The 103rd edition of Major League Baseball's World Series gets underway Wednesday in Boston as the Red Sox host the Colorado Rockies in Game One at Fenway Park Tuesday evening.Huh?
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
What Does This Mean?
From the VOH:
No Thoughts, Just Facts
Or is it no facts, just thoughts? No links, anyway.
ONE Today's news includes the fact that billions of dollars -- billions -- are lost and unaccounted for somewhere in the vast desert between State and its various "security contractors" operating in Iraq. I just want to say this should come as no surprise. Iraq is not a board game where you shuffle pieces around and simply try your best to focus firepower. It is a country, a rather large one, full of people who like people everywhere base their alliances on expediency. No doubt these security contractors have understood from Day One that the best thing to do with this situation was to bribe as many sheiks as possible in order to keep the levels of violence down, and off of this untraceable hoard skim a few millions for one's own extreme-risk-taking self. What's the point of being a mercenary if you don't become filthy rich?
TWO NPR has become as bad as every other news hack organization. Journalists are expected to report the facts, not deliver interpretations of the facts. This morning the report was on the wildfires currently raging down south. The Governator was reported to have said we had learned how to address disasters from previous mistakes -- "an apparent reference to Katrina and New Orleans." An apparent reference. Do journalists not yet understand that when they call something an apparent reference, it becomes a reference, and that the listening audience comes away believing that Schwartzy was referring to Katrina as the mistake "we" had learned from? Later, from the more local newscast, I heard Arnold speak directly. He was not referring to Katrina. He was referring to the wildfires of 2003. (If I was a paranoid right-winger I'd see deliberate partisanship in the journalist's redirection of Schwarzenegger's intent but of course I am not.)
ONE Today's news includes the fact that billions of dollars -- billions -- are lost and unaccounted for somewhere in the vast desert between State and its various "security contractors" operating in Iraq. I just want to say this should come as no surprise. Iraq is not a board game where you shuffle pieces around and simply try your best to focus firepower. It is a country, a rather large one, full of people who like people everywhere base their alliances on expediency. No doubt these security contractors have understood from Day One that the best thing to do with this situation was to bribe as many sheiks as possible in order to keep the levels of violence down, and off of this untraceable hoard skim a few millions for one's own extreme-risk-taking self. What's the point of being a mercenary if you don't become filthy rich?
TWO NPR has become as bad as every other news hack organization. Journalists are expected to report the facts, not deliver interpretations of the facts. This morning the report was on the wildfires currently raging down south. The Governator was reported to have said we had learned how to address disasters from previous mistakes -- "an apparent reference to Katrina and New Orleans." An apparent reference. Do journalists not yet understand that when they call something an apparent reference, it becomes a reference, and that the listening audience comes away believing that Schwartzy was referring to Katrina as the mistake "we" had learned from? Later, from the more local newscast, I heard Arnold speak directly. He was not referring to Katrina. He was referring to the wildfires of 2003. (If I was a paranoid right-winger I'd see deliberate partisanship in the journalist's redirection of Schwarzenegger's intent but of course I am not.)
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