The Noise Machine (10/26/10)

How 'bout dem Cowboys......



Increasingly Harris County Republicans are seeing the enemy, and it is them.


Think about this: Chronblog lost more readers in the last six-month reporting cycle than many candidates will receive votes in the upcoming election. What to do? Spin.


"We have to pass the bill to find out what's in the bill." Apparently some of what was in the bill involved large cost increases. (I'm surprised Politifarce hasn't weighed in on this yet.)


Meet Houston's new Inspector General. Good luck sir, you've got your work cut out for you.


Rick Perry is raking in the money a lot of it. He's got a comfortable lead in the polls (So comfortable that even the Left-leaning Texas Observer is having trouble finding a silver lining for White), the generic polls are looking good for him and the "anti-incumbency" narrative is finally fading away. (More accurately it's an anti-Democratic wave, but that story will probably only be told after the election.) To top it all off, it appears his campaign ads were hits with Texas values while his opponents were largely a miss. (White never did get a good message out for this campaign.) the only question remaining is by how much.


No surprise. (Whether or not you think this is a positive for Perry......)


Well, you're voting. In record numbers. (There's opposing takes on what the turnout means based on partisan affiliation. My thought is, in Houston, the Democratic areas are doing better than some might hope, but Republican anger is going to be too strong to overcome except on an occasional-race basis.)



Politicking as a non-profit?


You stay classy Tea Party. Ah the overzealous few, always tainting the fairly civil whole. (Just another reminder that everyone, regardless of party, needs to take a step back and calm down. Heated rhetoric and calls for violence only serve to agitate the unbalanced. The majority of people (even activists) in both parties are neither vile nor evil. They don't want to imprison you or your children and they don't want to stick a boot up your ass. The one's who harp the loudest are the one's that are least likely to do anything. Everyone just calm down.)



Candidates aren't buying social media? I doubt that, it's just that, in many cases, entrance into the big social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook etc.) is free. If anything I see MORE candidates migrating away from traditional media and toward social media because of the lower cost. (You can do several You Tube/on-line campaign commercials for the price of one TV ad. A Facebook, or blog, post has a zero marginal cost (above the price of the staffer who wrote the copy, who's cost would be in place for a press release anyway) and will probably reach more readers than would a traditional newspaper ad. This could certainly be the case in 2012.)



You know it's bad when the Brits are giving us grief about our lack of freedom of expression. Thought crimes? Controlling the narrative? Make it stop.


What's $23.75 Million amongst friends? ESPN does a good job broadcasting live events, but their journalism is wrong more often than it's right.


For all of the praise Smart Dumb Growth proponents in Houston slather on the "new urban lifestyle" you'd think there'd be no downside to being packed into "livable centers" like sardines with no cars and limited mobility options. You'd be wrong. The thing that's often forgotten (by both sides) is this: There's a reason people like to live in houses with yards in a suburban setting, just as there's a reason some people like to live in an urban environment. The trick is to satisfy the demands of both markets. (And to not let one group believe the hype that their chosen lifestyle is superior to the other. We're all just living after all.) It'd be nice to see balanced reporting like this on livability issue in Houston. Sadly, ChronBlog is all-in for the same failed residency model that gave us the Plague.....4 Million Houston-are residents shoe-horned inside of Loop 610 sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. That being said, all of those that want to live there should, money and housing space willing.


In the matter of Flores vs. Edwards.....It's over.


And finally.....

It's true, I've been hard on the folks over at the Houston Press of late, their 'hard' political reporting looking more and more like the work of amateurs. That being said, this is some righteous media crit. Good job Connelly.