Old Man Talk

The YMCA is one of the few places I go where I rub elbows - sweaty elbows- with the conservatives who make up the majority of my childhood home. Sometimes I find the parking lot bumper stickers abrasive, but mostly I find it interesting. Not, "Oh look at those ridiculous conservatives not understanding evolution," but, "Oh OK. This is where they are coming from." It always makes me frustrated but not in the way you might think. I leave longing for a venue where I could ask politically right constituents questions and not have the whole situation instantaneously erupt into a verbal pissing contest.

Update: Update: US Government has terminated it's contract with the Rendon Group.

Title says it all.

This isn't 2005, right?

It's always strange for me to hear government officials saying things and doing things I only assumed they said and did under Bush. On "On The Media" a few weeks ago (I'm listening to podcasts at work right now) they were talking about how the military has hired a firm, the Rendon Group, to grade individual reporters in war zones. They give them a positive, neutral or negative rating based on how favorably they've reported the war. This is happening now. In 2008. One reporter wasn't allowed to embed back in and his report said, "“Despite the opportunity to visit areas of the city where Iraqi Army leaders, soldiers, national police and Iraqi police displayed commitment to partnership, Mr. Druzin refused to highlight any of this news.” Maybe he also killed kittens. They didn't mention that.

And then to have the spokesperson for the U.S. forces in Afghanistan Lieutenant Commander Christine Sidenstricker say,"We've never graded reporters, and the information we get from Rendon doesn't do so. The information we were contracted with them to provide is basic biographical details and the past stories reporters have done. Now, sometimes those do include a positive, negative or neutral rating, which we do get. Frankly, we don't use that information."

Well, yeah.

(Sources: On the Media Aug 28, 2009)