We Suck,...

... so go over to Streak's or Rickey's instead.

Have a good weekend.

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Where's Rickey?

We here at Around the Keg are big fans of “Riding with Ricky.”

It has been a month or so since last we saw a post over at RwR. Visitors to the site are now greeted by a page stating that it has gone private. None of us would be shocked if the honeymoon picks got a little too risqué for the public, but frankly, we here at ATK are a little concerned. (And with no traffic at RwR, traffic is halved here at ATK.)

Despite the fact that recently Rickey threw off his alter ego and revealed that in fact he was NOT a black baseball hall of famer, we at ATK got over our shock and still love and appreciate the musings at RwR.

With that, we ask our readers: Where is Rickey? If someone knows, please have him contact us.

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Lazy Media Bastards

Or, maybe I should say lazy Bloggers. We had a good discussion over on Mr. F's site about media bias. One thing we did agree on was that the media could be really lazy at times and just not put forth any effort at corrobarating a story. While checking out one of the blogs I frequent, Boing Boing, I came across this article: Former French President says Bush invaded Iraq to thwart Gog and Magog's apocalyptic mission. Despite Bush's antics and BS reasons for going to war, my BS detector was going overtime. I wasn't the only one. Boing Boing's commenters tend to mostly be from the left and not fans of Bush, so if they are skeptical, then I had to pause.

It turns out that this was the first time this story was presented. Daily Kos ran the same story back in May. While reading the comments in another thread, I came across a post of the source article, a French University news magazine (here is the English tranlation). From what I gather, the author talks about a man that was contacted by another group that said former French President Chirac contacted them with an inquiry about Gog and Magog, which deals with some kind of prophecy from the Book of Ezekiel.

Kos and Boing Boing have interpreted this inquiry to mean (from Kos):

This is a distinct case of Bush referencing Biblical End-of-Days prophecies as a rationale for war in the Middle East. Stated to another head of state, no less.

It is? We have hearsay within hearsay and the best I can tell is that Bush may have made this case, but we don't really know. I think it is safe to assume that Gog and Magog came up somewhere in the conversation, but we don't know the context, nor do we have any statements from anyone that was art of the actual discussion. I know that Kos and Boing Boing aren't the MSM, but (in the case of Kos) some are often quoted by other news sources and bloggers are becoming major sources of news for many people.

I guess it wouldn't be fair to say either of those sources are biased, but I think it is reasonable to say they are lazy. Kudos to the other lazy bastards in the media that had the good sense to avoid this story.

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