Tag: newsworthy

A Veteran Newsman Makes Some Good Points About the “News”

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Ken LaCorte sends e-mails about his articles to my inbox.  He is a former Fox News big shot and he has a lot of insightful stuff.  But in the article linked below he considers whether there is more harm than good in all the outrage that he (and I) traffic in:

https://kenlacorte.substack.com/p/too-many-trees-not-enough-forest

“We’re inundated with stories and social media posts algorithmically chosen because they provoke reactions from people. Computers are quite literally targeting us not with the most intelligent news of the day, but those designed to evoke an emotional response to encourage likes and sharing.

Every morning I do my best to think up something of value for you. While I’m confident that I’m providing you with solid and, hopefully, insightful thoughts, I sometimes wonder: am I part of the problem? Does focusing on the daily political drama and unsettling politics-related behavior help us stay diligent? Or depressed?”

He’s right that at a certain point we’re not making our lives better when we spend all our time reading about this crap.  I guess we each have to decide what that balance is.

But stop by here once in a while anyway, for the witty banter and gnomic wisdom.

What’s New

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I tried to write something today.  Trump, DeSantis, Biden, Tucker, the Media, COVID, BLM, Antifa, Urban Crime, Ukraine, Russia, China.  It’s all been said.  It’s all been said a million times.  We all know it by heart.  BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH!!!

All the same stuff.  So, what is new?  What is news?

Well, news is what someone did about it.  And there are bits of news here and there.  That guy Rufo teamed up with DeSantis in Florida to begin cleaning out one of the woke Florida state colleges.  He’s on the board of governors along with a bunch of other conservatives and they are stripping away the DEI initiatives and the HR policies that favor leftist results.  They’re even getting rid of curriculum that serves no purpose other than leftist propaganda.  Now that’s news.

And in Texas the governor and the legislature have drafted, approved and signed a bill that keeps biological males out of women’s college sports.  Now that’s an actual event.

And a number of states have banned transgender transitioning of minors.  That’s news.  That’s worth noting.

And Anheuser-Busch is still losing untold hundreds of millions of dollars in business because they decided to bend a knee to the transgender mafia.  And Target and Disney and a few other corporations have also lost lots of business for similar decisions.  That’s big news.

News worth talking about is real actions that show results.

Liz Cheney and those other RINO congressmen getting bounced out of the House is news.  The fact that Mitt Romney is being primaried next year is news.  There’s a data point about to be unveiled.  We’re going to learn if Utah really is a red state.  If Romney survives it’s purple.  If he gets bounced it’s red.

Twitter (or X) is news.  We’ll have to wait to find out if it’s going to be good news or bad news.  Elon Musk has laid a $44 billion bet that a free speech social platform can make a profit.  We’ll see.

Fox firing Tucker Carlson is big news.  We’ll find out if the right is willing to pay a small amount of cash to get news from our side.  We’ll see.

And the biggest news will be whether the Deep State will send Donald Trump to prison.  In a way this isn’t really news.  This is political theater.  But it remains to be seen if Trump can use this stage to galvanize enough Americans to scare the Deep State into allowing a fair election.  This is the biggest question mark of all.

And there are smaller stories out there.  Christian movie studios and non-leftist book and comic book publishers making real money.  PublicSq providing a marketplace for people who want to avoid woke companies.  These things are news.

So, the news is the seeds that are starting to sprout.  And right now, impact is negligible, infinitesimal, laughably small.  But it’s a start.  And that’s the news.

Forget about the Republican primary.  That’s not news.  That’s a joke.  If Donald Trump is prevented from being the candidate, then it won’t matter who is.  The rank and file won’t show up in November.  Trump is their protest vote.  He’s a thumb in the eye of the powers that be.  News would be if somehow, we ended up with a fair election.  Forget news, that would be a miracle.

And the biggest news would be someone organizing a movement to bypass the Republican party to coordinate the Red State governments to start to standardize and optimize their policies to protect their citizens from the federal government.  And while they’re at it, begin to rein in the national Republican party and make it more accountable to the voters in their states.

Summer Solstice 2023

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Today is the longest day of the year and the first official day of summer.  Regular readers know that I have an inordinate attachment to summer.  This probably developed when I was a child and despised school as a form of imprisonment.  This week has been unpleasantly crowded with commitments that have kept me from writing and performing my other blog duties.  Well, it can’t be helped.

