US and the World

A desperate lateral?

The New York Times > International > Middle East > Handover Completed Early to Thwart Attacks, Officials Say

When I first saw this story about the handover two days ahead of schedule I thought - good! At last we've done something right. Then another image popped into my head - a football image. The team is behind. There are only seconds left in the game. The running back is making good progress bobbing and weaving down the field, but now he's dragging three tacklers with him and if he goes down the clock runs out with the goal line still 30 yards away. So as he falls he makes one last twist and flips a desperate lateral to the first friendly he sees coming up behind him. Unfortunately, it is a lineman and he fumbles the desperate exchange. End of game.

Ok, so I'm a first class pessimist on this hand-off stuff - but the second thing in my head was yesterday's Doonesbury. here are the four key panels:

You can see the whole cartoon here.

Now once again, I ask, why is it that I find out key facts - and I'm assuming this business about permanent basis is a fact - from cartoons? Be interesting to see if this shows up in the news stories today, or if we'll have to wait for the fake news of "The Daily Show" to give us the real news, or for Michael Moore to come out with another documentary. In short, while the press is no longer treating Bush like an untouchable, it is still dropping th eball - and I suspect that is, in the currrent jargon, systemic.

Ah, but if you do read the news carefully you learn essential things. For example, about halfway through the story linked at the top of this entrty is this valuable fashion reprot:

Bremer, wearing a dark suit and a blue tie with small white dots, read the transfer document, which was inside a blue folder.

Now that i know about those white dots on that blue tie I feel much better informed. I guess they forgot to mention that his suit had red stripes? ;-)