On the Contrary

Paul Krugman said something that I think a few of us are thinking about more and more, “If we just talk substance about that instead of the campaign for a moment…”.  He was reacting to the discussion of who was ahead, who was behind, who made the most strident attacks, who might be the eventual winner in South Carolina.  We have this never ending coverage of junk about the campaign and no serious discussion about what they are really proposing and what are the chances these policies would do anything for the economy.

As we focus on the Bain attacks, or attacks by Mitt on Obama, could we not examine the substance of the attack instead of the attack itself?  As Professor Krugman pointed out in his blog recently, Untruths, Wholly Untrue, And Nothing But Untruths, Mitt simply lies straight out and the lies get reported without the examination of what he said.  My favorite recently is Rick Perry claiming that Obama is attacking South Carolina by challenging their voter ID law.  State’s rights you know.  When was “state’s rights” ever a reason for anything but discrimination for blacks, gays, or women?  Preventing voter fraud is such a joke since there isn’t any (38 cases brought in a 3 year period, of which a little more than half were convicted) and for Republicans who claim to want effective government, they are focusing money and time on a non-issue when in reality it is all about keeping their opponents from voting.

But let us not just pick on the Republicans.  It does not matter which side of the isle you are on, the media fails to report at all on the substance of any issue and focuses once again on a he said/she said debate completely dumbing down the nation.  We need an honest discussion about our path forward.  We don’t need to know wild allegations, we need to know if what these people are proposing stands the test of examination.  Most of what the Republicans (who are getting all the coverage right now) are proposing is drivel that is retooled George Bush.  If the media would expose what they are proposing instead of doing People Magazine coverage of the candidates, we might start to get somewhere.

Here is a list for you and you can judge for yourself:

1. If you still doubt global warming you are stupid. Science is settled and yet we have a litmus test in the Republican Party to deny it.
2. If you think lower taxes are the answer to our problems, examine actual tax rates paid (lowest in 50 years) and ask yourself where are the jobs.
3. If you think less regulation is the answer, just how did the financial meltdown occur again?
4. If you think government can’t create jobs then why are you arguing that we can’t cut military spending because it will kill jobs?
5. If you think Obama is the socialist devil, compare his policies to the historical record and he is right of center (see Andrew Sullivan’s article in Time Magazine)
6. If you think competition in medical insurance will solve the problem, how come Medicare Advantage is more costly than just Medicare?
7. If you think that we need to depress wages and benefits to be competitive, explain who that will benefit, workers with less disposable income, or the 1% selling overseas?

Here is the real question we ought to be asking in this campaign:  Why are we even considering people who pander to the most ignorant in our society to get the nomination?  These are people who deny science, reinvent history, want religion back in our politics, use veiled racism and discrimination, and want to return us to a 19th century horse and buggy economy and nation.  The fact they would do that ought to be a disqualification for office.  When oh when are we going to have an adult conversation about any of our problems.  Not with Republicans, that’s for sure.  I can’t wait until the general election and see if the Democrats also pander to us instead of a real policy discussion about the way forward.

I read so much these days about what Republicans believe and I wonder what happened to rational thought and evidence.  Take flow down, which incorporates the idea that as the wealthy (“job creators”)  get wealthier, they reinvest and create jobs and opportunities for the rest of us. Rising tide and flotsam.   It just has never happened and the data is unequivocal, except of course for carefully manipulated niches that conservative think tanks generate to prop up the faithful.  Think about it.  There was not one, no I am not kidding, not one new private sector job created in the Bush years of the lowest taxes in 60 years and mass transfer of wealth through tax policies to the rich (Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that when President George W. Bush left office in January 2009, there were actually 653,000 fewer private sector jobs than there had been eight years earlier when he was sworn in).   We became poorer as a nation as our infrastructure deteriorated and middle class average earnings fell.  Yet here we are trying to reinvent that whole myth that flow down works.

So what does this all have to do with religious faith and the end of intellectualism?  It is no coincidence that many of the Republican conservatives are also conservative Christians.  We have this thing that religious beliefs are private and people should be able to believe what they believe however preposterous.  At the risk of angering Mormons, gold tablets in Manchester New York?  We have a whole body of science from astrophysics to biology that tells us that creationism is a nice quaint fairytale and yet many of our Republican candidates for President believe it.  So what does that tell us about intellectualism?

