Friday, March 03, 2006

Slap Shots for March 3, 2006

Port Deal - Who's Lying and Why?

If your opinion derives strictly from what you hear from major media and politicians, you probably think that Bush is lying and trying to sell out American interests. Of course, you may not realize it but you have been lied to and manipulated. Let's look at just a few points that neither big media not members of the Democratic party (Clinton, Reid, Kerry, Kennedy, et. al.), are telling you.

Ports are large facilities consisting of a lot of terminals, docks, warehouses and related buildings. The deal with DP World is for the acquisition of container terminals in various ports. In other words, the deal is for parts of the port facility and not the port itself. This practice has been going on for as long as their have been ports. In effect, this is no different than airlines leasing gates at major airports.

The deal does not give DP World control of the ports any more than leasing warehouse space to Amazon in Houston gives Amazon control of the city of Houston.

The deal does not involve turning over security to DP World. Security for America's ports is controlled by the Coast Guard and not by private firms.

DP World is looking to operate facilities already operated by a foreign company. In essence, the only change would be who signs the workers paychecks.

So the question has to be why aren't the power hungry politicians and their cronies in big media telling us the whole story?

Personally, I have reached the limit of how much deceit and lying I can stomach. I am tired of alleged "news" agencies present half truths that support their agendas. I am tired of politicians who believe that they can lie to us and that we will not do a damned thing about it. How about you?


Is There No End To Awards Shows?

Tonight is the Academy Awards show and once again I will make it a point to avoid watching at all cost just as I have done for all of these celebrity awards shows. I have never had an interest in watching pampered, elitist millionaires giving awards to other pampered, elitist millionaires for achievements that are usually of dubious value in the first place.

What I find hard to understand is why anyone would want to watch such tripe? Does anyone really and truthfully care which movie a bunch of Hollywood elitists think was the best of the past year? Or which actress did the best job or pretending to be someone else? Or who did the best job of makeup or whatever else they give themselves awards for?

Maybe it is time for those of us here in the real world to have our own awards show. We could give out awards for things such as

Best job of balancing a home budget despite heavy taxes

Most miles logged driving the kids to various events

Outstanding achievements in home schooling

Of course, this will never happen but I can dream.