Not wanting to let a good crisis go to waste, Tuesday's NBC Nightly News exploited California wildfires to push climate change. Correspondent Miguel Almaguer declared: "The fire season not just expensive, but historic. Nationwide so far this year, more than 32,000 wildfires have burned. 1.6 million acres charred, most of them in the west. Feeding the fires, drought crippling 60% of the west....Crews call this the front lines of climate change, a longer more destructive fire season." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Introducing the story, anchor Brian Williams warned: "In the American west tonight, a huge wildfire is burning in Yosemite National Park. One of more than 200 of them firing up in just this last week in California alone as this drought emergency continues to get worse."
California
The New York Times knows just how to rebuild the Republican Party in California...in the image of The New York Times. In Thursday’s paper, correspondent Norimitsu Onishi highlighted the Republican nominee for governor, Neel Kashkari, “a social moderate backed by the Republican establishment.”
“Social moderate”? In the next paragraph, we learn Kashkari “is of Indian descent and supports same-sex marriage and abortion rights, all positives for a party that has been steadily losing influence because of California’s increasingly diverse and liberal electorate.” So he is a social liberal, which the Times thinks is where all “moderates” belong. He's not one of those unelectable "Anglo" conservatives.
Yesterday the Toyota Motor Corporation announced it would move its U.S. headquarters from Torrance, California, to Plano, Texas. Closing his report on the development, Tim Reid of Reuters noted the reaction of a Torrance business owner who doubtless counts many Toyota employees as loyal customers. "The taxes are lower in Texas. There are fewer regulations. It's cheaper for a company there. Why wouldn't they leave California?" shrugged Frank Portillo, the owner of a nearby Mexican restaurant.
While Toyota's forthcoming move is a huge economic and PR development for prospective 2016 presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas) and a major embarrassment for liberal Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown (D-Calif.), a search of Nexis and our DVR recording system shows the Big Three networks -- ABC, CBS, and NBC -- ignored the story on both their April 28 evening newscasts and their April 29 morning news programs.
On Friday, University of California Feminist Studies Associate Professor Mireille Miller-Young pled not guilty to misdemeanor theft, battery, and vandalism. To bring those who missed the two previous related posts up to speed: A video at the YouTube site of the Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust (warning: profanity) shows Miller-Young taking a sign away from a participant in a campus pro-life outreach effort. Accompanied by two students, she took the sign back to her office and destroyed it.
Her attorney entered the not guilty plea on Miller-Young's behalf despite documented admissions to police that, in her words, "I'm stronger so I was able to take the poster," and that she, in the police report's words, "was 'mainly' responsible for the poster's destruction because she was the only one with scissors." Various searches on Ms. Miller-Young's full name indicate that only three local outlets, the Santa Barbara Independent and two others, filed stories on her plea. No one, as far as I can tell, has noted that Miller-Young continues to carry on without sanction as a $125,000-per-year researcher of "black cultural studies" and "pornography and sex work," and that her tweets betray no remorse for her destructive actions.
In a 72-word Cheat Sheet item on their website today, Daily Beast editors failed to note California Democratic State Senator Leland Yee's party affiliation nor the fact that the alleged gun-running politician was an outspoken advocate of more gun-control laws.
To be fair, the Associated Press article that the Cheat Sheet item linked to mentioned both facts, but casual readers of the Daily Beast's news digest who failed to follow the link would have remained ignored to them:
In another development most of the establishment press, with the usual exception of Fox News and the unusual exception of Reuters, has thus far predictably ignored, Santa Barbara County District Attorney Joyce Dudley announced on Friday the indictment of University of California-Santa Barbara Associate Professor Mireille Miller-Young on charges of "theft from a person, battery, and vandalism." The case's first hearing is scheduled for April 4.
To bring those who didn't see your truly's Monday post up to speed: "As seen in a video at the YouTube site of the Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust (warning: profanity), a UCSB assistant professor (MIller-Young) took a sign away from a participant in a campus pro-life outreach effort. Flanked by two students, she took the sign back to her office and destroyed it." Excerpts from the Reuters report by Laila Kearney follow the jump (bolds and numbered tags are mine):
California Governor Jerry Brown apparently thinks he's some kind of comedian. I would suggest that he not quit his current day job, but many readers would probably prefer he do that.
At a union-organized joint legislative conference on Monday, as reported in the Sacramento Bee, Brown told the following knee-slapper in connection with the high-speed rail project which is on track (excuse the pun) to become the mother of all public works boondoggles: "There's a lot of old people who shouldn't be driving ... They should be sitting in a nice train car working on their iPad, having a martini." More from the Bee's blog post (I would not know if it made it to the paper's print edition) follows the jump:
On Thursday's CBS This Morning, co-host Charlie Rose described how most of California was suffering from "extreme or exceptional drought" but fretted that "the crisis is turning into a political football." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
In the report that followed, correspondent Bill Whitaker explained: "House Republicans passed a bill to divert water to California's parched Central Valley farms, water that now flows to preserve rivers and endangered fish....In a letter, Governor Brown called the Republicans' actions 'an unwelcome and divisive intrusion into California's efforts to manage this severe crisis.'"
The PJ Tatler recently reported on the case of Larry Brinkin, for many years an “icon” on the Human Rights Commission in San Francisco: “A former high-ranking San Francisco government employee convicted of felony possession of child pornography will continue to receive his government pension because, according to city regulations, evidence of ‘moral turpitude’ is required to revoke a pension yet viewing violent kiddie porn does not qualify as moral turpitude." (Emphasis theirs.)
Michael Chapman of CNSNews.com also noted shocking racist remarks in Brinkin’s e-mails about "nailing" black toddlers. The media that loves riffing on pedophile Catholic priests have done nothing on this pedophile story. But 25 years ago, Brinkin was hailed as a gay-rights hero for instituting the “domestic partnership” rules in San Francisco.
A small but vocal band of critics has forced an actress to bow out of a stage production purely because of her political views. It's a brand of McCarthyistic bullying that the national media would (rightly) condemn if the politics of principals in the controversy reversed. But don't hold your breath for a firestorm of outrage in the case of Maria Conchita Alonso, a conservative/libertarian Latina actress who has strayed from the liberal reservation by not merely voting for conservative Republicans but cutting a campaign commercial with one.
Seema Mehta of the Los Angeles Times reported this morning:
The Los Angeles Times decided, as one of California’s leading arbiters of political correctness, that they would skip the ironic headline of “Illegal alien wins license to practice law.” That kind of direct language is a bit too honest. The use of the I-word will be banned in all civilized and "inclusive" forums in the future, and this may mark the beginning.
“California court grants law license to Mexican immigrant” was the headline, and reporter Maura Dolan took many paragraphs before listing just how many times this new lawyer evades all those annoying technicalities they teach you about in law school.
On Friday morning, Richard Pollock at the Washington Examiner (HT Ed Driscoll at PJ Media) broke an important story about the the large number of doctors choosing not to participate in Covered California, the state's Obamacare exchange.
The odds that the agenda-driven press in the formerly Golden State of California was already aware of this problem and chose not to report on it would seem to be pretty high — and they're still ignoring the story, despite its obvious impact on the availability of medical services once Obamacare kicks in on January 1. Excerpts from Pollock's report follow the jump (bolds are mine):