1555 Covering Paris

1555 Covering Paris

Can we stop being stupid, just for a moment?  Probably, but not for sure.  The “we” is the news community.  It is not beyond hope. But close.

When the attacks happened on a mild autumn evening in Paris, in a soccer stadium where a friendly rivalry was in play, in a concert hall where a band from California was making the noise that passes today for music and in the little cafes and bars that underpin the romantic and poetic myth that is Paris, we the coverers got our collective head out of the trivia that today passes for news.

Suddenly, your TV set and your newspaper forgot about college protesters in Missouri and New Haven. It forgot about Cosby, the Kardashians, the red carpets and the kindergarten for the criminally insane that passes for the current political climate.

In the big newsrooms of New York, Atlanta and Washington, the cry went up “call the Paris Bureau.”  This was immediately followed by the counter-cry “we don’t have one of those anymore.”

So the biggest story in Paris since its liberation in 1944 had to be covered by a patchwork of rusty old timers and greenhorn youngsters and random people with cellphone cameras.

Few reporters now on the scene know what the city smells like. Fewer still can give you walking directions from the Eiffel Tower to the low-rent 18th district or tell you when the garbage is picked up or recognize the sound of a Renault horn.

In fairness, not much happens in Paris that commands the attention of American newsies. But the January attacks on Charlie Hebdo might have warned us to keep an eye on things over there. Especially now that Syrian refugees are streaming into Europe and no doubt at least some of them are not your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

Would ISIS use the immigration to hide attackers? Perish the thought.

First reports are almost always wrong.  Figures change. Rumors and facts gather in the same blender.

The news troops on the ground or heading for it can be excused for getting caught in the undertow of error. Temporarily.

So now, some days into the coverage, how are we doing?

The only truly  indispensable news outlets in the country, the Associated Press and the New York Times, covered Paris like sharks on blood. Once they got there.

The NBC ex-pats at CNN and CBS managed, too. CBS was concentrating on its Saturday debate and lagged. Fox filled its airtime with the usual collection of hairdos and short skirts.

Now comes the why. Why Paris? Because when you hate pleasure, there are only two places worthy of attacking in jealousy or envy or self righteousness. And Vegas is too far.

Shrapnel:

--Watching the Dems debate Saturday night was a money saver for many. It was a brilliant substitute for Sominex and Lunesta.  And certainly not habit forming.

--It had to happen. Ronda Rousey finally lost a professional fight.  You knew she was in trouble when it went on long enough to have a second round. Holly Holm KOed the previously undefeated Rousey and claimed the UFC championship, if only temporarily.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1554 What Day is It Again?

1554 What Day is It Again?

It’s Friday the 13th, and a very special day: Black Friday.  But wait.  Isn’t Black Friday the day after Thanksgiving?  

Yes.

So does that mean we’ve already had Thanksgiving and some of us slept through it? Missed all the fun of family fights?  Burning a turkey or serving it raw? Hiding the uneaten cranberry sauce amid bones on the plate?  Secretly feeding the dog from the table? (They always know who to ask first.) Falling asleep in the least comfortable chair in the living room? Getting reamed after everyone’s gone for “being nasty to Uncle Ed?” while you’re cleaning up?

No.  

So, what’s with Black Friday?  Why, the usual manifest destiny that happens to almost all events.  Black Friday sales have been going on for awhile now, including on days that aren’t even a Friday.

Early starts and expanded sales are not a good sign.  Well, maybe for you, but not for the retailers.

Macy’s, almost everyone’s favorite Christmastime store, says it has a lot of merchandise on hand; stuff that didn’t sell over the summer and fall.

Wal-mart worries aloud about sales and is beefing up its loss leaders… those items it sells at a loss to get people in the doors.  And they’re considering something that has never occurred to any of its company higher-ups, ever:  getting the checkout done in less that forever.  (If they come up with a way now, why didn’t they do it 20 years ago?)

Retail stocks are taking a hit.  That means investment computers “think” sales will be flat or perhaps even (shudder) down this holiday season even if floor traffic is up.  

And as everyone knows with sales-per-square-foot only big increases count.

But it’s not just the in-person retailers that appear to be panicking.  It’s the catalogers, shopping channels and internet sites, too.

Catalogs are almost quaint these days.  But you’ll still get plenty, often from companies that you never heard of, but who’ve rented your name address from someone you once patronized even if it was back in the 1980s.

Fruit vendors, geegaw vendors, clothing companies.  You name it… the catalogs will be in your mailbox.  And your email box will get regular updates from every retailer on the planet, most of which you’ll zap without reading.

Desperation.  Fear of a figure lower than last year.  Extra “rewards” and deep price cutting.  We’re not sheep.  We’re fish.  We take the bait even if we know  it’s just a hook covered by a flashy feather.

