If Only We Could Have Seen This Coming

Not What She Meant, I'm Sure

Another "f word" that can get you into trouble. Time to look up the definition, dear TV guest.

Loaded Language

This is going to come up a lot so I'm hoping we proceed carefully with the language but this headline:
Obama Pledges Entitlement Reform

chooses to accept and use loaded words, twice.

"reform" and "entitlement" are both in the eye of the beholder.

Since I just had a Gen X'er tell me last week that her generation was unfairly going to have to support my generation (Baby Boomer), I'm feeling a little extra testy about this. And I'm hoping to read some news stories that do a good, thorough job explaining how Social Security is funded, expended, etc., since a lot of people seem to misunderstand it.

Riding to the Rescue

Go, Michael and his smart friends. Schroeder's an old pal from Newsday days. Anyone who can save a couple of newspapers in this day and age is more than OK in my book. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens.

Connecticut has a lot of newspapers that have been around for a long time, and a history of wanting their papers to be locally controlled and focused. While they won't be locally owned, at least it won't be like having the Beach Boys come in from Los Angeles, as they did at The Hartford Courant years ago, followed by the Chicagoland people in this decade.

Deal in works for central Connecticut papers

By JAMES CRAVEN
Herald staff

NEW BRITAIN — With less than two weeks before staff at The Herald and The Bristol Press were scheduled to cover their keyboards and lock the doors for the final time, a last-minute buyer has appeared to save the newspapers.

Publisher Edward Gunderson announced Tuesday that Michael E. Schroeder, owner of Central Connecticut Communications, has entered into a letter of intent to buy the two daily papers. The sale, which should be complete within two weeks, includes three area weeklies: the Wethersfield Post, the Newington Town Crier and the Rocky Hill Post.

If Bush and Rove Can Do It....

...So can I. My resolution for the new year is to read more books and fewer goofy Web sites. Right after I finish reading this. What about you?


UPDATE: I just breezed through John Darnton's "Black & White and Dead All Over," a murder mystery set at a fictional New York City paper. The book is a bit of an inside joke, with names that resemble or mock the real ones--the bar Slough's for the real Gough's, for example. He may have gone too far with his "Jimmy Pomegranate" though, the supposed Washingon bureau reporter and former foreign correspondent. If you catch the link to the real character, good on you, as one of my former bosses used to say.

But "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini is truly marvelous.