It tells us that in today’s world our rational thought processes can be compartmentalized and that is a very dangerous thing.  If we have this whole part of our brain that allows us to ignore reality, when does that bleed over into our other thought processes?  If we can be intellectually lazy about one belief system, why can’t we do the same for another?  I look at global warming, which is happening and there is no question about it.  From a purely engineering mind, we are dumping historically unprecedented amounts of CO2 into the environment, so we could expect some impact.  Then we have data showing melting of the ice caps, rising temperatures, changes and shifting of weather patterns, and increasing intensity of storms and weather events.  Finally we have developed scientific models of what is happening and they are accurately predicting all of this, and yet we have a whole segment of our society that chooses to deny it.  If they can find one scientist who doesn’t agree, or some event in our geological history that looks similar, then all the research, data, and modeling must be wrong.  It is not rational.

It is what I call faith based beliefs.  For some reason, Republicans don’t like science, so they let faith based reasoning inform their thinking process.  I believe what I believe, and like my religious beliefs, they can not be tested by reality and doubt.  Any truly rational person will tell you there is no God, or at least a God in the form of some fairy godfather that watches over us and sorts out our lives.  Look around the world at the cruelty and injustice and you can only draw one conclusion.  Most of us live sheltered lives and we are only required to face this reality when bad things start happening to us, “good” people.  But what so informs us about the way people are thinking, or not thinking today, is that they only question their faith (or their political dogma) when the bad things happen to them.  It is like all the rest of the chaos and injustice in the world didn’t enter into the equation until it happens to them.  Very irrational.  It is selective and compartmentalized thinking.

In the latest reincarnation of the Republicans, faith based beliefs are at the heart of everything they believe.  One can only draw this conclusion as they ignore the eight years of George Bush who did everything Republican to disastrous results.  Their immigration policy is irrational (see voting down the DREAM Act) and counter productive.   It is based on fear and xenophobia.   Their belief in “states rights” is another irrational policy that assumes that individual states know better than the federal government when the whole history of the establishment of our Constitution was just the opposite lesson.  Their belief in personal freedom is belied by their attempts to use government to take away personal freedoms if it doesn’t match their religious beliefs (birth control, abortion, gay rights).  They believe the EPA has destroyed jobs when the facts are just the opposite, cleaning up our environment created hundreds of thousands of jobs.  Finally their belief now in supply side economics, is belied by all the data you want to accumulate.  So how do they manage this?  Once again it s selective and compartmentalized thinking where they confuse their faith based thinking processes with rational reality based thinking and they aren’t even aware of it.

Then we have pandering to this anti-intellectual, anti-rational crowd.  We have the President dropping his ‘gs’ on ing endings to be folksy.  Personally I would prefer a president who spoke the English language correctly, but this pandering to irrational and ignorant is the sign of our times.  The media does the same thing, instead of looking at the real facts, they let anyone’s interpretation of the facts be as good as anyone else’s (he said/she said).  Somehow the answers to complex problems are some folksy intuition that does not stand up to the light of day and the complexity of reality.  Yet anyone’s opinion is somehow as valued as another’s no matter how outrageous.  It makes ratings based journalism what we call journalism today if you redefine what  journalism is.  I watched a discussion of Bachmann’s attack on Rick Perry’s Texas “miracle” and the discussion never touched on the veracity of the ad’s attack, only the politics of the attack.  What does that tell you?  Ever wonder why the media has paid political analysts, but not paid policy analysts?  It is another indication of the end of rational thought and intellectualism.

Look, I would love it if government were the problem.  If we just got rid of government then business would take off and we all would be rich.  Sometimes it is “a” problem, but not “the” problem.  Unlike Republicans, I can’t deny the last 200 years of the industrial revolution and the lessons we learned about unfettered capitalism without government regulation.  Heck, can you just remember what happened with the financial industry four years ago?  I would love for flow-down to work.  It promises me a free ride.  I don’t need to pay any stinking taxes for education, roads, bridges, drinking water, sewage treatment, and on and on, except it doesn’t work.  We are where we are today because we bought into the free ride narrative, and the most astounding thing of all is that you would think that Republicans who are all about discipline and earning your position in life would be the first to tell you, no pain, no gain.

The ultimate nonsense is what is going on in the economy, not just ours, but the world economy.  Since the crash after the housing bubble fueling the derivatives craze, we have been all about austerity.  We had proved that didn’t work during the Depression, and once again during the 10-year Japanese stagnation.  We have Europe today demonstrating the same lesson and they are a year into their austerity thing.  We have Econ 101 that tells us what we should be doing and yet all the really smart people are telling us to do just the opposite and the world is doing it, and things are simply getting much worse.

