Editorials @ MindSay

   Once your area of living has been alerted for a potential Ice Storm, the following actions should take place immediately if and when possible: Try to have these items on hand or at least a majority of them before the storm strikes. In most major ice storms, power failures occur. Ice storms differ in time lines, one storm may last for only a day or some to ten to fifteen days before your power is restored again, so be prepared for long-term survival. If your house runs on electricity … it is a good idea to have the items below on hand.

   If you have a gas stove … light the burners and keep the flames low. Open a nearby door or window just enough to allow escaping gas to exit. Do not stay near the stove. Check the stove regularly for burning. If your eyes begin to water …. Turn the burners off a few minutes to allow any fumes to go outside through the open cracked door or window before relighting your stove again for warmth.

• Purchase or have available … a generator with 5000 watts or more. Check your fuel level every seven hours. Always keep enough fuel on-hand for at least two refuels.
• ( All generators should be outside and away from your house / dwelling at a distance of twenty feet or more. Use a long extension cord from the generator to the house / dwelling .. then attach additional cords to the main generator extension cord as needed. Do not overload your generator. Check your generator every 40 hours of operation for oil.

Turn your generator off .. unplug all electrical cords .. check oil level .. fill as necessary .. wait ten minutes .. restart generator, attach cords.

Insure that the exhaust from the generator blows away from the entrance.

• Purchase or have available … extra long extension cords
• Purchase or have available … a heater that runs on propane … have extra tanks on hand.
• Purchase or have available … a Kerosene Lamp / w/ plenty of kerosene fuel
• A chain saw or saw tool. These tools are handy when clearing fallen limbs or debris.
• Tools for scraping off ice on walkways or driveway.
• Bags of rock salt for melting the ice areas.
• Water … bottled water by the cases.
• Blankets
• Purchase or have available .... flashlights / batteries
• Buy or have available …. "D"cell batteries for lamp lights
• Buy or have available … extra lamps powered by batteries
• Buy or have available …. a battery-powered T.V. for advisories
• Keep an ample supply of can goods and other food that will not spoil.
• Keep breakables, away from all windows.
• Keep everybody in the household away from all windows.
• Have a cell phone on hand and charger.
• Do not try to plug in a hair dryer to any cords.
• Check your generator fuel gauge every seven hours for fuel level.
• When fueling, turn generator off first. Fuel tank, (do not over fill). Allow five to ten minutes before restarting.
• Remember, during most ice storms, tree limbs break and fall from the heavy ice accumulations. If seated in the house, sit at the farthest point away from any windows or your tree area outside.
• If you lose power to your home, you may try staying with family or friends who still have power in their homes.
  
• Call your local power company and report all power shortages, when you lose power or know of someone else who has.

          Stay clear of downed power lines or exposed electrical fixtures.

Ice Storms are dangerous .. and at times can produce lightning too. Stay warm and safe.

      

"Bill O'Reilly may proclaim at the beginning of his program that viewers are entering the "No Spin Zone," but a new study by Indiana University media researchers found that the Fox News personality consistently paints certain people and groups as villains and others as victims to present the world, as he sees it, through political rhetoric.

The IU researchers found that O'Reilly called a person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute during the editorials that open his program each night."

"Using analysis techniques first developed in the 1930s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, Conway, Grabe and Grieves found that O'Reilly employed six of the seven propaganda devices nearly 13 times each minute in his editorials. His editorials also are presented on his Web site and in his newspaper columns."

Read more...

And read the study...

It won't get printed.

Editors:

Why does your board keep publishing cartoons by Jeff Koterba of the Omaha World-Herald? I'm from southwest Iowa, so I know Koterba's work well. Typically he illustrates a very simple editorial position of the paper *right next* to the OWH's editorial. His topics are thus severely limited.

Koterba's drawing skills leave much to be desired. Compare his work to David Fitzsimmon's. Koterba is an amateur; Fitz could actually be an artist.

And so often Koterba's cartoons depend on Rightist assumptions, or even impossible assumptions. Take today's cartoon, where two shoppers walk near a car with anti-Bush bumper stickers, saying "Do you ever wish some Americans would redirect their anger toward real enemies like al-Qaida, Iran, Nort Korea, Syria..." The first assumption is that expressing "anger" at foreign countries would actually do something. If I say, "I'm angry at North Korea," does North Korea hear me? But if I write a letter to the editor saying that Bush's foreign policy has failed, and that America can do better, that sentiment will make a difference.

The other assumption is that the Bush Administration shouldn't even be criticized, nor US citizens even *think critically* about our government's actions. Indeed, we should just shop.

Thomas Oliphant is a much better cartoonist and writer. Koterba just does not bring a critical, smart, intelligent, or well-drawn cartoon to the table. His work is much like the OWH editorial board's positions: arrogant, insulary, uncomfortable with questioning or activism. In a phrase, wary of anything but white Christian pro-business Republican ideology.

I am on the Left, but I can clearly see that Koterba does a disservice to the complexity of the Right with his self-congratulatory cartoons.

End letter. I can't post the cartoon I'm commenting on. The one below gives a taste of his work:

I'll paraphrase for the cartoonist: "moral relativism" (whatever that is) bad, Pope & Christianity good. This is so simplistic, to the point of being stupid. Koterba has little skill in the editorial cartoon format, period. That's a horrid picture of a Dracula, too. And look at all the white space.

This one is just in bad taste, indicative of the manipulative way the Right has used and overused 9/11 for its own political ends, disregarding and disrespecting those that died:


The importance of the statement here does not match the importance of the image of the WTC towers. The cartoon, as usual, is self-congratulatory and unserious -- and uses the most serious of images offhand. This is the cartoon of a narcissist, since for Koterba, it was more important to get a cartoon out that day than it was to craft one without referring to a tragic event where real people died. For shame.