So happy Black Friday.  Hope you enjoyed the Thanksgiving meal.

Shrapnel:

--In Page, Arizona, on the shores of drying Lake Powell, a big truck got into an accident and spilled most of its cargo on the road. Almost 40-thousand pounds of pizza dough.  Residents from miles around flocked to the wreck carrying jars of sauce, slices of cheese, bags of pepperoni, mushrooms and anchovies and argued about the recipe as the Arizona sun baked the pie.   

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1553 Hummm

1553 Hummm

Hum?  Perhaps you’ve heard of it.  Hard to miss these days.  Hum is a jolly new service that turns your car into a high tech wonder.

It’s a little thingy that plugs into your under-hood computer and warns you if anything is going wrong.  It alerts you to a small problem before it becomes big.

So far, so good, right?

Okay, here comes equal (or greater) time.

The daddy company of Hum.com is Verizon.  That should make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up all by itself.  In case it doesn’t, let’s look a little closer.

Here’s what Verizon says about Hum on its website:

hum gives you vehicle diagnostics, better roadside assistance and other helpful features with a single subscription. It makes your car smarter, safer and more connected.

Ducky.  Now, how does it do this?  By doing what VZ does best, collect data.  What does it do with the data once it’s collected?  Why stores it in the cloud, of course.  

But what can it do with the stats your engine puts out?  Not a whole lot.  It can gather metadata on what goes wrong with which cars.  Helpful to buyers if anyone cares to publish the figures.

It can offer your numbers and codes to your mechanic/technician. Helpful to owners who want to get their cars fixed before they break.

But wait, there’s more. Hum also is a GPS. Helpful if your car is stolen and the thief isn’t aware the system is running and disables it with the oh so tough deactivation process:  pulling out the plug.

But now, Verizon will know where you are whenever you drive. So, how about a fast look at their privacy statement:

Verizon is Committed to Protecting Your Privacy

Protecting our customers' privacy is an important priority at Verizon and we are committed to maintaining strong and meaningful privacy protections. The privacy of your information is a significant responsibility and we value the trust you place in us.

Of course! How silly of us to question VZ’s good will and good intentions. The privacy statement goes on encyclopedically in its detail.  But the essence of it “We won’t give your info away unless we have to and you can opt out of some of our marketing nonsense if you can find where on our many websites we hide the little boxes you have to check or uncheck.  

Privacy, of course, is vestigial these days, so what do you care, right?  Your cell phone tracks you. So does your EZ Pass.  And the chip the NSA planted in your head if you were born after 1990 covers the waterfront pretty well, too.

Hum costs 15 bucks a month. For now.  Here’s another piece of fine print from the website:

Limited-time offer for new hum subscribers. First month free with a two year subscription. $14.99 for the first car and $12.99 for each additional car, up to 3, per month thereafter. Other fees, taxes, equip. charges & terms may apply. Up to a $120 early cancellation fee may apply. Cancel the service at any time with no early cancellation fee; provided you return the hum equipment within 30 days of cancellation. Pinpoint roadside assistance provided by Signature Motor Club, Inc., up to 4 events per year. Many services require GPS service and/or network availability, not available in all locations. Not all incidents or problems will be detected. Compatible vehicle model restrictions apply. Automotive discount services not available to residents of AR, CA, DE, MT, NE, NV, NM, OK, SC, TN, VA, WI, and WY. © 2015 Verizon.

Emphasis ours.  We especially liked the part that says there’s no cancellation fee unless there is.

Grapeshot:

-We salute the men and women of the armed forces, past present and future on this Veterans Day 2015.

-And we remember with sadness the deaths of 29 men on the great ship Edmund Fitzgerald, eaten alive by the waters of Lake Superior 40 years ago yesterday.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1552 The Burning Bush

1552 The Burning Bush

We give an old man some breathing space as he approaches the age of death.  If we like him, we start thinking of him as better than he is. If we dislike him, nostalgia crowds it either down or out.

So when George Herbert Walker Bush, 91 and ailing, spends long hours over long years with a biographer and says things that surprise, the nostalgia is joined by warmth.

Jon Meacham’s biography of the 41st President is out and it’s making waves.  Meacham is a big time editor (Newsweek, Random House;) commentator (PBS) and a patient and thorough researcher.

He spent years listening to Bush and was given access to years of presidential diaries.  From this, he wrote almost 900 pages as one of the era’s most famous figures gives it one last try at shaping history in his favor.  Trial and -- to an extent -- success.

Unlike President Bush 43, HW served with honor in WWII, admitted his mistakes and tried to lead rather than exclude large swaths of the public.

