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Haley Barbour's New "Democrat-Lover" Nastygram
July 30, 2003: Gubernatorial hopeful, and former national GOP party head, Haley Barbour seems more stressed about Davidian challenger Mitch Tyner than you'd think. A rather breathtaking nasty-politics flyer landed in the JFP PO box this morning. In a tone worthy of Ann Coulter, the four-color (read: expensive) Barbour fold-out shows Mitch Tyner in the backseat of a stretch limo driven by a donkey (you'd think that'd be hard to afford with the $209,484 Tyner has raised to date, compared with Barbour's $5,316,884) with "Liberal Trial Lawyer and Democrat-Lover Mitch Tyner." With a huge photo of a zebra on the front, the headline reads: "A zebra can't change its stripes and neither can a donkey!!" READ MORE ...
Clarion-Ledger Publisher Explains 20 Layoffs
Following a directive from its corporate owner, Gannett, The Clarion-Ledger laid off 20 people Thursday7 percent off its already-depleted staffin addition to freezing the positions open from recent resignations. Three of those positions were in the newsroom, a source inside the paper tells the Jackson Free Press.
Black and White ‘Looters' Being Covered Differently?
Salon has an intriguing story, with screen shots, exploring whether the media are treating blacks who are taking items from stores differently than whites doing the same thing.
The Choices Chicks Make
I spoke to a roomful of young chicks recently. We were all packed into the charming old depot in Forest, Miss., some 40 miles from where I grew up in Neshoba County. They've renovated the building into a downtown art gallery and performance space in a small town where such cultural offerings are unusual.
[Ladd] God Bless the Little Man
When Wal-Mart first came to my hometown while I was in high school, I was ecstatic. It opened on a side of town where there wasn't a whole lot, and soon other businesses popped up around it. Back then, of course, it wasn't one of those Supercenter monsters; it was the smaller, more manageable kind.
Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Raids
The Cato Institute—made up of pesky libertarians who take on both "sides"—has released a report by Radley Bilko on the rise in popularity of paramilitary drug raises—and their dangers and abuses. Here's the executive summary:
Missing Shannon: Family Wants Closure
August 29, 1999, was the last time Theresa McKinney heard from her daughter, Shannon. It was the mother's birthday, and Shannon always called her mother back home in Omaha, Neb., on holidays from wherever she was. She also regularly called her own little daughter, 4-year-old Alyssa, asking her to sing to her and tell her she missed her mommy.
The JFP Interview with Joey Lauren Adams
Filmmaker Joey Lauren Adams, 39, is a fan of drinking Budweiser and driving along flat Arkansas highways looking at cypress trees, not necessarily at the same time. The first time I interviewed her, for a hoity-toity celebrity magazine in New York City in the summer of 2001, she was home in North Little Rock from her adopted city of Los Angeles, hankering to live in the South again. But as a successful and respected actress—she was nominated for a Golden Globe for her starring role in "Chasing Amy"' and is a charter member of director Kevin Smith's hipster actor posse—her life and business were far from Arkansas.
Update: W.C. Don's Still Open for Business
Note: See comments below this posting for update from management.
The City of Jackson announced Thursday afternoon that both northbound lanes of State Street between Tombigbee and Capital streets are temporarily closed to traffic for the remainder of the week. City Engineer Tim Bryan said the shutdown is due to a wall collapsing at the W.C. Don's Restaurant at 218 S. State Street around 10:00 a.m. on Thursday.
Sen. Hagel: GOP Has Lost Its Way
AP is reporting that Chuck Hagel is sounding the death knell on the Republican Party as its "evolved." Good. He's a good Republican, and should be ashamed of what his party has turned into. And, hopefully, he'll be able to lead it a new direction. I've always admired his unwillingness to be caught up in the party's corruption and demagoguery. We need more Repubs like Hagel—and will likely get them, now that this version is likely to get its a$$ handed to it by the American people.
Don't Nobody Know: Lalee's Kin
Everyone who cares about human dignity and justice should see "Lalee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton," which debuted on HBO Sept. 18. I first saw it during the Crossroads Film Festival in Jackson last spring in a mixed-race audience, most of whom stayed to hear a lengthy and emotional discussion about African-American poverty in the Delta.
