It's really not that hard to proof your headlines, kids!

The answer to the puzzle: Peeples Valley man charged with assault

ToT: People need to get health care facts

Kathy Lopez contributes some fact-based reality and mature thinking to the sense-starved health-care debate, and the Courier wins a point for giving her the Talk of the Town banner.

Unfortunately, like other contributors she lacks pertinent credentials, and she gives us a whole lot of numbers without backing citations. Providing sources would help convince a lot of readers, and a good editor would have asked for it.

Update, 4pm: In the comments, "Truth Doctrine" offers us the anonymous blog post that started the Hitler-image-as-Dem-plant rumor. Click here to read a response from actual journalist David Weigel, who investigated the allegation for The Washington Independent.