Category: Headlines

The San Francisco Chronicle plays with verbs when it presents this on its Web site:

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Text:

Bush Military Info Destroyed
Payroll records that could clarify his service history were damaged. Pentagon blames ‘deterioration.’ AP

Really? The Pentagon–Bush’s Pentagon—blames deterioration? What about “explains fact” or “cudgels conspiracy theory advocates with facts, to no avail”?

Here’s the words from the article:

The letter said that in 1996 and 1997, the Pentagon “engaged with limited success in a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm.” During the process, “the microfilm payroll records of numerous service members were damaged,” the letter said.

This process resulted in “the inadvertent destruction of microfilm containing certain National Guard payroll records,” including Bush’s, the letter said.

This particular conspiracy stretches back to the last year of Clinton’s first term and the first year of his second! Damn, these Bushies are thorough.

I mean, it must certainly be unthinkable that this particular set of undifferentiated records from thirty years ago were damaged by underpaid, but underwhelming, low-ranking government and military functionaries. Instead, the San Francisco Chronicle would seem to have you connect the stars to make damning constellations.

Headline: Schwarzenegger Wants Strays Killed Faster:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to repeal a state law that requires animal shelters to hold stray dogs and cats for up to six days before killing them.

Instead, there would be a three-day requirement for strays. Other animals, including birds, hamsters, potbellied pigs, rabbits, snakes and turtles, could be killed immediately.

Actually, it sounds like he’s reducing a requirement, not mandating felinicide and caninicide. Perhaps Schwarzenegger alone among the ruling class understands that federal- and state-level mandates and requirements serve as Procrustean beds that bind the hands of local governments who must deal with the ultimate execution, er, implementation.

I would guess that if the three-day requirement replaces the six-day requirement that all shelters in the state of California will immediately set the red digital countdown clocks on their puppy doomsday machines to 72:00:00.

Instead, those counties running animal shelters flush with cash will continue their current policies, and those counties whose governments need to choose between hospitals and an extra three days of keeping an ill-tempered, underfed chow-rottie mix in a six by four cage except for brief exercise periods where it snaps at the shelter volunteer but doesn’t–thankfully–draw blood.

But Brian, the counties don’t have to make those sorts of choices! You’re more right than you should be, opposing viewpoint; governments will make both choices whenever possible and will flout a tax increase or ballot initiative to pay for it. But damn it, those tax dollars are the difference between canned asparagus and fresh asparagus, the difference between the pork and the steak, in some people’s diets. So you want to save the animals, you eat lesser food and donate the difference to keep Sapp, that chow-rottie mix, in his chain link for three more days, but don’t make me do it with you, and don’t you fail to do so without your precious government mandate.

UPDATE: Michael Williams gets it.

Economy slows to a 3.9 percent pace in first quarter:

Economic growth in the first quarter was slower than first reported — at an annual rate of 3.9 percent — a pace that was solid but lacking the momentum exhibited as the calendar turned to 2004.

Economic growth was less than the preceding quarter but was growth nevertheless. AP reporters apparently have the same mentality that afflicts equities traders: that growth, not financial strength or profit, determines the state of the economy.

An unfortunate, but probably meditated, mischaracterization. Each quarter, the same amount of gain in absolute dollars represents a smaller growth in the relative percentage measurement because each quarter, the whole gets bigger. So an addition of 3 to a total of 100 is 3% growth in the first quarter, but an addition of 3 in the second quarter (where the total is 103), the economy “slows” to 2.9%, the second seal is broken, and apparently the only way to prevent the end of the world is to elect John Kerry, who will Robin Hood money from the rich and corporations to increase the economy!

Or maybe I am reading too much into it.

What should we make of this headline from CNN? Jenna Bush Agents Join Fistfight. Pic:

(Click for full size.)

Article text:

Bodyguards for President Bush’s daughter Jenna Bush were entangled in a fistfight with two men trying to steal a cell phone in southern Spain, a U.S. Embassy official said Tuesday.

So a couple of Secret Service agents prevent a couple of hoodlums from stealing something, and CNN casts it as bodyguards of Jenna Bush joining a fistfight?

That’s some damn deep, invasive bias that prevents a journalist from writing facts and where every single news story predigested interpretation. Just open up your maws, little cheepies, and mama CNN will regurgitate its truth down your gullet for your own good.

Taranto over at Best of the Web Today mocks this Reuters headline by saying “Where’d We Ship It Off To?”

But Taranto overlooks the true “beauty” of the headline: Its unironic use of the doublespeak Peace Troops.

Uday, Qusay Ead-Day