Making even O'Rielly seem like a news reporter

Chelsea Clinton is now a big-time journalist for NBC, joining Jenna Bush and  Meghan McCain in a new triumvirate of lucky sperm kids who will explain the world to us. The network assures us she wasn't hired as just another pretty face.

Chelsea Clinton "made it very clear that this is not going to be a surface-deep relationship," (NBC News President) ) Capus told the New York Times. "She wants to be in the field for the shoot and in the edit room for the edit."

And if that doesn't terrify you I'll kiss your arse in the Rainbow Room and sign a model release for every camera crew you can cram into the joint.

(For Chelsea's first effort, maybe she could treat us to a retrospective on her ma's heroic conduct under intense fire in the Sandbox.)

Paranoia revisited

Or: "Gee it's fun to yell wolf-wolf-wolf at the kids."

Down at the Athens of the Corn Fields, someone reported a man threatening a woman with a gun, "somewhere in Iowa City." University of Iowa officials flashed out an e-alert (a "Hawk Warning") telling the 31,000 students to stay put and avoid the horrifying risk of being outdoors in the sprawling city of 68,000.

Local teevee found one of the panic-stricken students.

“We were terrified because we were going to have to walk back and everyone told us not to leave,” said ... a freshman student who was at a local restaurant when she received the message."


She was not alone in fright: 

“The girl taking our orders was freaking out," (another coed) said. “Everyone behind us was like ‘Oh my God.’”

The police investigated and reported: "

the suspect was located in Muscatine, where he planned to spend the night with a family member. Local police talked to the man, but did not find a gun in his possession. Iowa City police are not planning on filing any charges because there is no concrete evidence in the case...

You can chalk up some of this to teevee doing what teevee lives for -- creating the highest possible drama from every pee-leg 911 call. Panic on campus draws viewers. 

And much of it to university officials petrified at the thought of having a public relations problem, of not being seen as custodians of a venue safe as Sunday school.

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There's nothing wrong with some sort of communications system reporting potential danger, but these panic attacks every time a jittery citizen sees a firearm pretty much negates the value  of any alert system.

Terror threat in the Heartland

The City of Des Moines blocked off a an area of the urban core after a citizen reported a suspicious object on the sidewalk. Crack hazardous-objects officers in full armor charged to the scene and successfully disarmed a cylindrical plastic tube used for dispensing dog crap bags.

You may recall a TMR report of a few months back detailing another suspicious object on one of our highways. In that case a road-kill muffler was neutralized.

So much for my life-long view that paranoia is not a Midwest trait.

Gee, maybe President Obama really is a Christian

Or maybe he just decided a new Christmas tree tax was not the wisest  possible political move.


Big Christmas tree growers actually wanted a 15-cent-per-tree tax to promote Christmas trees, and the Obama Administration went along. Then those pesky conservatives started tossing around words like "Grinch." The President turned 180 and advanced, warp speed,  to the rear

The immediate result of the tax would have been a national board for the promotion of Christmas trees. We can't actually prove that the new bureaucracy would have immediately set up a lobbying effort to extort a little extra from the general fund of U.S. Treasury, but  if you suspect this was the real motive, I forgive you.