Saturday, January 29, 2011

Not a good move...

Egypt turned off the Internet today. That's some serious shit to be doing in the 21st century. I understand the thinking. The government wants to stop the protesters from using Twitter and Facebook to organize. But at this point, the cat is out of the bag guys. And while Cairo is a huge city, people generally know where the protests are being held now.

What isn't being reported, is that when Monday comes, they better be back online because banks, the stock market and many businesses will be unable to operate without net access. The stock market has already taken a 15% hit and dropping tourism is going to hurt even more in a country that gets 12% of its GDP from it.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

It's the story...

There's an old saying in the newspaper business, its the story people remember, never the retraction, or correction. Last week some nutjob went on the radio and said "I've spoken to the Governor of Hawaii, and he said there is no birth certificate for Obama".

Except he didn't. 

He's sorry he misspoke. But that's not the important thing here. This is the kind of shit we are seeing more and more of from the Right. They will say outright lies with conviction. They will ignore facts, twist statistics make insane connections and suppositions. And when someone calls them on their bullshit they might MIGHT mumble something about "maybe you misunderstood what we were saying".  It's tiresome.