Daily Archives: June 15, 2012

Your Virtual Front Page, Friday, June 15, 2012

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My week of vacation had to come to an end sometime. Your top stories:

  1. Obama ‘lifts shadow’ of deportation for young (The Guardian) — The pres shows some cojones in a bid for Hispanic votes, putting Republicans in the position of having to decide how much outrage to evince. Oh, and sorry (not really) if some readers object to my using some Spanish in that sentence (for English, press 1…)
  2. Egyptian generals shutter parliament, order its dissolution, state media say (WashPost) — The Arab Spring hasn’t quite led to Nirvana yet.
  3. Russia Sending Air and Sea Defenses to Syria, Exporter Says (NYT) — Nobody but the NYT was playing this up, but it sounds hairy to me. It’s like the Russkies are ticked they never got to use that stuff against our stuff, toe to toe, in the Cold War, so they’re setting up a confrontation here, just in case we decide to intervene.
  4. S.C. jobless rate rises to 9.1% in May (SCBR) — Was this in the paper this morning? I don’t think so, but I don’t remember. In any case, even if it’s a little old, it’s important.
  5. ECB ready to act ‘if necessary’ (BBC) — Head of the Euro central bank tries to ease worries leading into Greece’s general election Sunday.
  6. Election officials uphold decision in 7th (thestate.com) — Well, that didn’t work, did it, Dick? Any other ideas for salvaging the party elite’s preferred candidate?

Apparently, war really IS hell…

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Found myself back at Barnes & Noble again today, and remembered something else I took a picture of last week when I was there.

Above is a shot of one of the “New in History” shelves. OK, it’s slightly doctored. Hell in the Pacific was actually on a lower shelf and I moved it up to take this, but they were all in the same category.

Sometimes it seems that the only time “history” was happening was from 1939-45, the bookstore shelves are so dominated by that period. Or maybe it’s just because Father’s Day was coming up. In any case, it seemed that about 50 percent of all history books were about WWII, and another 40 percent was about other wars in which the United States was involved.

And I say that as a big fan of military history, and particularly the WWII period. But still, let’s have SOME perspective, people.

The least you could do is provide some variety in the titles. Does no one at the publishing house notice when it’s getting monotonous?

That is all, men. Smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em. This is my rifle; this is my gun. Off yer dead asses and on yer dyin’ feet. And other cliches of the era…