Refuse the Juice

Spotted at Lunch - Team KHRO and the Strelz!

Spies have told me that Paul Strelzin, Abel Rodriguez and David Candelaria were having lunch at Avila's.

I'm guessing that's where Strelzin is landing late this week or early next week.  He'll be back in his afternoon spot, which will put Ken Hudnall to a shorter show.

I do wonder what Freyermuth thinks about Strelzin's claim that he's starting in the afternoon, but will be moved to morning drive time by the summer.  Are we to guess that Freyermuth and the weather guy are gone come summer time in this deal to get Strelz back?

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Does anyone have Gerald Miller's email address for the second time???  email me the address.

Smachel Ventana Being Truthful?

She's on Jaime Abeytia show right now and she's claiming not to be a Luther Jones minion. 

She is.

She votes the way his block would vote on every issue.

Jaime is asking the wrong question - He keeps asking her if Luther wrote her material.  Luther doesn't necessarily write it, but Jaime O. and others do.

I think it's funny she denies it when nobody in his camp does!

As usual, somebody is saying one thing and other's involved are saying something different.

Her goose is cooked come time for her reelection bid.

Don't Ask Because I don't Know

I don't know anything about Strelz's deal.  I just know I was contacted late yesterday and told to check my email for the new lineup. 

I can tell you that Sito is not  on by Sito's choice - he's better off in the office cranking out news than in the studio.

I am excited about Jaime A. (Lionstar) because I know he'll being bringing great local info as well as a different take than mine on the national level.

Of course, Chris Babcock allows listeners unprecedented access to a guy who decides what gets covered and what doesn't.  Not only will he sneak preview the day's news, you can ask him why his station is covering that news.

That's what I know right now.

Can anybody get me Gerald Miller's email address?

I'm Still On the Radio - Technical Difficulties

Nothing is wrong. Everything is fine.  Just some growing pains as we move to the new studio.

Lisa D will for sure be on the air today and I'm confident they'll have Strelz up and running shortly.

Hopefully we'll be in the new studio on Monday. 

Get Ready for the Frenzy and the Rising Anti-Mexican Sentiment

Newspaper Tree was on the ball today along with their media partner ABC 7 when they reported the finding of a U.S. Federal Marshal's body in Juarez.  You can find the story HERE.

Expect the major national media to go ape shit over this story.  This plays right into their over-hyped reporting on the problems in Juarez and the rest of Mexico.  Expect this to be sensationalized to a point that it is no longer recognizable for what it is -  one rogue agent facing jail time gets "offed" before he can name cartel members.  Shit happens when you break the law on the behalf of the world's most violent criminal enterprise. 

The real bad news is that the "open borders" crowd is losing ground with all this sensational coverage rather than gaining it.  The more violent, out of control and hopeless the situation looks in Mexico, the more middle America starts to form ill opinions of our friends to the south. 

On top of that it doesn't help that the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, went to Mexico today and blamed America for Mexico's problems.  Americans do not like to hear to that.  Smart Americans know that there are plenty of countries providing us with the fuel to feed our habit and they don't act near as violent as the Mexican cartels.  Clinton's speech may have made Mexico feel warm and fuzzy, but it pissed off the everyday American who doesn't like to have fingers pointed at them when it's clearly not their fault.

The Obama administration was to carry the hopes of the pro-immigration crowd and they have actually moved public sentiment against them.

I think it is quite funny that CNN and MSNBC are all of a sudden completely immersed in this story even though the real action was at its height last year.  Why so late? 

Obviously both networks are hurting for ratings and were curiously enthralled with our new President up until recently.  Changing up the formula allows them to take a run at the ratings and helps divert attention from the serious problems the administration is creating with our liberties.   They need a buffer and this story helps them create that buffer. Too bad it kills the hopes of the "open borders" crowd that thought Obama would bring hope and change for their people south of the border.

It should be noted that Foxnews is enjoying the best ratings they've ever had - and they've been on top for quite some time.   Their focus is primarily Obama. 

Stupid Stuff Heard on Strelz's Show

I had the pleasure of listening to my good friend Paul Strelzin's show today.  Usually I can't listen to his show because I'm not allowed to have the radio on loud enough for me to hear it at the office (I'm partially deaf in both eyes). 

I was in the truck today and had a good listen.  Here are my thoughts.

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Strelzin said he thought President Obama did well last night.  Uh, really?  Even the folks at MSNBC and CNN admitted he was terrible and looked very uncomfortable.  

