News Vérité

When I studied journalism in the Dark Ages, you had two choices: print or broadcast. I chose print and spent many years behind a typewriter and eventually a computer keyboard. I ran into my broadcast fellow travelers out in the field, and they always seemed an egotistical lot. In those days, I worked a lot, and continued to do so for decades to come, so my watching the news on TV never amounted to much more than 30 minutes a night — unless something like the OJ Simpson Bronco-escape-a-thon was being televised. When I retired, I had more time on my hands, so I found myself tuning in to the news even in the daytime hours, and at night too. I quickly realized something profound: “These people gotta go.” If today’s newscasters aren’t downright Nuevo Comunista (pardon my bad Spanish), then they are simply — for the most part — just one-dimensional. Seen ’em once, you know their schtick. That’s why I’m proposing something that has been proposed for members of Congress for ages: term limits. I see term limits for national newscasters as being three years, no more than five, at which point they can go do their own

The late Senator Lindsey Graham be damned, we need that oil! That must’ve been Donald Trump’s reasoning when the president yesterday signed a waiver to the sanctions bill against Russia that Graham spearheaded, and that Trump once praised. The executive order signed by Trump frees Russia of all sanctions imposed by the Graham bill set to take effect Sunday. Recall that just last week, Trump cut a deal with Putin for diesel fuel, the cost of which has skyrocketed here in the U.S. Trump said the order was “in the national interests of the United States,” without specifying why. The law that Trump signed after Graham’s passing allows for the sanctions to be waived if such action is in the country’s best interest and he submits an explanation to Congress.  If this action is to lower the price of diesel before next month’s midterm elections, that clearly isn’t going to happen. Russian diesel won’t arrive quickly enough to make a difference. This is Trump, once again, kowtowing to his dictator buddies. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy decried the action as giving Putin more funding to prolong and expand the war with his country. “A U.S. sanctions blackout, easing pressure on the

After being announced in 2017 — with $50,000 deposits being accepted — the Tesla Roadster, with ambitions to lift off the ground and reach zero to 60mph in less than a second — is still nowhere near completion. Elon Musk and team, however, this week called a meeting to show off a prototype of the Roadster. The firm now claims the vehicle should be ready in 2028. The production date announced in 2017 was 2020. A little behind schedule, fellows. I don’t claim to understand all the details divulged about the Roadster in its McGregor, Texas, unfolding, but I know it is electric-powered and has wings. I’m not sure whether it can lift off the ground, but I’ve heard those rumors. The main point is, this vehicle seems to be taking a long time to come to fruition. SpaceX rockets seem to come into the next generation more quickly than the Tesla Roadster.   WATCH TESLA ROADSTER FLY IN PROMO VIDEO — CLICK ON IMAGE

I’m old enough to have grown up during the Vietnam War when a song by Barry McGuire included the unforgettable lyric: “The Eastern world, it is explodin’, violence flarin’, bullets loadin’ / You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’.” If you substitute Middle Eastern for Eastern, the lyric seems to apply as much today as it did in the 1960s. Ask the Saudis, whose airports are being shuttered and whose travelers are being killed by Iranian-backed Houthis and their missiles. Meanwhile, Trump claims that U.S. forces have opened the Strait of Hormuz to oil tanker transit, but Iran says otherwise. In fact, two cargo liners went down near the Strait yesterday. And, according to the head of the Islamic Republican Guard Corps (IRGC), Ali Ozmaei: “If the Americans think the Strait of Hormuz is open, let them come closer. We are impatient to sink American warships…. We are waiting for U.S. warships to approach the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz so we can sink them. We are counting down every moment until this happens.” The song lyric can stretch over to the Western World as well, as Ukraine and its energy resources continue to be hit by