Friday, February 27, 2009

Texas may let hunters shoot pigs from choppers

In the '60's, that meant something much different:

MERTZON, Texas - Millions of wild pigs weighing up to 300 pounds have been tearing up crops, trampling fences and eating just about anything in their path in Texas. But now they had better watch their hairy backs.

A state lawmaker is proposing to allow ordinary Texans with rifles and shotguns to shoot the voracious, tusked animals from helicopters.

For years, ranchers in the Lone Star State have hired professional hunters in choppers to thin the hogs' fast-multiplying ranks. Now state Rep. Sid Miller of the Fort Worth area wants to bring more firepower to the task by issuing permits to sportsmen.


This wouldn't be quite as inhumane as Alaska's aerial wolf-gunning program. Still ...


"If they're going to open up to where you can do this and anybody who's got a helicopter can go off to an old boy's place and hunt, that's going to be bad," said Jay Smith, owner of Smith Helicopters in Cotulla. Some people "may get confused and shoot the rancher's dog or a calf."


Go on and read some more about the guy in the Panhandle flying the "pork chopper".

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Hearst now threatening to shutter SF Chron *update*



Fresh on the heels of a threat to close the Seattle Post-Intelligencer last month comes Frank Bennack and Steven Swartz with another ominous warning:

The San Francisco Chronicle will be sold or closed unless major cost-cutting measures -- including an unspecified "significant reduction in the number of unionized and non-union employees" -- can be realized within weeks, parent company Hearst Corp. said Tuesday evening.

"If these savings cannot be accomplished within weeks ... the company will be forced to sell or close the newspaper," Hearst said in a statement. The company claims the Chronicle lost more than $50 million last year, "and that this year's losses to date are worse." The paper has had "major losses" each year since 2001, the company added.

"Because of the sea change newspapers everywhere are undergoing and these dire economic times, it is essential that our management and the local union leadership work together to implement the changes necessary to bring the cost of producing the Chronicle into line with available revenue," said a joint prepared statement by Frank A. Bennack Jr., vice chairman and chief executive officer of Hearst Corp. and Steven R. Swartz, president of Hearst Newspapers.

Fifty. Million. Bucks. In losses.

When I worked for Hearst in the 80's they owned the San Francisco Examiner, and the publisher was W. R. Hearst III, grandson of you-know-who. It was still considered the flagship, the one from which The Chief had built an empire. The company sold off that paper (in a hilarious comedy of very public errors) and bought the crosstown rival Chronicle, the more successful in circulation and ad revenue of the two. They had previously been married in a JOA (just like the P-I, just like the San Antonio Light -- RIP -- and the Express-News).

And now, apparently, they have run that one into the ground.

I suppose Hearst just isn't interested in being in the newspaper business any longer.

Update: And today, the Rocky Mountain News -- two weeks shy of its 150th birthday -- publishes its final edition. No online version will continue to be offered.

(Yesterday's) announcement comes as metropolitan newspapers and major newspaper companies find themselves reeling, with plummeting advertising revenues and dramatically diminished share prices. Just this week, Hearst, owner of the San Francisco Chronicle, announced that unless it was able to make immediate and steep expense cuts it would put the paper up for sale and possibly close it. Two other papers in JOAs, one in Seattle and the other in Tucson, are facing closure in coming weeks.

The Rocky was founded in 1859 by William Byers, one of the most influential figures in Colorado history. Scripps bought the paper in 1926 and immediately began a newspaper war with The Post. That fight ebbed and flowed over the course of the rest of the 20th century, culminating in penny-a-day subscriptions in the late '90s.

Perhaps the most critical step for the Rocky occurred in 1942, when then-Editor Jack Foster saved it by adopting the tabloid style it has been known for ever since. Readers loved the change, and circulation took off.

In the past decade, the Rocky has won four Pulitzer Prizes, more than all but a handful of American papers. Its sports section was named one of the 10 best in the nation this week. Its business section was cited by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers as one of the best in the country last year. And its photo staff is regularly listed among the best in the nation when the top 10 photo newspapers are judged.

Staffers were told to come in Friday to collect personal effects.

Piyush Jindal flops

Even most conservatives considered the Louisiana governor's star turn Tuesday night a miserable failure.

This seems to be the least harsh and sums up the man's shortcomings, all of which appear to be style-related:

He looked young and amateurish. His delivery was unprofessional: He spoke entirely too rapidly, something a speech coach would work on in the first lesson. His tone and mannerisms were less presidential than they were something you'd see in an infomercial, and he seemed to be talking down to the viewing public.

So if you could meld Jindal's mind into Sarah Palin's body, you think maybe the GOP would have something?

Nah, me neither.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

And that's why Bill White and John Sharp are running for Senate

Because Kay Bailey Perjury Technicality spanks "the longest serving governor in Texas history" like an unruly child. Let's give Harvey Kronberg the chance to shout a little:

NEW POLL PUTS KBH AHEAD OF PERRY 56-31

Company uses controversial robo-dialing methodology but notes it was the most accurate in 2008 Texas GOP presidential primary

A North Carolina polling company called Public Policy Polling reports that a recent poll of 797 likely Republican primary voters puts Kay Bailey Hutchison decisively ahead of Rick Perry by a margin of 56-31.

PPP uses a controversial method of automated telephone polling that has both supporters and detractors. To pre-empt arguments about methodology, the company forwarded an analysis indicating that they had the most accurate Texas numbers in the 2008 GOP presidential primary.

KBH has 76% favorables to RP’s 60%. But the 27% Perry unfavorables lean to Hutchison by a factor of 85-8.

PPP President Dean Debman said, “Rick Perry is in grave danger of losing in the primary. It’s partly because he’s worn out his welcome with a certain segment of the Republican electorate, but he even bigger reason is that Kay Bailey Hutchison is just a lot more popular than him. It would be hard for anyone to beat her in an election.”

Most observers believe that a contested primary would draw well over a million voters rather than the six to seven hundred thousand that normally vote in a gubernatorial year.

The poll results can be found here.


Does an all-out assault on DC, abortion, and running so hard right he's knee-deep in the bar ditch get Rick Perry back in good graces with all the freaks who will vote in the Texas GOP primary next March?

I predict that my year's supply of Orville Redenbacher is going to run out before the summer.

Meanwhile ... what's Boyd Richie telling Kinky Friedman and Tom Schieffer?