PunditGuy

I’m in meetings all day then on the road this evening to Grand Rapids, MI. I’ll check in later.

Buddy Guy

I’m in Chicago, and my business associate said he wanted to go find some blues. So, we headed over Buddy Guy’s “Legends” bar, a place owned by Buddy. Well, you know how these things go. Famous people who own their own restaurants, or hotels, or casinos, or whatever…they NEVER show up there. Or they hardly do. The last thing I expected was for the Blues King to appear.

He did.

It was very cool.

As the fallout over the Newsweek story retraction continues, Pakistan dismissed the apology and retraction by the magazine as inadequate.

The report in the magazine’s May 9 issue sparked protests across the Muslim world, from Afghanistan, where 16 people were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan, India, Indonesia and Gaza.

“The apology and retraction are not enough,” Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told Reuters.

“They should understand the sentiments of Muslims and think 101 times before publishing news which hurt feelings of Muslims.”

I’ve got a breaking news report for all the Muslim world – Newsweek doesn’t get it. They didn’t get it before and they don’t get it now. The drama that played out yesterday was a public relations move, pure and simple. It was not the beginning of new reporting policies. It was not a confession from any of the ‘professionals’ there. In other words, it’s business as usual for many at Newsweek.

The Main Stream Media (MSM) is not an easily turned vessel. It will take more than a few mistakes by a few reporters to adjust this institution. As we know, they didn’t change after Rathergate, and nothing changed after the Jason Blair affair. It is naive to think that any major change will happen over this misaligned Newsweek story.

It will take time, but things will change. Just don’t set your watch by it.

So for now, take a breath, relax. The blogosphere can easily beat this horse into oblivion. Don’t. We should move on and await the next goof by the MSM. It will happen, and the bloggers will be there to expose it and demand changes. One by one, these milestones will result in a reformation of the MSM. The metamorphosis will not be hurried along.

I made it to Chicago. The trouble is, when you come from the west coast, and your flight doesn’t leave until after 12 Noon, you pretty much shoot the whole day travelling. By the time I got out of the airport, then to the rental car, then to the hotel, then through check-in, then out to eat dinner, it was 10:45 PM.

Now it’s 11:35 PM and I’m thinking about tomorrow’s meetings and how I should get some sleep.

Blogging to continue in the morning.

I’m off to Chicago in the morning. I’ll be there til Wednesday, then I drive up to Grand Rapids for a couple of days. I’m due to fly back to Seattle on Saturday. I’ll have the hotel WIFI (thank you Lord) but blogging might be lighter than usual. We’ll see…

I’m thinking about visiting Buddy Guy’s in Chicago on Tuesday night. If you’ve been there, or know something about it that I should know, please, do share.

Likewise, if you know something special about Grand Rapids (I know…the chances are slim), please send me a tip. Thanks.

Newsweek = Idiots.

Michelle Malkin covers the debacle.

Come on Bill…tell us how you really feel.

Good Lord. A shiver went down my spine when I read number 6.

Forget about cancer. Smoking is now shown to cause pneumonia!

Smoking and drinking affects the body’s defences against infections Smoking on top of drinking alcohol leaves the body wide open to a bug that causes pneumonia, say scientists. They say they have shown for the first time that alcohol impairs an important defence barrier to lung infections, and that smoking intensifies this.

Not to mention that it makes your lungs look like this.

Rats exposed to alcohol and smoke lost movement of cilia – tiny hairs lining the airways that beat rhythmically to waft bugs up and out of the lungs.

The authors’ paper in Alcoholism said the same was probably true in humans.

And then, they get seriously gross.

Researcher Professor Martha Gentry-Nielsen, of Creighton University School of Medicine, said there were several reasons why alcoholics were more susceptible to an infection called streptococcus pneumoniae, which can cause pneumonia.

“They have a decreased gag reflex,” she said. This means it is easier for mucus from the nose and fluid from the gut, such as vomit, to go down into the lung, particularly when they lose consciousness, she said.

Eeewww.

“Host defences within the lungs of alcoholics are also compromised, so they are not well equipped to handle the infection once the organisms reach the lungs.”

She said that smoking compounded the problem.

“Smokers are much more likely to be colonised with the organism in their mouths and nasopharynx – the upper part of the nose – than non-smokers.

Organisms = bugs. Yikes.

“Smoking also injures cilia and alters the efficiency of their beating so that bacteria entering the trachea have an increased likelihood of making their way into the lungs.”

Oh, and it KILLS YOU. Duh.

Need I mention that tens of thousands of dollars were spent conducting this study?

Brilliant.

Via BBC: Rice pushes role for Iraq Sunnis

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has stressed the importance of Sunni Arabs being more involved in drafting Iraq’s new constitution. In a surprise visit to the country, Ms Rice said she and the Iraqi Prime Minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, had discussed mechanisms to achieve this.

She told American ABC television that Iraq’s achievements in the past year had been remarkable. But she said further political progress was vital to overcome the insurgency.

It’s great that she’s over there, and I think it’s important for our leadership to make appearances in the country in order to show the people there that we support them. We should encourage them and continue to push them toward freedom and democracy.

One thing does make me wonder — how do the Iraqi men relate to a powerful woman like Secretary Rice, especially when some of their own women are covered from head to toe in black and are prohibited from showing any personal freedom whatsoever? Yes, I know that many women in Iraq are coming out of their shells, abandoning the black garb for more fashionable colorful head coverings. Many are outspoken. Still, a culture shift has not yet fully occurred in the country, and until it does, women will continue to have a diminished role in society and especially in leadership.

What do the male Iraqi leaders say when Condi leaves the meeting room? To this group of men, with all the baggage of their culture, all the traditions and class systems they grew up with…is Secretary of State Rice credible?

I wonder.