Most of the news today has to do with the submarine that has disappeared during a trip to the Titanic wreck site on the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean.  From what I’ve read, the guy who runs the company that brings sight-seers to the Titanic was piloting the sub.  Opinions about whether the trip was a senseless death trap or a brave adventure seems about evenly split.  As someone very familiar with pressure vessel design, I wonder if carbon fiber as a structural material is well understood.  Materials like stainless steel and other alloys have been tested for decades to understand their reaction to pressure, temperature, corrosion and other factors.  I guess this situation will probably bring to light the details of this company’s policies with respect to design and risk.

Elsewhere in the news, Hunter Biden and Donald Trump and their comparative treatment at the hands of the Justice Department is providing supplementary examples of what a two-tier justice system means in practical terms.  We’re all going to learn over the course of the next year and a half whether the awakening of the American public to the realities of who runs this country makes any difference at all in how those in charge behave.  We may find that they now have nothing to fear from us at all.

On the Ukraine front, the summer offensive by the Ukrainians has been ongoing for about three weeks.  It’s not completely clear whether the operations are probing attacks or some kind of multiple axis maneuvering.  At this point, the Ukrainians have lost about 20 – 30% of the tanks and armored vehicles that the West provided them since December.  This is due to the extensive minefields that the Russians have laid out in front of the defensive lines that they built.  Maybe there will be a successful penetration of those Russian lines in the near future but so far it doesn’t look promising.  There’s a NATO meeting coming up in Vilnius, Lithuania on July 11th.  Speculation is that the Ukrainians have until that meeting to show that they can use the equipment and training that the West has given them to make significant progress against the Russians on the battle front.  We’ll see how that turns out.

As far as the economy, prices continue to soar on just about everything and companies report lower earnings.  Of course, “no recession in sight.”  But that may be just the new way the economy is reported.  Basically, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.  Well, we’ll see how that goes in the fall when the election is in high gear.  Once again, maybe our masters no longer care what we think or say.

On the home front, Camera Girl continues to stuff me with splendiferous foods whenever I return from the various annoying errands, I’ve been assigned this week.  Tonight, is eggplant stuffed with sausage and rice.  I guess I shouldn’t complain about living in bondage if it includes good food.  But of course, in Biden’s America the sausage will be replaced with crickets.  So, there is that.

Waiting for Significance

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You may have noticed I haven’t had many political posts in the last few days.  I scan the headlines every day.  After all, railing against the outrage of the day is sort of my schtick.  But for the last few days all I see is “same old, same old.”  The FBI raids Trump associates.  Political polls from Left and Right claim advantage for their side in the mid-terms.  Economic indicators and business events reinforce that we’re in a recession and statements from politicians on both sides confirm that we hate each other’s guts.  You, see?  Same old, same old.

There have been some stories about CNN firing some frothing at the mouth Trump-haters.  That I consider newsworthy.  That’s something different going on.  So that’s an example of the kind of thing I’m looking for.  New developments.  News!  When I see a story about someone on the Left waking up to the anti-freedom excesses of the current regime, I think that is newsworthy.  Anytime I see some establishment type waking up to the reality of what our government has become that’s sort of newsworthy.

But outrage for the sake of having something to say is becoming boring and even painful to write.  We all know it’s bad.  Only the brain dead could miss the fact that things are awful.  Only the hopelessly clueless don’t see where the awfulness emanates from.  Only a Democrat flak can listen to a Joe Biden speech and pretend that what he is saying resembles reality.

But what I write has to have some freshness, some life to it.  Even for me it can’t just reiterate the same old thing.  So, you may see some days when my post will be a review of a movie or a book.  Or it may be about something else I’m interested in like photography or beekeeping or some aspect of science and technology.

And this is all to the good.  Just banging the same old drum doesn’t really accomplish anything except wear out the reader’s patience.  There are always plenty of things going on in the world and there are even the beginnings of alternative cultural and social organizations doing things in the world.  These will give us things to talk about.

So don’t be alarmed if I haven’t ranted in a week or so.  It’s simply that there’s nothing new worth saying about life in Oceania.  I can’t record every last word and deed of Big Brother.  I may have to say I love him but I can’t claim he isn’t boring as all hell.