Pottersville wrote:Also the closest laptop has no mouse attached (unless it's on the left side).
Most people use an actual mouse with a laptop instead of the horrible touch pad.
I doubt that's true. It's true for IT pros and designer types, but these are run-of-the-mill information workers as far as their IT needs are concerned. The laptops are also crowding around a small conference table so external mice may be impractical.
Pottersville wrote:And of course all the screens are dark. WTF?
I'm guessing these laptops are either a room fixture, available for whatever anybody needs in a room like that, pre-loaded and pre-cleared for whatever such people might need to do, or are brought in hastily and set up by a team of tie-wearing hacks just in time on as-needed basis. I don't think they're everybody's issued laptops (they don't wander the halls with laptops, that's what assistants are for), so in this case I'd guess the screens are dark because everybody's watching a projection screen on the wall behind the photographer and simply don't all need their own laptops to look at in this meeting (as anticipated or prepared for or permanently set up for or whatever), who has been instructed not to shoot the screen, so he gets the next-best thing, subject-wise.
Or they have polarized displays since they're classified systems, and only appear dark...?
Anyway, I think the general, rather than "averting his eyes" is actually typing, either commands or in a chat room / IM type of thing with, oh idunno, some command operations center? He may also be operating the presentation display they're all watching.
Mikey wrote:What a strange photograph. The folks at top right looked pasted in, dark screens, Hilary looks like she's smoking a spliff lol
LOL, she sure does!

I disagree that anyone looks pasted in. It looks like a perfectly candid shot of one of those "get your ass in the room, you're missing it" moments. It looks exactly like my office conference room on 9/11, frankly. Except I'm not in there grinning at the hubris of whoever set the Pentagon alight, blissfully unaware that the evidence and team investigating Rummy's shitty news yesterday had just been pulverized.
DoYouEverWonder wrote:That's why they set the picture up this way. It's a subtle way to show us that Obombya is not the one in charge. He's President in name only.
While PINO = true, I think it's the whole White House that's in-power-in-name-only, so they're collectively immersed in a self-legitimized atmosphere where they're permitted to make go/no-go decisions and stylistic modifications to the plans of others within certain bounds.
But that said, I don't think the picture is a set-up.
Can we be intuitive cynics while maintaining the rigor of assuming horses before we jump to zebras?