FrontBurner

Interesting story by Matt Moseley here, on how the Cowboys’ Felix Jones worked to become a more explosive running back in the offseason. In short, he started attending gymnastics classes in Rockwall, where he was under the tutelage of Brazilian gymnastics coach Igor Carvalho, but Marion Barber started it.

“Yeah,” sports executive Chuck Greenberg was saying to Paul Stewart, a former Dallas Symphony Orchestra official, “I’m gonna try to make it two in a row!”

Greenberg (pictured at far right with Stewart) has kept a low profile since being ousted as Texas Rangers CEO earlier this year. But there he was at a party last night at the W Hotel penthouse where sports entrepreneur Kirby Schlegel lives, talking openly to guests about his interest in acquiring the Dallas Stars.

Greenberg and Kirby’s father, Canadian-born Pavestone founder Bob Schlegel, who was also in attendance, years ago tried (unsuccessfully) to buy the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres team.

Parkland Board Replacing CEO Ron Anderson. If you missed the story as it broke last night, here you go.

Wildfire Destroys 25 Homes Near Possum Kingdom Lake. Another 125 are threatened, and this comes only a few months after the fire that burned down 160 in the same area.

Carrollton Neighborhood’s Long Egret Nightmare Finally Over. “The stained streets, the poo, the regurgitation in the lawns,” resident Scott Baughn said, in a quote you are unlikely to see that high in a story again. No one on Chamberlain Drive or from the city could disturb the birds, who have been nesting in the trees there for months, because they are protected by Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Code.

DISD Trustee Carla Ranger Retracts Her Resignation. She turned it in on Friday after losing a redistricting battle, but decided to stay after all.

The Morning News is reporting that Ron Anderson’s 29-year stay as Parkland Memorial Hospital’s president/CEO is ending, but the board wants to keep him on in some capacity. Anderson’s current position officially ends Saturday, Dec. 31, 2011.

According to Parkland’s board chairwoman Lauren McDonald, Anderson is not being fired. Rather, he will be given a newly created position in January.

You might remember Rais Bhuiyan, the man who sued Rick Perry and the state of Texas to stop the execution of the guy who shot him in the face. Bhuiyan’s efforts to stop Mark Stroman’s execution failed, but his campaign against hate continues. In the next two weeks, Bhuiyan’s organization, World Without Hate,  will be launching a web site. On it, he wants to share stories from people who were personally affected by 9/11 or hate crimes, and how those people have learned to heal. You can contribute by emailing: [email protected]. Bhuiyan says he’ll try to publish as many stories as possible.

… or at least maim you. Or at least make you soil your britches.

A emailing FrontBurnervian points to this WFAA story, which points out that for the second time in two days, someone has made a dental office a drive-through. You may want to reschedule that cleaning, or ask for an interior room.

Must be time to take Rick Perry’s presidential candidacy seriously. Even Kinky Friedman, who once ran against Perry for governor, is banging the drum for the GOP hopeful, saying “there’s a lot of good” in him. The Texas Jewboy adds that Perry can’t be worse for the economy than President Obama, who’s “done for the economy what pantyhose did for foreplay.”

Update: Right here.

Parkland is far from perfect. No question that organization needs to make some changes in how it does business. But is Parkland as horribly mismanaged and dangerous to its patients as the Dallas Morning News would lead you to believe? More specifically, is the ongoing Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) review of the hospital as monumental and unprecedented as the paper has made it out to be? I don’t think so.

Surely by now you’ve heard about the survey of the facilities conducted by the Texas Department of State Health Services, which led CMS (no idea why it’s not called CMMS) to issue a report saying the hospital was putting the health of its patients in “immediate jeopardy.” Fix the problems, said CMS, or we’ll withdraw your funding. Effectively, the hospital would be shuttered.

Sounds pretty bad, right? In a big front-page story (sub. req.) about the CMS report two Sundays ago, the News drove home the direness of conditions at Parkland with this money quote:

“It appears safety was routinely relegated to a lower priority by other pressures,” said Vanderbilt University professor Ranga Ramanujam, a national expert in health care safety. “The CMS action is extraordinary. I am hard-pressed to think of an example of a similarly high-profile hospital facing the very real possibility of losing their CMS funding as a result of safety violations.”

Ramanujam was the sole expert quoted in the story as to the singularity of the CMS report. You read his quote, and you think, “Parkland is the most awful hospital in America. It’s extraordinarily awful. I mean, a national expert can’t even think of another hospital that’s as awful as Parkland. That’s pretty awful.”

But hang on just a second.

Methodist Dallas Gets the Parkland Treatment. The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has sent Methodist Hospital a letter much like the one it recently sent Parkland, saying the agency inspected the hospital and found serious problems. Methodist either fixes the problems or it loses its Medicare and Medicaid funding. Soon as I get into the office, I’m going to write about 5,000 words on this deal (sub. req.) and how it shows that the Morning News has a bias against Parkland. So start getting excited now.

Dallas To Fulfill George Orwell’s Vision. Got unpaid traffic tickets? Watch out (sub. req.). The law firm that serves as the collection agency for the city of Dallas is enlisting the help of an outfit called the Municipal Intelligence Group, a Texas-based corporation that “offers revenue capture services to units of government by combining technology and data analytics with a network of over 1,800 field agents in 27 metropolitan statistical areas across the nation.” In English: they drive around and take pictures of license plates on parked cars. A computer matches plates to a scofflaw database. If you’re guilty, your car winds up sporting a bright orange sticker telling you to pay up or else. Privacy advocates, understandably, are all, like, “That stinks, man.”

Cowboys Cut Andre Gurode. He was a Pro Bowler. Now he’s gone. The move makes sense to me. If the Cowboys want to be good this year, they shouldn’t have an offensive line staffed with guys who play other professional sports, whether it’s bowling or golf or what have you. (Sorry about that.) Now let’s look at a USA Today photo gallery of Tony Romo.

WFAA reports today that former reporter Bert Lozano, who left about four years ago to join the PR firm Weber Shandwick, suffered a heart attack and is in critical condition at an area hospital.

Lozano is 42, and his family released the following statement:

“The family of Bert Lozano thanks everyone for their thoughts and prayers. The family will provide updates as they learn more about his condition.”

Ed Bark has more over at unclebarky.com.

I’m not going to call you out on calling Bosque County, Texas, backwater in your little brief about Glenn Beck moving there, for the Dallas Morning News‘ Bruce Tomaso already did that.

Instead, I’m going to call you out on math. Yes, I know we’re all journalists because of the existence of Very Hard Math Classes in college, but really, this sentence?

In 2009, Texas had more deaths by firearm than New York and Connecticut combined.

You used it kind of as a throwaway at the end. I’m not sure why it was necessary. But let’s review. The 2010 census has Texas’ population at 25,145,561. New York has a population of 19,378,102 and Connecticut’s is 3,574,097. This means that Texas has more people, period, than New York and Connecticut combined.