...you start thinking like Dennis.
Seriously; I was (barely) following one of the headline emails from the Washington Post about AT&T scarfing up a hapless competitor, one link led to another, and a lot of the talk was about WHY they'd overpay, or DID they overpay, yadda yadda.
The thought then entered my mind (yes this happens), that were Pajamas Media, or LGF, or poor misguided Michelle to turn so biased a gaze towards the phone companies, there'd be all sorts of cool plots they could conjure up.
"AT&T Buys Out Bell-Smurf To Assist Bush In Monitoring Terrorist Phone Conversations..."
Stuff like that. But, even I know that to get a deal done a lot of businesses will pay through the nose, and for many, many reasons. We leave such fantasy's to the nutcases over at the Daily Kos, and go about our business.
So it was with a puzzlement that I read more from the Dubai Debunkery Doofus, cough, Charles at LGF, proclaiming:
Dubai Ports Deal Misperceptions and Mysteries
At National Review, Barbara Lerner has another disquieting fact to throw into the mix, in the Dubai Ports deal controversy: Misperceptions & Mysteries.
"We should reject the Dubai Ports deal, not just because it is risky to have a hostile country managing critical parts of our infrastructure, but because the claim that the UAE’s desire to do so is “just business” presents us with a mystery. At the very least, those who make this claim need to explain why the UAE agreed to pay P&O a 70-percent premium over existing share prices to buy the company. If P&O is really worth $6.8 billion, why didn’t any other international shipping company offer anything remotely like that? Apologists for the deal say the problem is that few privately-owned companies have pockets deep enough to pay that much. Maybe, but DPW is hardly the only deep-pocketed, government-owned international shipping giant, and none of the others made any attempt to outbid DPW either. Apparently, no one else thought they could pay that kind of money to manage our ports and still make a profit. Perhaps DPW knows something no other shipping company does."
_______________________
The intro paragraph is from Charles, the remainder from Ms. Lerner, and I'm sorry I cannot employ the quote feature here, as every time I try it screws things up.
Charles doesn't write, he points, so at first I gave him the benefit of the doubt. But sweet geez, this is so silly a tempest in a teapot as to be laughable. They, according to SOME of the money-mavens, overpaid, so it means there's a conspiracy in the offing?
Thinking like that will drive you literally insane if you try to dissect each and every High-Finance/Wall Street move. It even makes the experts crazy. And for uninformed, unknowledgeable lay persons to dive in and proclaim that something is amiss is ludicrous at the least, and terrible journaljism from hate-mongers at the worst.
I HATE militant moslems. With a passion. A purple fucking passion. But this is bullshit. Investigate. Learn what it is you are writing about. Talk to some experts, then find some more experts. That's what journalists do. When journalists DON'T do that, we ALL jump on their asses with a vengeance. When CBS played fast and loose with the facts Charles drew down on them and scored. When Charles plays the same game I am left with no choice but to dismiss him as the new boss, same as the old boss.
We asked for BETTER journalism. They are pushing horseshit in Conservative wrapping tissue and trying to pass it off as Paco Rabanne.
See it all over at the Peasant's.
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