The CIA decides to put the hurt on the President to hide their own embarassments, so they send a guy to Niger who reports back to the CIA that Iraq tried to buy uranium ore - then tells the NYTimes they didn't. This guy they sent apparently has problems keeping the story straight - says his wife's a covert agent, yet they're behaving in anything but a covert fashion.
(First rule of security as it's taught in the military - you don't know nuffin'. 'specially if you got a TS or higher clearance - even if Jane's All The World's Weapon Systems have already published everything including the throw weight of the warhead and has pictures detailed enough that you can count the screws holding the nose fairing on the warhead shroud.)
The Senate goes into a closed session (and I can't even recall the last time they did that) over the Iraqi Intelligence flap, when they've already issued a bipartisan report. Why they need another one, I can't guess - unless they want the Reader's Digest Condensed version. And when a disaster hits in NO, all the failures there are laid at the feet of the President - DESPITE all the documented failures of the local authorities and the crappy engineering of the levees that broke.
Bird flu is apparently making its way worldwide - yet there's little attention paid to it by the media, instead the focus is on whether or not Carl Rove will get indicted for the possible outing of Joe Wilson's wife - with a sidebar spectacle of a reporter who went to jail rather than release the name of the source who supposedly did the outing - despite the permission of the source - and who's notes are supposedly startlingly inconclusive of who said what to whom, to the extent of misspelling the outed agents' name.
Iraq has elections - and they're ignored. Iraq votes on a consititution - and it's ignored... though there was breathless anticiaption on how bad the violence was going to be before the election. No violence - no story - and the passing of the Constituton was two paragraphs tucked into the 'World News' section. We're 'winning' the war in Iraq - but the media doesn't see the good stuff that's going on, just the problems. Hey, if it bleeds, it leads.
Afghanistan has elections, and that rates one paragraph in 'World News'.
In other world news, Paris has 6 straight nights of race riots - but is virtually ignored.
The headline story as of the time of this posting on MSNBC news is about a supposed CIA secret prision where a high-ranking member of Al Quaeda's being held. (They say that like it's a bad thing....) And there MAY be something new on the Natalie Holloway case. Foxnews has a two line blurb about the Paris riots.
There's something exceedingly odd about the priorities of the media these days - and about the priorities of our legislators. They seem to be too focused and intent on the easier stuff than on the hard - and are grateful for any assistance in the way of distractions from the media.
Frankly, if this were in anovel I can imagine the slush-pile reader throwing it across the room. "People aren't that stupid!" they'd shriek. "Crappy plot devices! Sheer stupdity on the part of the villans!" And the thing would never see the light of day again.
Instead, we're living it. God, I hope the writer gets a damn clue soon.
J.