War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
US politics creates some hardcore business deals, even unceremoniously dumping someone for an election. But one deal won’t die — an Obama-Hillary Clinton set-up for 2012. From CNN: “It’s on the table,” veteran Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward told CNN’s John King in an interview Tuesday on John King, USA. “Some of Hillary Clinton’s advisers…
Not! A new Gallup poll indicates a majority of US peoples don’t trust the mass media — Trust in the media is now slightly higher than the record-low trust in the legislative branch but lower than trust in the executive and judicial branches of government, even though trust in all three branches is down sharply…
Once again, and I couldn’t help, another post on Bob Woodward and the state of journalism as it covers national politics and war. As a nit-wit young reporter, in the original viewing of “All the President’s Men” in 1976, I was much-more captivated by Dustin Hoffman playing Carl Bernstein than Robert Redford as Woodward —…
Although informative and hilarious, the TV news programs on Comedy Central present a stark, and sad reminder of just how bad journalism in general (or honest-to-goodness news gathering) has become in the last few years. When the best news programs on TV are phony mock-ups — WTF! (Illustration found here). Of course, the massive, humongous…
What a complete, horrible mess the US nine years and some 24 hours following the attack on the World Trade Center, an event apparently which has become a turgid line drawn in the sands of time — we’ll always be caught nasty-faced in the before and after. In the front-page explosion off the San Francisco…
In keeping with the reality of early morning, it’s always a heart-touching, easy embrace to read Nobel Prize-winner and NYT columnist Paul Krugman, especially on Mondays — in a quiet, peaceful pre-dawn it’s hard to believe the USA and the world is going to shit in a wire basket. A lot of folks don’t like…
The US is getting the shaft in war making. Two invasions and two bloody, nasty quagmires. Rare is the Maureen Dowd column that is more than pancake face powder, or a shoe-horned turn at national politics, and rare still is a piece with insight into the US’ two beleaguered faraway wars. In her column this…
Massive toxic leaks into the environment can be horrible, whether it be the Gulf of Mexico or a horrible, incompetent-run war in Afghanistan. On Sunday, WikiLeaks (my laptop won’t load the group’s website) released a shitload of formerly-classified documents on the Afghan conflict, and the result ain’t pretty. From the the New York Times: The…
Highlights the desperate plight of news gathering: Editor&Publisher, an authentic cornerstone of journalism will cease publication at the end of this year. The announcement was made Thursday on its online site. An interview today with Greg Mitchell, E&P‘s editor since 2002, on the demise of the newspaper-trade industry/journo-icon can be found at Columbia Journalism Review.…
“The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is that you really want to say.” — Mark Twain’s Notebook, 1902-1903 Writing in this modern age is still the same as in Twain’s day, only quicker…