Flag Day (Austria)
Two small reads and a big one for you today:
The State GOP is playing fast and loose with the facts again. Today, as documented in this Register story, they've sent out a mailer accusing Eric Palmer of being late on his property taxes six times. As it turns out, he was only late twice, and four other offenses the GOP has attributed to him actually occured before he owned the building.
It's bad enough that they're sending out mailings with inaccuracies, but let's take a step beyond that and look at exactly what they're accusing. Eric Palmer didn't try to skip out on his property taxes. He paid a two bills a grand total of 1 month and 21 days late, and paid $43 in penalties for doing so. It's hardly something to use to disqualify him from public office.
When asked about it, though, GOP spokeswoman Sarah Sauber stretched the lie a step farther:
"The point of the mailing is to point out that Eric Palmer was voting to raise taxes in Oskaloosa while he wasn't paying his taxes."
Palmer paid his last late bill in 1997. He was elected to the city council in 2001.
Moving on: The Des Moines Airport is still not safe, but it is winning tourism awards.
Finally, in case you didn't notice it last night, Sinclair Broadcasting is run by the slimiest people on Earth. Here's a Register story for background.
Sinclair and Mediacom are in a contract dispute, and they're both trying to negotiate, which is their right and I understand that. In the meantime, Sinclair is running spots on their station making people aware of the problem. I'm ok with that. They're also offering people rebates to screw Mediacom and switch to DirecTV. That's shaky, but life goes on.
BUT, last night they stepped way over the line. I'll acknowledge that KDSM is free to do what it will during regular programming, but last night, during a rain delay in the World Series, they ran a NEWS BROADCAST with the conflict as the top story. That's bullshit. There's no excuse for compromising the integrity of your news department for leverage in contract negotiations.
KL
2 comments:
Odd fact of the day... The Austrian flag's design was inspired by the sight of Duke Leopold V (1157-1194) after a battle in the Crusades. The Duke went into battle wearing a white battledress, which was, by the time he was done, soaked in blood. When he took his belt off, his battledress appeared to be red, white, and red. Hence the red, white, red stripes on the Austrian flag...
Austria and Denmark have the world's oldest flag designs, but Austria didn't use the design during the Nazi and Allied occupations of WWII - they just kinda skipped it from 1938 to the 1950's, then re-adopted their flag once independence was gained.
Betcha didn't know that, huh.
The DM Reg headline spells "burglar" as "burgler." Holy crap.
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