Someone Spent Time and Money Putting This Cutting Edge Story Together

Stay calm. I'm going to blow your mind here. Are you ready?

Are you sure?

Here we go.

When someone we don't like or who plays for the wrong team does something even if it's relatively innocuous, we're more likely to not agree with the action than if it was someone we do like or who is on our team.

Crazy, eh? Mind. Blown.

So, I'm sure glad to see some cutting edge journalism from CNN on things that are clearly The Most Important of Our Time, things like...what people think about Obama putting his feet on his desk. Really.



I'm very glad they didn't ask people about things like whether or not we should take military action in Syria, the vast data-mining of the NSA, the drone war without borders, locking up people for small amounts of drugs, or any of the other myriad trivial matters that our nation faces. Thank God CNN can resist the siren call of such trivialities and get to the essentials. "Hey, this guy occasionally puts his feet on his desk (you know, like nearly every other male ever who has ever sat at a desk). What do you think of that?"

Next up: Wolf Blitzer showing people (especially people who aren't in the same political party as the President) a picture of Obama and saying, "The President is breathing in this picture. What do you think about that?"

Journalism, Drones, and Assassination! Oh, My!

Jeremy Scahill is one of the best voices out there covering American foreign policy, especially in regards to drones and American policy on terror. Here is a good interview with him about these subjects and the media that covers (or doesn't) these topics.

I do think the stuff about video games comes off as sort of a cheap shot. Kids have played at war games ever since the advent of kids and I don't think violent video games are much different than running around whacking each other with sticks.

Montana Makes the National News!

I'm so proud of my state. We made the national news!

A Montana legislator is proposing the state embrace global warming as good for the economy.

Republican Rep. Joe Read of Ronan aims to pass a law that says global warming is a natural occurrence that "is beneficial to the welfare and business climate of Montana."

Reaction by scientists and environmentalists to House Bill 549 has been harsh. University of Montana climate change professor Steve Running calls it an indefensible attempt to repeal the laws of physics.

Oh...we made it for stupidity. Damn.

Something that I have a hard time understanding is why science has become so politicized. There isn't a serious scientist out there who will say that scientists never make mistakes, that theories never have to be revised or thrown out. But they will tell you that when multiple differing experiments conducted by many different scientists and validated by many others, then the likelihood of a theory being accurate continues to increase.

So, why is that that we have politicians constantly deriding science? Not too hard, to understand, I suppose. They see political and personal gain from it. So, why do people elect politicians who pull this crap? Because science is hard to understand and politicians are good at whipping up fear with banal sound bites. So, why are pols allowed to get away with this? Shouldn't someone, somewhere, be tasked with reporting on these stories and explaining them to people? Hmmmmm...oh, yes!

The media!

I think I remember learning somewhere that the media's job was to get to the bottom of things and report on them. Unfortunately we have a media who get upset when one of their own calls someone a liar even when they clearly are. This seems to be born of cowardice and a desire to befriend the elite at the top. It's sorta hard to buddy up with someone when you call them out on their bullshit in your news story.

It's sad and rather pathetic. Politicians should not be basing decisions based on short-term personal gain, but the long-term benefit of all. But when there is no one willing to ensure that pressure is maintained on them to do that, it's probably not going to happen.

The Average Person is Confused or Ignorant

Matt Yglesias highlights an incredible bit of polling data.



This is the reason I always shake my head at polls showing what voters want or politicians talk about giving the voters what they want. The fact is that most people have no clue what they are talking about when it comes to things like this because they are big and complicated and they are more focused on their day to day life. They have some politician from a political party that they sorta listen to and go along with but they don't really understand what they are going along with.

This is, of course, why it's so easy for politicians to manipulate voters. They can spout banal red meat for the base who lap it up while not paying much attention to what is really going on. The problem is amplified by journalists who don't feel it's their job to call a lie a lie.

If we want better government, we have to have a better understanding of our policies and what our government is doing. Ignorance is not bliss.

MSM Fail

Thank you, Jake Tapper, for bringing this important story to light. Did the President Go to the Wrong Ice Cream Store?"

I will sleep better tonight knowing that ABC is on top of this.

Fear in the Media

Greenwald has some questions about standards in the media.

So common is this appellation that a NEXIS media search reveals that the word "disgraced" appears extremely close to the phrase "Eliot Spitzer" (within two words) a total of 394 times:

The problem is that conservatives don't get the same treatment.

By blindingly stark contrast, ever since he got caught hiring prostitutes to wrap him in diapers while campaigning on the basis of Family Values, the word "disgraced" appeared within two words of the name "David Vitter" a grand total of 4 times -- all from small blogs:

[Newt] Gingrich was so described a grand total of 5 times, none from major news outlets:

Alberto Gonzales, who was forced to resign as Attorney General in the wake of a major Department of Justice scandal, and who was revealed as one of the earliest authors of pro-torture memos, has had that term applied to him a grand total of 17 times.