These are all the really smart people who did not see the bubble or the problem in the financial industry, and believed that the modern era would not be subjected to the cycles of capitalism anymore.  Their economic theories failed, yet they are trying to recycle them at our detriment.  We have economists like Paul Krugman, Dean Baker, Simon Johnson, Jeffrey Sachs, and the list goes on and on, who have predicted quite accurately that these policies would fail, and yet we continue on down the road of faith based beliefs in economic policies that don’t work ignoring those who have been right.  In this nation we have a whole cadre of Republican candidates promising the same thing as George Bush, except eviscerating government even more, and economists trying to resurrect failed theories of the death of Keynesian economics, and we expect a different outcome?

And the ultimate stake into the heart of rational thinking and intellectualism is a President and politicians that pander to this irrational thinking.  The prime example is the focus on our debt.  Any rational analysis will tell you that cutting now will not help the debt,  but make it worse as we further decrease our output, with the result of decreasing revenues.  Our problem is lack of demand due to high private debt, joblessness (worsening the private debt), and all the wealth focused in the few.  After WWII we grew out of a much more massive debt by investing in our nation and expanding our middle class.  But that is not the popular belief these days and popular is the measure of truth in our current irrational world.

So our very smart President decided to co-opt the Republican debt narrative for political gain and of course, the nation falters.  That is why I have described him as having no there, there.  There has to be an underlying consistent rational approach to our economy.  The rational approach that has worked in the past is to stimulate the economy big time now with a 10-year plan to then tame the deficit.  But to pander to popular public misconception for political gain, he has done just the opposite.  And the nation withers.  His latest pandering to business on the environment makes no economic sense in terms that it is not regulation that is holding them back, but lack of demand.  Forcing them to upgrade their pollution spewing industries is a win-win as it furthers innovation and creates jobs, not to mention saves lives.  So where is the logic in this move?  None unless you understand that it is pandering to illogical beliefs.

So as our media and our politicians dumb down the world to pander to us for short term gains, some of us pine for an adult in the room who will tell us the truth, put together a logical argument about our path forward, and then be informed by outcomes to adjust policy as necessary.  Instead what we are getting is a nation more and more attuned to faith based beliefs, at odds with outcomes and the lessons of history, and our leaders and news media that panders to this irrational population for votes and ratings.  We are so screwed and if you are like me, who questions everything, you start wondering if we are now living in an upside down world where good is bad, and bad is good.  Where economic policies that don’t work means we need to continue to do the same things only harder and wait for a different result.  Ah, back to being a moron.

But I am not scared.  I know that a higher power than me will make it right.  That those who live the righteous life are the chosen and we will get our just deserts. All the others are barbarians at the gate who deserve their fates.  Don’t pay any attention to that evil snake over there hanging from the tree of science and rational thought.  We don’t need no stinking science or rational thought.  We know the right path and we will be appropriately rewarded with the bounty of our righteous life.  We will get them all right and the funny thing is that we truly deserve them for our irrational and quite frankly stupid choices as we sink as a nation.  Excuse me now while I go tweet my feelings in 146 characters which is plenty to communicate complex ideas to those who just feel I know what I am talking about.

Once again our media, in a failed attempted to be fair and balanced, is trying to paint both sides as equal in the poisonous rhetoric that may be inciting violence and disrespect for public officials.  I listened to Lester Holt on NBC explain to us that the shooter hates government, but that isn’t a political point of view. Huh?  That is B.S. and it is the conservatives who hate government as they decry big government loving liberals and vilainize it at every opportunity.

“Hate unions and the public officials they represent.”  “Obama care will destroy America.”  “He wasn’t born here.”  “He is a Muslim.”  And we see Republican leaders not tamping down this rhetoric or distancing themselves from these lies.  Sarah Palin’s rhetoric is full of gun and shooting metaphors. Michele Bachmann and Sharon Angle are major offenders in inciting violence with their 2nd Amendment analogies (we are armed and dangerous).  Where is the hate coming from, liberal radio?  Who keeps waving guns and says a little blood is good to water the tree of liberty?  Who thinks wearing guns to political rallies is a good idea?

