Saturday, May 12, 2007

Coming: Another contender for AZ-1

I'm a little late hearing about this -- busy weekend -- but I'm sure we'll see something soon in the Courier.

Editorial: "Economic ripples are not tidal waves"

Today's sermon shows that the unnamed Courier editor buys into the idea that a less-steep curve for revenue growth is a scary thing -- hence his stentorian reassurance. This confirms some of my suspicions from yesterday that the editor doesn't really understand what the bureaucrat is telling him.

Thanks, editors, no one's panicking here, we're OK. Looks like you could use a Valium, though.

Letters: More love for Hambrick

The cards and letters keep pouring in.

Reagan: "Dems fine with being 'surrender monkeys'"

You might like to think that the Courier carries this moron to prove there's someone the editors can point to who's so far out to the right that they, by comparison, appear centrist. Then you look at the original ("Going Wobbly," May 10), compare it against the Courier's changes and the choice of headline, and it's hard not to conclude that the editors think Mike Reagan isn't quite right-wing enough and they need to punch him up a bit.

What's interesting is that Reagan's tortured-pretzel logic and bug-crazy hysteria is so easy to see for what it is, you gotta wonder why the Courier editors don't see it as well.

There are plenty of sane writers on the right to choose from, and that's the path to credibility for the Courier. Do the editors care?

A1: "Chino Valley approves pipeline"

There's something funny about this story. I have it on pretty good authority that Chino Valley has been working public process on building this pipeline for some time, although perhaps not the part involving the contract to actually build it, an area that is normally handled confidentially. A whisker-thin margin on the agenda for the vote, that's another matter, but it seems very odd that Mayor Simmons is saying this blindsided him. Perhaps someone at City Hall is not doing his homework. In any case we're given the impression that Chino Valley is pushing something through underhandedly, and that seems to be more in the editing than the facts.

A1: "Program forges bonds between troops, students"

Another nice little inside feature makes it to the front page.

Maybe I'm getting old, but I remember when a "care package" was a CARE package.

A1: "Armed standoff leads to arrest"

Given recent history on this page, I'd just as soon not conclude that this represents anything like reality just yet. I'll keep an eye out for the followup, and see what we get.

A1: "Push is on for city pool"

Cindy covers the meeting just fine, but in introducing a public issue like this, I'd like to hear from the other side. It wouldn't surprise me that no one at the meeting was standing up to say, "we don't need to spend money on this."

There seems to be a certain amount of keep-up-with-the-Joneses thinking in Council's consideration of Emperor McCasland's recommendation. The crux of the issue seems to be competitive swimmers. How many of those live here compared to the five to eight million clams the project will eat?