Where’s the Press?

This is a clear act of domestic terrorism, but it feels difficult to find anything out about it.

Blame the Tea Parties

So it’s clear that this guy would be part of the Tea Party movement. It was only a matter of time before the anger they incite would spread to people like this who are willing to take action. I wonder how Texas Governor Rick Perry feels about encouraging secession from the union now? This is partially your fault Rick.

Blame the Government

Of course we all regret that this happened, but he truth is Joseph Stack is one of the nations barometers that has just hit maximum. Democrat or Republican or Independent, the American people are demanding that the government be held accountable for its spending. The government needs to explain to us what it’s doing with our money and tell us why in no uncertain terms.

I’m a pro-Obama liberal, but even I can see it. The days of the government blithely passing laws using more and more of the American people’s money are over. They come up with crazy theories about how they can do things, but their theories hardly ever even seem to work. Furthermore, they are never proven to work. So why do they take so much money?

Roads, emergencies, parks, public buildings, and defense (properly used) are all good reasons to collect taxes. But other than that (and a few other obvious things I’m forgetting, I’m sure) they need to explain to us why we need to pay for them, and it can’t be a “theory.”

As much as I hate to say it, this falls partially on Obama. He’s the leader of the nation. When tea parties start saying crazy things he needs to talk about it and bring things back down to earth. If he doesn’t this is what happens.

Where’s the Information

The FBI has taken all of the information that Stack put online offline. Why? I guess it could encourage other copycats, but shouldn’t we be allowed to see first hand what he was thinking? He sounds like a loser in many ways, but still, shouldn’t we be allowed to see the evidence too? This feels a lot like political censorship. Just to be clear, I’m firmly opposed to Stack’s actions and probably even his words, I just want the freedom to see what he said.

I have kept The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on my TiVo but I don’t commit to watching them. If I do, I’m very liberal with the fast forward.

Liberal or Conservative or even unbiased, television has one goal. Create and exploit controversy to entertain viewers. This is what is causing all the problems right now. So how can I make a difference? Just stop participating.

I give up, The United States has already been destroyed by The President, The Congress, and The Supreme Court. Now all there is to do is watch the slow crumble, because nothing productive can happen ever again.

By the way, Sarah Palin is a fucking retard.

Tonight I saw on The Daily Show how John McCain has flip-flopped on his promise to consider repealing don’t ask, don’t tell when the leaders of the military wanted to. Now they want to and he doesn’t. I guess he doesn’t respect the leaders of the military and doesn’t believe they are able to make good decisions. Interesting.

John McCain, you are a fucking asshole. The world is going to be a better place when you die. Do you think we’re going to talk about how great you were? No, we’re going to talk about how you were such a horrible example of bigotry. We’ll talk about how similar you and Strom Thurmond were in your hate.

Keep it up John. Even conservative Republicans in the future will remember you as a bad person.

Today Chris was talking about getting rid of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and he had this guy on that was a religious guy and Chris got him to admit, without pressuring him too much that not only did he not want gays in the military, but he thought that being gay should literally be made illegal throughout the entire country. Chris ended the interview on that note, and it was very skillful. The guy who said it was happy too. It just show that letting light shine on the truth can really help. People will think twice about what this guy is saying after he made that statement.

He was trying to describe the story where four people (I think) were arrested for trying to wiretap the phone of a Democrat. However, his version of the story was so incomplete and confusing that I couldn’t really tell what had actually happened.

Then quickly, he had his first guest on and his first “question” was, “If a Democrat did this wouldn’t the Republicans be all over it?” You know what, maybe they would, but do you think maybe we could discuss what actually happened at least before attacking the Republicans?

I’m tired of Keith Olbermann. He’s a little baby who goes on TV and whines every night. Most of the time, I agree with him, I just can’t stand all the whining and finger pointing. So I switched to Hardball with Chris Matthews and we’ll see if it’s any better. I really just want the news, but actual news programs tend to cover stuff I don’t care about.

This morning while I was in the shower, where I often do my best thinking, I realized that the right wing news channels and crazy right wing personalities have no better friend than Keith Olbermann. He gives them more publicity and attention every day which almost certainly increases their audience. Keith Olbermann’s job seems to be to tell those of us who don’t watch those shows what they say, so in effect, we end up watching their shows, just not directly.

Well I don’t want to watch those shows, and I don’t want to draw attention to those people.

I have a very challenging and fearful dog, and it’s taught me a lot about dog training some of which applies to human behavior. Sometimes when people are just starting to understand and train their dog they get caught up in the “scolding game.” When their dog misbehaves they start scolding the dog which the dog thinks is a fun game and thus the undesirable behavior is reinforced. Add to that the fact that new dog owner’s rarely reinforce actual good behaviors and you have a problem.

Keith Olbermann is playing the scolding game with the right wing crazies and they clearly love it! He’s giving them everything they want and doing them the favor of getting their message out to Democrats and people who tend toward the left who otherwise wouldn’t hear it.