Sadly a newly elected Tea Party Congressman pushed the “both sides” bull shit on Meet the Press and nobody challenged him, but they should have.  He cited some obscured liberal threat back in the Bush days like that is the 24/7 hate that is being pumped out by Rush and Company, and the failure of Republican leaders to address it.  We need to look at issues full on and without this idea that we need to blame or put both sides in the same light.  It is simply not the case and if we don’t see that the Republican Party is the party of hate, then we have missed the biggest lesson in this tragedy.  Fear, anger, ignorance, and hate is their currency of political discourse.  “Hate immigrants, they took your job.”  “Be afraid of gays. “  “States Rights”.  “Obama is a socialist.”  When is our press going to wake up and start challenging outright lies?

One last thought.  This does not mean we shouldn’t have rigorous debates and point out lies when they are provable lies (like tax cuts don’t hurt the deficit, death panels, Obama care will bankrupt the nation).  It just means that we have to be true to our Constitution and its basis in honest and respectful debate.  And the press better start doing their job and calling these lies instead of legitimizing them to be “fair and balanced.”  The Press has much to answer for, both for this event and the sad state of our fellow citizens real understanding of issues.

Well we got a taste of what letting the fruit loops run the country feels like.  I am talking about how the press has covered Reverend Jones, the essence of a fruit loop, down in Florida.  There are a lot of news stores that are important to our future, but this isn’t one of them.  And by covering the inane “negotiations”, it just got more bizarre.  It is kind of like when some other fruit loop goes postal and shoots up his work place.  The news goes 24/7 to covering this while things that would really impact our lives just gets pushed out.  Maybe it is who we have become.  The news is the new reality TV entertainment show.

Now think about it.  If I decided to burn 2000 Korans, or Bibles for that matter, if I didn’t get press coverage, the only damage done would be to the atmosphere in the form of pollution.  And it was clear to everyone that this nut job was a nut job.  So why did we lend him our microphone and cover the story with anything but derision?  Now Reverend Jones is a reflection of the Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin disciples.  In fact the “deal” he was trying to negotiate with the Muslim Center in New York was probably egged on by some of their comments.  This is what America will look like in 2011 if the Tea Partiers and their mindless followers get into power.

But what really strikes me about this whole adventure is that it made no logical sense.  In a country whose government was founded on secularism and the protection of religious freedom, one religion attacking another is anathema to everything this country stands for.  It is intolerance and racism at its most basic form.  Our country was based upon allowing the freedom of choosing your own beliefs.  In other words you are free to hate some one based upon color, or believe women are second-class citizens, but you can’t act it out in a way that violates our Constitutions protection of basic rights.  But this act was illogical in that it rejected this very notion of freedom.  Apparently freedom of religion only applies to Christian sects.

Even more illogical was the “negotiations”.  According to Reverend Jones, he was going to burn the Korans because it is evil.  Then, and he probably got the idea from fruit loops Palin and Beck, he enters into negotiations to try and exchange his burning of Korans for moving the Muslim center in New York.  Huh?  How does moving the Muslim Center in New York have anything to do with the supposed evilness of the Koran?  It was apples and oranges.  Even more ludicrous was that anyone took these negotiations seriously.  Let’s see.  If I am a Muslim and someone threatens me with defiling my Holy Book, then I am their slave?  Oh come on.  Somebody in the media needs to start using their brains.  And that, my friends, is the essence of the problem.

This whole episode tells how far we have fallen and that we need adult supervision.   We have a large portion of our population who takes mental midgets like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck seriously, and that is because our media grants their pronouncements equal time with responsible pundits.  They fail to take a critical look at what they are saying and debunk it for its falsehoods or blatant appeals to racism.  The fact that Sharon Angle even gets news coverage at all tells you all you want to know about how badly our media fails us.  In their attempt to be fair and balanced, they have fallen prey to political opportunists who have spread hate and fear as a tactic to achieve power.  Our news media’s function is to inform us, and that means to take a critical look at what people are saying.  Instead they have substituted the he said/she said political back and forth for analysis, instead of an independent look at the facts.  With this abdication of their role, our less than informed public is easily manipulated into believing, say, that our President is not a citizen.

So if we do turn the country over to the loonies in November, and a failed conservative economic policy gets to wreak more havoc on our economy, we can thank three responsible parties.  The first is the media who have advocated their role as gate keeper and now are simply a rent-a-megaphone industry, the Republicans who are so enthralled with power that they will destroy the country to get it back, and Democrats for failing to stand for what they believe and fighting back against falsehoods.  What you see all around us is a total lack of political courage.  We reap what we sow, failure.