Glenn wants to know "[w]hat accounts for this extreme discrepancy." I think it boils down to fear. The media is scared of being portrayed as having a liberal bias, so they go out of their way to demonize people on the Left while soft-pedaling conservative politicians. The noise machine from the Right led by Beck, Limbaugh, and Hannity make MSM media outlets cower in fear, worried that attacks from them will diminish their quickly dwindling audience. They don't realize that their extreme cowardice demonstrated in issues like this and their changing the use of the word "torture" is a bigger reason for their decline, not attacks from right-wing bloviators.

Ah, the News Media

Watch and be amazed at how stunningly stupid our news programs can make us.

This is an example of why I rarely get my news from the TV anymore. It's easier to find more reliable voices on the internet. Really.

I'm St. Vincent Healthcare

The hospital I work at just announced the expansion of our Walk-In Clinic and Emergency Department. This is very exciting news for the hospital, of course, and something we very much needed. Anyway, there was a press conference with the usual pomp and circumstance. The media was there and if you look carefully at the next couple of videos, you'll see some creepy looking dork in a green shirt. I hope that guy doesn't work at St. V's because I sure wouldn't want to get healthcare at a place that would employ a guy like that.





I hate to disappoint anyone, but I'm not doing autographs. Sorry.

Birthers and One More Reason I Could Never Be a Politician

This video has been making the rounds lately.



Watching this amazes me on a certain level. I mean, I'm a pessimistic guy but I try (really!) to give people the benefit of the doubt. Then I see something like this and I think, "Yeah, humanity has barely more gray matter than an amoeba." What seals it is not the lady with her crazy rant. One or two loons in a crowd is to be expected. It's the mob applauding and cheering what she's saying.

This is just one reason I could never be a politician. I could not calmly stand there and be respectful toward this woman. No, I would be saying something like, "Look, lady, the fact of the matter is that you're crazy. And retarded. There's just no dancing around the issue. I hope you are not voting for me because I would consider myself a failure were I to secure votes from people as stupid as you."

Clearly, Mr. Castle is uncomfortable here. I feel for him. Up to a point. Republicans have not done near enough to quash this ridiculous rumor and so now have to sleep in the bed they've made. Of course, the media has been just as complicit. Witness Lou Dobbs raising the specter of "Obama Might Not Be an American" when the story was debunked on his own show three days previous.

NPR and the T-Word

Glenn Greenwald, a new addition to my blogroll, has been one of the best voices online in regards to the torture issue. Here he is, slamming NPR hard for its decision to not call "torture" torture.

Here’s the nub of the matter – the crux of journalistic decay in America. Who cares if NPR is "seen" as siding with the White House or its critics? How it is perceived -- and who it angers -- should have nothing to do with how it reports. Its reporting should be guided by the truth, by verifiable facts, and by the objective meaning of words [notably, NPR's excuse -- "the Right will get angry at us if we call it 'torture'" -- is identical to The Washington Post's excuse for why they stopped calling Dan Froomkin a reporter (it angers the Right); it's amazing how much The Liberal Media makes editorial decisions based on a desire to please the Right].

Also, note that Shepard explicitly admits that, with its language choice, NPR has opted to be "seen siding with the White House and the language that some U.S. officials, particularly in the Bush administration, prefer." That, too, is an odd choice for a supposedly Liberal Media outlet. And note her snide and revealing assumption -- conventional wisdom among the establishment media -- that the only people who want these tactics to be called "torture" are those "who are particularly and visibly still angry at the previous administration" (or, as David Ignatius put it, "liberal score-settlers"). It doesn’t seem to occur to her that something other than base vindictiveness – such as a desire to maintain the universal taboo against torture, or allegiance to accuracy in language – might motivate those who want NPR to call torture "torture," rather than prettify it with banality-of-evil euphemisms invented by the very people who perpetrated it.

This is one of the things that has really baffled me over the past few years. Why are media outlets so afraid of what the message machine on the Right says? I think one of the reasons people so dislike the mainstream news media is that they always seem to be pandering. They don't want to lose access to politicians, so they don't want to ask tough questions. They don't want to make people on the Right mad, so they change what they write.

It's the media's job to investigate and report facts. That might make people mad. That's all right, though, 'cause it means the media is doing its job. The inability to call a spade a spade is positively Orwellian.

Who Doesn't Love Jon Stewart?

He is one of the most trusted (fake) journalists in America.

Though this spot is the program’s mocking sendup of itself and the news media’s mania for self-promotion, it inadvertently gets at one very real truth: the emergence of “The Daily Show” as a genuine cultural and political force. When Americans were asked in a 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press to name the journalist they most admired, Mr. Stewart, the fake news anchor, came in at No. 4, tied with the real news anchors Brian Williams and Tom Brokaw of NBC, Dan Rather of CBS and Anderson Cooper of CNN. And a study this year from the center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism concluded that “ ‘The Daily Show’ is clearly impacting American dialogue” and “getting people to think critically about the public square.”

I am a huge fan of The Daily Show. Not being tied down to a 24-hour news cycle, asking tough questions on serious issues, and the obviousness of Jon's heart behind his biting humor serves to make The Daily Show one of the best programs on TV. You can probably learn more about what's going on in the world than by watching any other program.

Here's a great clip from a recent show where Jon takes a look at the John Edwards affair, the Russia/Georgia conflict, and Bush's gold medal in "lack of self-awareness."