This morning, I even began to wonder if Keith Olbermann was actually on their side. I couldn’t imagine anything he could do to help them more. Every night they are featured prominently on his show.

In dog training, the right answer is positive training. You start rewarding your dog for good things and after a bit of time, he only wants to do good things. You even go out of your way to create situations where he will do good things. You start off simple with “the sit game” and you see how when you make sitting a game your dog learns the command very quickly. You don’t ever stop playing the game, whenever you want your dog to sit, it’s a game. It gets a little more complex from there, the human has to change the way they think about things, but everything else is this same basic idea.

Now the analogy isn’t perfect because dogs aren’t “bad” or “crazy” (unless we make them so.) But maybe humans aren’t bad either. What if we were to start rewarding right wing crazies for good behavior instead of rewarding the bad behavior? It doesn’t take a genius to realize their behavior would improve, at least a little.

Then what if we forgot about the crazies and started rewarding people who were really doing good things and gave them all that publicity?

I guess the hard part is that there aren’t a lot of people in politics doing good things. I can’t think of any, unfortunately. But there are people doing good things that could really use the recognition and would be more fun to watch. Keith Olbermann is making things worse, not better.

I think it’s actually a good thing that Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate race. Martha Coakley was clearly lame and would have only shown further that Democrats can’t accomplish anything. Let’s face it, the Democrats had a dream situation for the past year and they still couldn’t get anything done. Obama’s promises are not coming true. It literally proves that if the Democrats have total control, nothing will actually happen.

Also, I think it’s time we get out of this mindset that a party has to have a 60 vote majority to get anything done. Now when it comes to the midterm elections Republicans will be just as responsible as Democrats for having accomplished something, and that’s important. The political parties are going to have to learn how to work together.

That’s a nice thought, and also true, but what I expect to happen is that the United States government will continue to degrade and fall apart. Believe me, I would love to think otherwise, but being a politician is no longer about representing your constituents, it’s about being a professional douche, and I don’t expect that to change.

What Keith Olbermann is doing right now is trying to appear holier that thou on the topic of Haiti. He has basically stopped his show and instead has become regular news and only covers the earthquakes except when he takes the time to judge others for not doing so. The earthquakes are tragic, but I think the regular news can cover the Haiti situation just fine. Keith is not the regular news, he is supposed to be commentary.

But what Keith is doing is not honest. The only reason he’s covering Haiti is so that he can appear better than his competition who aren’t covering it, and he goes out of his way to let us know that. Keith’s only goal is to let you know that he cares more about the poor and the suffering than they do, or even you do. It’s disingenuous and obvious.

What this country needs is people who tell the truth, and Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow are not those people. Six months ago, I would have said we are on the same side, but I would have been wrong. My goal is to unite the country, and their goal is to help Fox News divide it.

I think of MSNBC or Fox News, the hosts on MSNBC are more likely to understand this concept and change their ways. However, I don’t think they will. I didn’t think when I started this blog I would end up having to debunk stories from both networks, but that’s what has happened.

It’s too bad, because this country could really use someone who was willing to just tell the truth and be honest.

Rachel is notorious for choosing her party’s side. She’s pro-union even when a union is killing its company. She’s blind to the truth and only says what she’s supposed to. I was so hoping that Rachel would be a new and clear voice of reason, but she’s turned out to be the opposite of that, and everyone’s noticing. I hope she takes a lesson from this criticism and starts reporting the truth instead of opposite of what Fox News reports. She is likable as a person and has the potential to be really good if she would just not politicize every topic.

It’s coming from Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, Keith Olbermann on Countsown, and Bob Costas on who knows what. All these people are talking about Mark McGwire and his use of steroids.

They are mad that he used steroids and that he’s destroying their dream. But I don’t think their personal goal is to punish Mark McGwire or to even punish steroid users. They are fighting for their dream, that baseball is the fantasy that they want it to be, and that baseball players are heros. To them they are the last men in the world who are good, kind, and honest. Their point is that although Mark McGwire may be a real fallible human being, the rest of the baseball players are all angels sent directly from heaven to shower us with their glory.

These middle aged men are being put through one of the hardest things that a person can go through: coming to terms with something. I can relate. However, I have some great news, although I’m sure they don’t want to hear it. Nobody ever does, and when they do hear it, they don’t believe it. All the same, it’s true.

That is, there are no heros. The one who believes in the heros is much more likely to be the good guy.

The heroic baseball players that Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann dream of are not real, but the core attributes of those players can be brought to life in both Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann because they are actually interested in them. But they have to stop externalizing it before they can internalize it.

Professional baseball, like all sports, is about money and sex and extremes. There are no heros when it comes to money or sex, and there are no heros when it comes to extremes. The real heros are the guys that aren’t the best and don’t need to be the best. They know that the cost of being the best is neglecting the people around them and their own morals. They won’t do that for any price. Those are the guys Keith and Jon fantasize about, they just haven’t realized it yet.