If Strelz thinks that press conference was good, what would he consider bad?  Does the President have to punt a baby seal across the room to open the press conference?  Maybe he could throw in some racial slurs and tell all the women in the room to go iron his pants.

I think the Strelz is fixated on saying the opposite of whatever I say even if he knows it's wrong.

He even tried to make a case for Jaime O. Perez because I was beating up on the old bald freak.  Strelz said that Perez had "supporters."  Evidence shows that he doesn't have "supporters" given that he can't win an election.

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Mike Rooney called into tell Strelz that he didn't like me saying he was "hoodwinked" into signing the PSB petition.

Good for Rooney.  However, when he spoke he only proved that he was in fact "hoodwinked" by the petition.  His version of what he thinks the petition is about is laughable. 

He figures that the petition is asking that the City Council take control of the rate setting.  He also figured they'd let the PSB draw up the plans, construct the improvements and maintain the stormwater system.  That's not what's happening.

First of all, if the city sets the rates, they control when and what gets built or maintained.  If the city collects the money - they do not have to spend it on stormwater.  As they have done in the past, they stole money out of the stormwater pot to pay for other things.

It's ridiculous to even talk about that scenario.  The petition will return every bit of the stormwater responsibility to the city and we will be taxed accordingly.  More than likely a low end home will see a $500 tax increase yearly.  High end homes are looking at $1,500 to $3,000 yearly. 

Mr. Rooney is a nice guy, but has no idea what he's really supporting.  However, if you see him, thank him for the tax increase.

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Lee Mendez is running for Mayor.  Lee Mendez is a moron who needs to do some research.  He asked why isn't El Paso using wind and solar power.  Strelz followed him down that path blindly.

Wind power in El Paso? Where do these people come up with this shit.  We can't put up cellular phone towers anymore and this genius thinks he's going to stick a 100 foot pole with giant rotating blades attached to it in the middle of the city?

First off, wind power requires at least a 20 MPH CONSTANT wind.  That means all day and all night 24/7 -365.  El Paso doesn't even come close to that.  Just because we have windy days in the spring fall, doesn't mean we are candidates for wind power.  If either of these guys had taken five minutes to read about wind farming, they'd know this.

Let's not even get into the solar power argument.  As it was stated, you'd need a solar field that is 30 miles by 30 miles to power El Paso.  You couldn't fly over it and a hail storm would put you in the dark for weeks. 

Let's get something straight about "alternative energy."  If it was better than what we have now, we'd  be using it.  Do you know why we don't use horse and buggies anymore?  Because we invented cars and they are better.  We will always adopt the cheaper, more efficient solution in any situation.  Look at your entire life and examine how you adhere to that rule all the time whether you are conscious of it or not.

Maybe Lee could propose we capture Desert Fairies and sell them to people in Japan!  Or we could hatch a plan to capture Santa Claus and then hold him for ransom! 

  Maybe he could run on a promise to bring free wireless internet to the ghetto. 

The poor kid is going to tarnish his name before he even gets out of the gates. 

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"That's all I got to say about that."  Forest Gump.

Get Your Stories Straight or Risk Looking Stupid

Jaime O. Perez appeared on Strelzin's show today. Besides making serious ethical accusations against Newspaper Tree staff that went unchallenged, he completely screwed Alfrank and Urias!

Jaime O. Perez admitted to writing Alfrank's material and Urias' PSB material.  He didn't even skip a beat and reported that we'd all be very surprised for just how many people he "ghost writes."

I asked yesterday who might be lying in that triangle - turns out it was Alfrank and Urias.

Anti-PSB Crowd Run by Jaime O. Perez, Luther Jones and a Home Builder to be Named Later

I knew this to be a fact from the beginning, but needed some way to put a face to it.  Today NPT dropped a huge bomb on Alfrank Catucci and the Anti-PSB group.  You can read that scoop HERE.

I feel bad for Alfrank.  Even though he apparently wants to beat me up, I thought he had a chance to break into local politics with a good showing here.  Getting arrested twice and running to Jaime O. Perez for advice pretty much turned his political stock into nothing in a very short time.  He can fight me all he wants, but it's he who has something to lose.  Giving me a black eye won't do much for his election numbers - or would it? 

The PSB guys, however, are a bunch of guys out for themselves and the ringleader, the Home Builder to be named later."

Here's how this works.  

The "Home Builder to be named later" was pissed when the PSB didn't breakup the northeast land deal so he could afford to put his kind of subdivision on the land.  Due to the size of the sale and the stipulations, only very large development companies could come up with the dough to buy the land.  We all know what happened to that.