If he had one flaw that was more “fatal” than others it was loyalty.  In seeking a second term, he chose to stick with vice presidential running mate Dan Quayle, who probably was the second worst veep of the late 20th century, the worst being Spiro Agnew.

Up until recently, the vice presidency was a job of low demand.  And even at that Quayle didn’t measure up.  Goofy is okay if one also is likeable. Dan had the former attribute but not the latter.  His picture is in the dictionary next to “dolt.”

Male members of the Bush clan have trouble expressing themselves understandably and in complete sentences.  They speak in bumper stickers. That hurt “W” more than HW and brother JEB! of the wilting exclamation point -- thank you Gail Collins for that -- is right up there with his brother.

Ah, his brother.  HW tears into a couple of W’s top guns.  Cheney and Rumsfeld. He says (translated from the bumper sticker) they are dogmatic, rigid and doctrinaire. While “Poppy” as he’s called in the family started the gruesome Iraq nonsense, W turned it into high art and HW didn’t much like that, either.

Bush 43 defended his choices of advisers, most of whom had worked for Poppy earlier.  And the advisers themselves are wearing the senior Bush’s  pejoratives as badges of honor.

In the diaries, HW admits to something few politicians would, self doubt.  He paints himself as far more human than the present generation.

So, we give the old fella a break because he kept silent when to speak up would have undercut his son (there’s that loyalty thing again.) We forgive him at least some of his many trespasses.

And we give him a break because he is a throwback to the days before the republican party had been completely co-opted by the crazies.

George Herbert Walker Bush, senior skydiver, lifelong public servant admitter of having to change course after “read my lips, no new taxes” will not save us from the abyss his older son opened and newer members of his party are pushing us to leap into.  But by today’s standards, he’s sane and reasonable.

And you can’t ask much more of a politician.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1551 Declassified: The Trans Pacific Partnership

1551 Declassified: The Trans Pacific Partnership

We must love to be screwed over.  Every time we sign a trade agreement, that’s what we get.  This latest one shows -- again -- we don’t learn from our mistakes.

NAFTA, CAFTA, Shaft-A.  

Yes, in the recently released formerly secret Pacific trade pact, some safeguards have been installed.  Sort of like the traffic cones that warn you of slippery conditions.  Occasionally, even in English.

(“Piso mojado” means “wet floor” in Spanish.  But it sounds like a holiday greeting.  ‘I wish you a Piso Mojado.’”)

The official name of this monstrosity is the Trans Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement.  And make no mistake, we are the junior partner.

“Eighteen thousand taxes on American exports have been removed,” raves the 30- chapter agreement. That makes our stuff cheaper and therefore more attractive.  Like, we export a whole lot of stuff to our dandy new partners, Chile and Vietnam.

Ah, but there are much needed safeguards for fair labor practices, right?  Sure.  Malaysians will see their work day reduced to 12 hours, sometime before 2024.

Many labor items in this contract.  But did anyone ask the AFL-CIO of input?  Of course not.  We can’t have special interest groups meddling in international affairs, now can we?

Plus what could those thugs tell the scholarly experts who worked out the terms behind closed doors and signed off on it before it was made public.

Supposedly, this thing can’t be implemented until congress signs off on it.  Well, the jingo caucus might be able to justify its pathetic, Koch-fueled existence by opposing this latest demeaning of America. But many co conspirators won’t.

TPP doesn’t extend benefits to tobacco or drug companies than they expected.  Well… it was written primarily by the Obama administration.  So you can expect the republican autonomic response we’ve been hearing since the details were published just now.

Opposition from the pharma- tobacco-cancer complex should mean the rest of us should support it. But if you look closely, you’ll see they’re whining not about being excluded but by not being kissed deeply enough.

Here’s another splendid benefit we can expect from TPP.  China will have to introduce the safeguards other countries are to observe.  Yeah, of course!  China! Why they’re famous for bowing to international example and/or pressure.

The president gloats TPP lets “...us set the rules” for international trade.  This space generally supports the Kenyan Muslim Socialist’s viewpoint if not the specifics of his actions.   But this lie is right up there with “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”

Shrapnel:

--Fellow car nuts, here’s important news. Bob Lutz has started writing columns for Road and Track Magazine. So far, he’s explained the roots of VW’s diesel problems and why he thinks Tesla is on the wrong track.  Lutz is always worth reading.

--Struggling BlackBerry is drawing rave reviews for its new Android smartphone, one of the few that still has a slide-out keyboard for those of us with trouble typing on screen.  That’s the good news. The bad news is it costs $700.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1550 Little White Lies

1550 Little White Lies

The US Supreme Court is considering a proposed change in law that would let you sue companies that publish little white lies.