Then he bizarrely tried to backpedal and say he wasn’t referring to the underwear bomber. But it doesn’t matter, his statement is still false even by his own oddly switched parameters.

I just wrote a post about how I want to stay calm and reasonable on this blog. That means when I’m upset I have to really look at what’s bothering me about a situation, get past the anger, and describe how it really makes me feel. When I try to do that, what I feel in this situation is disappointment in and even fear of Rudy Giuliani. It scares me that a man can just go on TV and start lying about things and not be challenged by the interviewer, in this case, George Stephanopoulos. It scares me that a man with Rudy Giuliani’s credentials would want to.

I’m scared because I don’t feel safe, I don’t feel like the media is protecting me or doing its job. This is why I like Countdown. Even if Keith Olbermann is sort of douchey at times, this is one of the only places that at least partially looks for the truth.

But back to Rudy Giuliani. I am just disturbed by how hateful and ugly he is being to Obama. Once someone goes down that road, I no longer see them as a leader.

Political blogging currently is about taking sides and tattling on people. To me, that’s boring. I want to know the truth, but in the world of politics, that’s literally not going to be possible.

But from now on, my motto is stay calm and stay logical. Nobody else who talks about politics does this, but I’m going to try. But what do you talk about when everyone’s lying? If you talk about what they want to talk about, you’re just falling into their trap. If you talk about corruption that’s all you’ll talk about and nothing will happen.

Right now, I don’t know what to talk about where I can actually talk about truth and make a difference. However, it seems like figuring that out is what we all need to do. So we’ll see, but I think I will start exploring these issues more.

Today was the first day after the holiday break and during the first story I started getting bored. While I am a Democrat and a liberal, another thing I like to do is point out Keith’s own propaganda, because he certainly does have it. Right off the bat, though, Keith was trying to blame the Republicans for everything and it seemed even more important to him than doing anything else. As an exaggeration, someone could say, “…and that’s how we can all help the poor people of the world eat.”, and then Keith would say, “But don’t you think it’s the Republicans that really cause starvation?” On tonight’s show he was so random that he was even confusing his guests.

Don’t get me wrong, the Republicans are behaving like douche bags presently. But the Democrats are behaving like pussies. And worst of all, Keith Olbermann is going crazy.

I don’t watch the news to hear someone say my side is good and the other side is bad. I watch the news to find out what’s going on, and I wouldn’t mind just a little backstory so I can understand what’s really happening. Which leads me to the next problem. Keith’s show is an hour regardless of whether or not anything happened that day. When nothing happens, Keith rants about Rush Limbaugh or the Republicans.

I don’t need this. It provides no benefit to me, I’m a busy business owner, and I don’t have time to watch Keith Olbermann throw a childish tempter tantrum.

So, now I’m lost again. I’m not sure how to get my news, maybe fast forwarding most of the show or just watching The Daily Show because at least that’s funny. But Keith Olbermann is just as bad as the conservatives, and just as frustrating to watch.

There certainly have been a lot of whack-jobs this year and on December 29, 2009 Countdown with Keith Olbermann reviewed the best.

Sarah Palin: The Vanilla Thrilla’ from Wasilla

David Letterman reading a top ten list says: “2. Bought makeup at Bloomingdale’s to update her ’slutty flight attendant’ look.”

Sarah Palin says: “Hey don’t disparage flight attendants! They work hard! We love ‘em!”

David Letterman says: “One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game during the 7th inning: her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.”

Sarah Palin says: “That’s, uh… pretty pathetic, good old David Letterman.”

Later, Sarah Palin resigns with no real reason to do more and better work for Alaskans. But in this case she was right, Alaskans will be better of without her as Governor.

She is so bizarre.

They brought up Sarah claiming the fact that one could see Russia from land in Alaska counts for something.

John Ensign and Mark Sanford

Republicans prove that they don’t care nearly as much about family values as they say they do.

They show Christian Finnegan commenting on Mark Sanford. He’s great.

These clip shows really are nearly useless if you watch the news regularly.

Health Care Town Halls and Joe Wilson

Republicans send out talking points to get people to disrupt health care town halls so that people in need of health care can’t get answers or help.

Joe Wilson of South Carolina screams “You lie!” at President Obama while Obama is addressing Congress. Obama wasn’t lying. Even Republicans were upset.

The Birthers and Barack Obama’s Birth Certificate

Orly Taitz tried her heart out to prove Obama was not actually President.

Paul F. Tompkins corrects Keith by pointing out that Orly’s last name is Taitz, not Taint.

Glenn “Lonesome Roads” Beck

The anti-defamation league named Glenn “The Fear Monger in Chief”.

Glenn rants about Rockefeller Center and Mussolini and the Soviet Union and the United Nations. Glenn Beck is a douche.

Keith does a great impression of Glenn.

These specials are such a cluster, but I have to admit, I like them. It’s good to get it all out so we can start fresh in the new year.