UMTravels

On the road again, and who is surprised.

Well, actually I was a little surprised today after boarding the one-stop (SFO) flight to PSP (Palm Springs) when my friend SpaceOtter and his boyfriend also boarded to plane. I hadn’t seen them in the waiting area and had no idea they were even travelling today.

But I have to back up a minute and show today’s travel commentary photo:

If you look beyond the Alaska planes you will see three United jets parked on the tarmac (not at gates) – grounded due to Hurricane Sandy.

And since it’s almost Halloween, how about a picture from the board room… spider with planes:

A spider building its web on the window of the Board Room.

So, while I was on the road this came in from my friend, one of the Colonels who I travel with occasionally (they are both retired Air Force) ex-Lt. Colonels who are in the middle of a 42 day cruise

As I mentioned earlier, we’re out in the middle of the ocean………or maybe three-quarters of the way across the Atlantic as I write this, and we’ve lost all of the satellite TV transmissions, except for Fox News. That’s been the case for several days now, and because I’m a news junkie, I’ve watched a lot of the Fox brand of news. I must say it has been a revelation to me in several areas, the first of which is the degree to which the material on the channel is not news, but rather, propaganda. There is a constant drumbeat of outrage against all things either Democrat or Obama; the degree of vitriol has really been a shock to me. They’ve accused Obama of everything other than being the Antichrist. I knew that Fox sees itself as a bastion of conservatism, but what I’ve seen over the past several days goes far beyond that: It is the political voice of an extreme right wing cult, and insists on quick and easy answers to very complex questions.  Every fact, or more often, alleged fact, is presented with a twist to make it as negative as possible toward anything that’s not extreme right wing…..”Third quarter growth is only 2%.”, “Unemployment is just barely under 8%, despite Obama’s promises.”  “Benghazi cover-up continues.”  The distortion and half-truth and innuendo just don’t let up, talking head after talking head after party hack after party hack. It seems to be unending.

I’ve noticed several other things about Fox News that strike me as odd: For example, it refers to other news,  ALL other news,  media as “main stream”, setting itself apart from NBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and other responsible news providers. Also, the people who host the shows with the talking heads ask leading questions: “How terrible was growth in the last quarter?”, and then argue with the folks they’re interviewing if they don’t get the answers they want, not to mention putting words in the mouths of people they interview. Finally, and I’ll shut up after this, Fox News seems to want the attack on the embassy at Benghazi to be as serious as the 9/11 attacks of 10 years ago. While I agree that Benghazi was a bad thing, and the deaths of the Americans there is a tragedy, I don’t see equivalence between the two events, and it’s clear Fox News doesn’t comprehend what has been referred to, correctly in my opinion, as “the fog of war”. I don’t think the President should be criticized for taking  time to figure out what happened, and I do not think that we should have called in close-air support against the attackers and the crowd of on-lookers……….that’s what I think.

Needless to say, THAT got posted to FaceBook.

The plan was for my buddy Craig to pick me up at the airport at 4:30 when my flight got in… the reality was that he had an on-camera interview representing (he’s the President) the Silver Lake Reservoirs Conservancy which he knew was going to make him a little late, what he didn’t expect was to be rear ended on the way and have to deal with the highway patrol. Think three hours late – gave me time to finish the New Yorker and have a bite to eat. By the time we went shopping, got checked in, dinner was at nine thirty on the deck – one of two comprising about 1000 square feet. The condo itself is about 3600 square feet. Pictures tomorrow.

This was the very full trolley coming up to the room – and what you don’t see are all the grocery and laptop bags hanging off the top.

Off to bed now.

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