After the "Home Builder to be named later" found out who won the bid for the land he was even more pissed than before.  He declared war on the PSB and recruited Luther Jones and friends to lead a fight to destroy the PSB.

The goal was to find a way to get rid of the PSB, which would put all PSB functions into the hands of the elected council.  "Home Builder" would use the Luther Jones network to elect a bunch of brainless idiots to the City Council and then control their votes to have all the land handed to him for next to nothing.  Those candidates are in Jaime O. Perez's political school.  A school with nothing but failures so far.

When the stormwater issue came up, Luther Jones and friends decided to put together a "concerned group of businessmen" to start the process of dismantling the PSB.  They find Gerald Miller and Mr. Urias and use them as unknown surrogates to fight their battle.  Jaime O. Perez takes the orders from the "Home Builder" and Luther Jones and then creates the strategy to hand to Miller and Urias.   As for the Theidt guy - he's just an old angry guy with nothing better to do than screw with City Council.

The petition had Jaime O. Perez's signature bullshit written all over it.  I just couldn't prove it.  Now I can.  He's been writing this crap from the beginning. Now we know.

The use of Miller and Urias worked.  They may not be "pillars of the community" like a Paul Foster or J.O. Stewart, but they seemed innocent enough to the people who approached them.  They were able to actually complete a signature petition and it was because the face of the group wasn't connected to Jaime O. Perez or Luther Jones - at least you couldn't tell from looking initially.  If you had told anybody that Jaime O. Perez was involved, the petition wouldn't have had enough signatures to get the issue on the ballot.

I got very suspicious when the "Home Builder's" little erand boy, Ray Aduato, got involved and gave away a free space at the home show for the petitioners to collect signatures.  It was a bad move not only for transparency, but maybe even ethically as well.  After all, they were hit with an ethics complaint afterwards.

After today we know that the players really are the "Home Builder," Luther Jones and Jaime O. Perez.  This should be sufficient to kill this issue in this election.

Their candidates aren't doing so well, so it's obvious that even if the petition was successful on the ballot they wouldn't be able to execute their plan to take the land from the El Paso taxpayer for another two years.  We would have time to stop them by then.

Any questions?

I almost forgot!!  Jaime O. Perez and friends still have sympathizers at City Hall.  These people are the ones going through city files and trying to intimidate me and others with what they find.  Of course, it's all public record, but using city time and taxpayer money to try and intimidate political foes isn't a good idea.  In fact, it may get someone fired soon.  (You know who you are, you just don't know who has been watching you.)

The Assault on all things El Paso

The grass is always greener; somewhere else is always better than where you currently are and people are always better than you if they live in a bigger city.  Sound familiar?  That's mantra of the self-hating El Pasoan.  To be honest, I'm really damn sick of it.

If you don't like El Paso - leave.  If you don't think there are the caliber of people here that you want to be seen with - leave.  Nobody is forcing you to consume our little paradise here.  Don't waste another second of your life being tortured by us.  We really don't want your angst weighing on our conscience.

Even my own friends at NPT are addicted to people who live other places, but want to tell us how we are supposed to be. They've got some guy who lives in New York City who is their new golden boy for content.  His shit is boring.  He's an average writer at best and a self indulgent one at that.  Rich Wright is ten times the writer he is. However, the new guy is automatically better than everyone else and allowed to stink up the pages of NPT because he's from somewhere else - obviously he's better than anyone here locally who wants to write, right?  After all, the guy does live anywhere but El Paso, so he MUST be better than anyone here locally.

We as a city, through progressive outlets like the El Paso Media Group, are searching for the twenty-first century El Paso.  Too often we are inundated with expat losers who can't achieve anything great wherever they've moved to, so they dirty our local media up with their "I'm too good to live in El Paso, but I'll tell you how you should be living" drivel.  For some reason the gatekeepers let this crap through.

I have a few rules I live by

1.  Never take legal advice from another guy in a holding cell

2.  Don't pay a fat person to help you lose weight

3.  Never make plans with someone who isn't going to be there when you execute those plans

4.  Stay on Teresa Caballero's good side... or at least don't become the object of her obsession.

Number three in that list is exactly what we are doing to ourselves when we let expats tell us how to live.  We are never going to be a San Antonio, Austin, Taos, Phoenix or Denver.  I don't care how many people wish we could be, it ain't going to happen.  We are much too different.  We have way too many cultural barriers - AND THAT'S NOT A BAD THING!

The self-hating El Pasoans go off to other places to visit and live and feel the need to compare us to them.  They put their thoughts into words and our local gatekeepers are all too happy to embrace those who they feel are "enlightened."   It's total bullshit. 