Update: Sheriff McMillin is New Chief
Update: Just came in on text message...Mac is the new chief. Donna and Adam are covering and will be in with the scoop. (Listen to the radio show at noon for more: WLEZ-FM, 103.7FM.)
Auditors: Billions Squandered in Iraq
AP is reporting:
About $10 billion has been squandered by the U.S. government on Iraq reconstruction aid because of contractor overcharges and unsupported expenses, and federal investigators warned Thursday that significantly more taxpayer money is at risk. The three top auditors overseeing work in Iraq told a House committee their review of $57 billion in Iraq contracts found that Defense and State department officials condoned or allowed repeated work delays, bloated expenses and payments for shoddy work or work never done. More than one in six dollars charged by U.S. contractors were questionable or unsupported, nearly triple the amount of waste the Government Accountability Office estimated last fall.
Welcome to the Wild, Wild West
So, how many innocent people's lives were endangered in this inter-agency chase and shoot-out in the streets of Jackson? Good to know they recovered a small amount of marijuiana to justify this madness.
UPDATED: Chick Ball Donations Piling Up; Here's Who Has Donated So Far ...
With the JFP Chick Ball less than three weeks away and the deadline to make the big Chick Ball gift/silent auction guide (in the July 6 issue of JFP), the donations are arriving fast and furious at the JFP offices. Here is a list of the donations and donors we have logged to date; we will update between now and Chick Ball (if you don't see your name and you've donated, email [e-mail missing] to make sure you get due credit).
Clarion-Ledger's Jackson Circulation: 22,000
This is so deliciously educational that it deserves its own blog entry. In an article today about the city's legal-ad controversy, The Clarion-Ledger admits that out of its total circulation of "roughly 100,000," that only "about 22,000" of that is in Jackson. That means that less than a quarter of the paper's circulation is in Jackson—perhaps explaining a lot about why the paper dumps on Jackson so hard. Of course, its dumping on Jackson so hard is probably part of the reason so few Jacksonians read The Clarion-Ledger. It also explains why the Ledge is chopping itself up into pitiful little pieces and throwing piles of unwanted publications in our yards -- in a corporate scheme to try to force more Jacksonians onto its circulation rolls.
Will New Palin ‘Racially Tinged' Attacks Backfire on McCain?
Bizarrely, the McCain campaign announced to media over the weekend that it was going to launch personal attacks on Barack Obama to try to turn attention away from the economy, which is helping drive national and battleground state polls way up for Obama. Sarah Palin is already on the campaign trail trying to tie Obama to terrorists, prompting the Associated Press to warn that McCain may pay deeply for this tactic:
NYT: Clinton's Negativity ‘Squandered' 20-Point Lead
The New York Times seems to be turning on the Democratic candidate they endorsed, saying she took the "low road to victory":
The Death of Conservatism (As We Know It)?
Conservative columnist David Brooks rethinks today's Republican Party in the cover story of this week's New York Times Magazine: "Democrats may imagine that the G.O.P. is an amalgam of fat cats and conservative ideologues, but things feel different inside Republican circles. Inside there are, beneath the cheering and the resolve, waves of anxiety, uncertainty and disagreement. You hang around Republicans, and you begin to hear all sorts of discordant things. Jesse Helms recently remarked he wouldn't have voted for the tax cut if he'd known how bad the deficit would become. Three of the senior right-wing columnists -- George F. Will, Robert Novak and William F. Buckley Jr. -- have come out, in their different ways, against the war in Iraq. I had lunch recently with a senior Republican official who said his party had succumbed; it was ''defeatist'' about reducing the size of government. As Will himself has observed, under President Bush, American conservatism is undergoing an identity crisis."
Melton to Fire Officer for Rolling Eyes at Him?
In an interview with Howard Ballou of WLBT, Mayor Frank Melton said he plans to fire Jackson police officer Mike Braxton, who made public a police report (PDF, 1013 KB) he filed after Melton allegedly verbally abused him with profanity last summer.