The case pits an ordinary guy against the internet search-for-fee site Spokeo.  Spokeo is loaded with the kind of personal information that we have always craved.

Is he or she married or single?  Educated or a dropout? Solvent?   What if the information is wrong and someone loses a job or points on a credit score because of misinformation in an internet search?

Spokeo says in court papers that people should be allowed to sue only if there’s actual damage.  The proposed change would allow a relatively low payout in a suit even if no one but you looked at your report.

Conservative justices who have spoken publicly don’t want the law.  Liberals are divided.

How did the misinformation get to the website? Did the subject of the search lie?  Did the site mistype the data?  Is there name confusion?  After all, there may only be one or two Lyro Panacallis.  But there are an awful lot of John Smiths or Mary Joneses (check any motel register if you doubt this.)

Jrs. are often confused with Srs. Twins have recently defeated facial recognition software at a state motor vehicle bureau.  Most of these errors are innocent.  Some are just careless. Few are malicious.

So, the question is “what is right?”  Laws are essentially cookie cutters.  They are mass production Thou Shalt Nots.  Most are couched in complicated legalese designed to confuse and mystify.  And most are open to interpretation.

There are simple laws that require none of this. “No Right Turn.”  “Stop.”  But once it gets beyond traffic control, it’s anyone’s game. Look at any murder trial if you disagree.

So, what to do about the little white lies.  Given the makeup of the activist court, chances are this will be defeated.  But it’s still hard to tell what’s right.

And that’s no lie

Shrapnel:

--Speaking of the Supreme Court, it has slammed the gates on St. Preet. In effect it legalized insider trading and forced federal prosecutor Bharara of New York to drop seven of the cases on which much of his reputation rests.  The court so narrowed the criteria for the crime that only an imbecile could fail to avoid prosecution.

--China admits it is burning more coal than previously reported. Much more.  So which came first, the Chinese Little White lie or Volkswagen’s.

--It is November and that means someone better get down to the third subbasement and awaken WestraDamus the Non-prophet.  He has his work cut out for him this year because so much happened.  Feel free to send in suggestions you find important for him to screw up.

Grapeshot:

-Which school bathrooms are transgender kids and teachers supposed to use?

-Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp recently bought a big stake in National Geographic Magazine and to the surprise of no one, the layoffs are starting.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1549 Knee Deep in the Big Sandy

1549 Knee Deep in the Big Sandy

As a nation, we learned nothing from Vietnam -- the “Big Muddy” -- except that no one came home whole.

And so, we replicated our failure there in the Middle East.  And we’re about to go deeper as the US sends “advisers” to Syria.

If you think things were bad in Iraq and Kuwait, if you think things are bad in Afghanistan and Libya, hold tight to the railing because they’re about to get worse.  Probably much worse.  This time, we’re not only fighting an enemy on its own turf, we’re not only  fighting what amounts to a popular front, we are also fighting Russia which has a much bigger stake in this conflict than we do and has something to gain, which we don’t.

The old lion Charles de Gaulle warned the old lion Dwight Eisenhower not to get involved in Indochina.  He didn’t listen and neither did the three presidents who followed.

The old lion Gorbachev warned the old lion Reagan against getting involved in Afghanistan. He didn’t listen and neither did the four presidents who followed.

Now comes Syria, home of ISIS, the current black keffiyeh in the region.  We don’t want them. The dictator Assad doesn’t want them and the Russians don’t want them.

So what’s the problem?  We all get together and crush them.  Ah, but it’s the Middle East where nothing is simple even if it’s easy.

The problem seems to be twofold. 1. We like to kill or otherwise topple unwanted regional dictators. 2. The Russians want Assad to stay.

And we want Assad to go with such fervor that we made his removal a condition of our helping in the war against ISIS.  Until now.

Make no mistake about it, we are going to get sucked into this mess and fighting a hot war against Russia in an area where influence is important to them is not in our best interest.  It has the potential to grow into something much bigger.

But, you say, Russia has become a third world country. What harm can they do us?  A third world country?  With enormous natural resources, a strong will, a relatively strong and clever military and a preternatural ability to tolerate civilian poverty and suffering?  Some third world country!

But, you say, we’re only sending advisers. Right. That’s now.  The secretary of defense says “we’re in combat.”  The White House disagrees. The secretary is prescient and the White House delusional.

Vietnam started for us with advisers.  So have other wars. All that means is that the buildup of American involvement will be relatively slow and probably half-baked.

So the question we American peasants on the ground have to ask -- and answer -- what do we need that for?

Lives and money at a distance of seven thousand miles?  It’s bad enough they can’t seem to resolve their own problems, what makes anyone think we can… or even if we can, we should.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015