When I was in DC - I was published in DC.  I never spent time telling El Paso how it should be.  God knows I had offers.  I never felt the need to give my opinion on something I wasn't invested in.  I was never so delusional that I thought people in El Paso would give a damn what some guy who left them by his own choice thought about their city. 

The local media outlets should be promoting El Paso writers and artists.  We don't need input from the people who are too good to live here.  We need not be their whipping boy.  Even when they hide behind reminiscent tales of days lived in El Paso's past, they are always still saying, "El Paso wasn't good enough for me." 

It's the same as a married man writing a letter to the girl he dated just before he met the woman who would become his wife.  No matter what he has to say it always ends with, "I met someone I liked more than you."  Who wants to hear that?

It should be noted that when I was in DC, I bragged about El Paso and Texas all the time.  Everyone used to say, "if it's so great, why do you move back?"  One day I announced that I was going to do just that.  I was seven months into my dream job. Hell, it would be your dream job too - it was a "once in a lifetime opportunity."  One of my biggest critics - a person who hated hearing about Texas - came to my office on my last day and said he's never actually known anyone that left DC on their terms to go back to the "God forsaken shithole they crawled out of."  It was his way of telling me that he believed me when I said my hometown was bigger than any paycheck I could get somewhere else. I send him pictures of sunsets and 70 degree December days to torture him whenever I can.  He gets a kick out of it. 

Too bad I'll be ignored.  When you're jealous, envious and in love with people because they live somewhere you wish you lived, your judgment is worthless.  Maybe if I dressed in a suit everyday and strolled around like a DC asshole I'd get some respect around here.  Too bad I have too much self respect to do such a thing. 

In the end I feel bad for those who live here and want to have a voice, but are pushed out of the way by the expats and their condescending contributions.  I'm lucky - others are not. I get a voice.

And by no means am I telling people not to leave - please do.  Please go live somewhere else for a few years.  You'll either miss this place like you've never missed anything before, or you'll realize that you belong somewhere else.  Either way, leave us alone until you are ready to come home.  Bring your experiences, hopes and dreams when you come back.  Apply them to your community  from inside your community.  Be a stock holder in El Paso, not a foreign investor.

Just so you know and since I've already pissed off people today -

The reason El Paso will never be any other city I listed above is because we are not 80 percent white.  We are 80 percent Hispanic.  White people do goofy shit Hispanic people would never go for - i.e. $22 plates of Mexican food, oxygen bars and the Volkswagen Jetta.  I'm not sure we're missing much, anyhow. 

Glass Houses...

Newspaper Tree has the complete rundown on the Jaime O. Perez ethics complaint.  You can read it HERE.

I think the cherry on top was the fact that Jaime O. was out screwing around with his bar when he should have been at work. He got caught messing around outside of work at the very moment a complaint was being filed against him.  This shit writes itself. (sorry, I feel like cussing today. So you're just going to have to get over it)

He's long been rumored to have been spending lots of time out the office in the past.  The rumors usually report that he spends that time at his bar during regular work hours.

I don't think anybody would be making a stink of this if he didn't have a long history of being an asshole.  It also wouldn't be such a big deal if he and his boss, Judge Cobos, weren't always blabbing about protecting the taxpayer's interests.  Obviously Jaime O. isn't THAT interested in spending the taxpayer's money wisely.  He wouldn't be messing around at his bar on the taxpayer's dime if he really cared.

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Let's switch gears here a litle bit.  I'm still a little miffed that the local press has been pretty lazy with this story.  Newspaper Tree carried it; and that's great.  However, everybody else is ignoring the story - but why?

It's because it's Jaime Abeytia.  He's not some freaky ankle biter who makes an ass out of himself at public meetings.  He's a blogger.  A damn good one.  He's the competition. 

The problem is, he's not "official" like real media zeros in this town.  There's a concerted effort to ignore what he does and it's because the media zeros in this town don't think he's earned enough respect.  They are wrong.

Jaime attends everything he can - pencil, camera and recorder in hand.  He digs out the stories from the source.  He doesn't just break them, he discovers them through hard work and patience.  Since he laid his father to rest a few weeks ago he's been on a tear and I can't wait to see what finds everyday.

Maybe if the media in this town stopped acting like local celebrities and started being journalists, they wouldn't be out hustled, out reported by a guy from a Phoenix barrio.

For the record - I still think Jaime's politics views are a little too commie for my taste, but that doesn't mean I can't call a spade, a spade.  He's good at what he does and people would do themselves good to get out there and try to learn from him.