Bad Deeds for 4-28-2009

Republicans Slam Spending on Wildlife Preservation – As President Barack Obama pushed his new $100 million campaign to cut government spending last week, the House of Representatives authorized $50 million to help protect cranes, snow leopards, wild African dogs and other endangered species. “With federal spending, bank failures and home foreclosures reaching historic levels,” asked Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, “is it really appropriate to spend our constituents’ hard-earned money to conserve an African wild dog, an Ethiopian wolf or a Borneo bay cat?”

Sure, said Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash. He called the effort “a very, very modest step to try to preserve these endangered species that, in fact, are threatened and are listed on international lists.”

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas said, “We are going to borrow more money from the Chinese to possibly give them money back. . . . There is no assurance that if we did that we wouldn’t end up with moo goo dog pan or moo goo cat pan.”

 

Fox News Incorrectly Reports That Apple Encourages Multiple Antivirus Utilities for Mac – It’s not just political news that Fox can’t get right. In a “Tech Q and A” published today, FOX News’ Guy R. Briggs says:

A note on the Apple support site posted Nov. 21, 2008 reads, ‘Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult.’

Apple’s support page, “Mac OS: Antivirus utilities,” was pulled on December 03, 2008. It was an old article that did not apply to Mac OS X. “We have removed the KnowledgeBase article because it was old and inaccurate,” Apple spokesman Bill Evans, told Macworld. “The Mac is designed with built-in technologies that provide protection against malicious software and security threats right out of the box.” Full article: Apple pulls ‘old and inaccurate’ antivirus support article; says ‘Macs are secure right out of box’ – December 03, 2008

 

President Obama and Fox News Misstate the Percentage of Guns in Mexico That Come From the U. S. – During a joint press conference with President Felipe Calderón of Mexico, Obama said of the raging violence by Mexican drug gangs:

A demand for these drugs in the United States is what is helping to keep these cartels in business. This war is being waged with guns purchased not here, but in the United States. More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that line our shared border.

Obama would have been correct to say that 90 percent of the guns submitted for tracing by Mexican authorities were then traced to the U.S. The percentage of all recovered guns that came from the U.S. is unknown.

According to a Fox News report, titled “The Myth of 90 Percent,” only “17 percent of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced to the U.S.” But the 17 percent figure is a myth, too. The Fox reporters come up with a figure of 5,114 guns traced to U.S. sources in fiscal 2007 and 2008. That figures to 17.6 percent of the 29,000 figure for guns seized in Mexico, as given by the country’s attorney general.

The 5,114 figure is simply wrong. What Newell said quite clearly is that the number of guns submitted to ATF in those two years was 11,055: “3,312 in FY 2007 [and] 7,743 in FY 2008.” Newell also testified, as other ATF officials have done, that 90 percent of the guns traced were determined to have come from the U.S. So based on Newell’s testimony, the Fox reporters should have used a figure of 9,950 guns from U.S. sources. That figures out to just over 34 percent of guns recovered, assuming that the 29,000 figure supplied by Mexico’s attorney general is correct.

Even that number is too low. At the request of factcheck.org, an ATF spokesman gave more detailed figures for how many guns had been submitted and traced during those two years. Of the guns seized in Mexico and given to ATF for tracing, the agency actually found 95 percent came from U.S. sources in fiscal 2007 and 93 percent in fiscal 2008. That comes to a total of 10,347 guns from U.S. sources for those two years, or 36 percent of what Mexican authorities say they recovered.

 

U. S. Transportation Security Administration Destroyed Custom Steinway Piano Because the Glue Smelled Funny – Krystian Zimerman is one of the world’s most well-regarded concert pianists. Soon after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Zimerman’s custom Steinway piano was intercepted at JFK airport and destroyed by the Transportation Security Administration because the glue “smelled funny.” Now, Zimerman said he will not return to the United States because of the nation’s military policies and President Barack Obama’s support for a missile shield site in Zimerman’s home country of Poland.

 

Conservatives Likely to Think That Stephen Colbert Really is a Conservative – On TV’s “The Colbert Report,” Stephen Colbert plays the part of a conservative pundant who is famous for such lines as “You can count on George W. Bush to be consistent. You know he will think exactly the same thing on Wednesday as he did on Monday, no matter what happened on Tuesday.” A study by Ohio State University investigated biased message processing of political satire in The Colbert Report and the influence of political ideology. The study found liberals think that that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements, but that conservatives think that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely means what he says and that he actually dislikes liberalism. In other words, conservatives can’t recognize satire.

Regards,

Jim