In the last few days I have written about angry people, angry people without a sense of humor about themselves.  These are the most dangerous kind, because if you can’t laugh at yourself once in a while, you are entering the realm of believing you are infallible.  You become an intolerant lout who looks down on every one else.  You have lost your sense of humanity which allows you to understand your own failings and respect others because, guess what, you don’t always have the right answer.  I was going write a blog about this in our media, and was reading through the papers and blogs this morning when I came across this absolute gem from John Stewart of the Daily show.  It made me laugh so hard I think I hurt myself.  Humor in social commentary is one of our great saving graces which helps us laugh at ourselves and see issues in less threatening ways.  But in this classic piece John used humor not only to make a political point, but to show the great contrast between anger with grace and without.  Thank you John Stewart for keeping me sane and grounded during these turbulent times.

If we are hoping that the media is going to help us understand the issues or clarify the choices, will then think again.  I had not watched 60 Minutes in some time, so I turned it on Sunday and there were some promising stories on, including the water crisis in California and the war in Afghanistan.  Both turned out to be monumental flops as the coverage was so superficial as to be nothing more than over simplified opinion pieces.

Let’s start with Lesley Stahl and the water crisis in the valley.  Needless to say farmers are facing a crisis because of the reduced water flow to them.  There was Lesley interviewing a farmer about how an endangered little fish was ruining his life.  How, oh how could we put this farmer and our nations breadbasket at risk over a little fish for which a judge had ruled to cut the flow through the turbines that send the water to this farmer to save this little fish.

Of course this is not the whole story and what I was hearing was the oversimplified and self-serving blame on the environmentalists I hear all the time up here.  Oh, for sure they touched on the other side, but just barely.  The lack of water is caused mostly by our drought, which if anyone looks at California water history, is a reoccurring phenomenon.  Oh and that stupid little fish?  It is an indicator species for the whole Delta estuary and the collapsing ecology of the Delta is making the salmon extinct and other domino effects on the ocean.  Oh but why confuse yourself with all that when you can just hate a little fish and those bleeding heart tree huggers.

So back to the farmer who is lamenting that he has worked hard and he deserves his water.  Like 90% of the rest of the world doesn’t work hard and yet live in poverty?  But what they did not report on at all is how much the rest of us subsidize his water.  In fact the whole nation subsidizes it through Federal Water Projects.  Finally back to the scientist who raises the issue of the crop selection may not be practical to the reality of the shrinking water supply and  drought cycles (Why grow cotton in an arid climate?  Answer: Because the government subsidizes the water so it is cheap to do).  The farmer and his livelihood are really dependent on government handouts, but he would never see it that way.  He is a real American who works hard and deserves his water.  But instead of focusing on real policy, Lesley was back to hating fish.  It is so much easier to dumb down the story for apparently a dumbed down audience than dealing with all those irritating realities that are the real issues.

Now on to Afghanistan.  Here we have Lora Logan interviewing Harry Crumpton, ex-CIA operative, who helped the Afghans defeat the Taliban after 9/11, on how important it is to stay there.  This was followed by her interview with the head of Afghan Security about fighting for his country and why we should stay there.  Now watching Lora Logan interview dirt could be entertaining because she is so much darn fun to look at, but does symbiotic relationships come to mind?

Do we think that maybe Harry has a vested interest in seeing us win there?  I mean after all, what was that sacrifice he made back in the Taliban war if it amounts to nothing today?  As far as the head of Afghan Security is concerned, I was hearing a repeat (Lora would be too young to remember) of the interviews of Vietnamese generals before we pulled out.  I guess it is true he is fighting for his country, but the rest of his countrymen are not so why should we?  His clan or his valued position there, I am sure, does not enter into his calculation.  Lora herself has been over there reporting the war and also owes her career to it.  Nowhere in the story was a real consideration of our strategic interests or whether this war really has anything to do with Al Qaeda.  As we have learned in Yemen, they just move to where there are more stupid impressionable religious nuts.  When you look at all of them, you have to wonder what came first, the war or their career and how the two are related to give reporting a very biased edge.  But none of that was examined.

Meanwhile on Monday we had a full-blown discussion of the terrorist attempt on the plane headed into Detroit and whose fault it was.  The media, instead of examining the real faults, what could be learned, and how we could improve our security, had the Republican and Democratic strategist pointing fingers at each other, with the media egging them on.  Oh there were the token security experts (another symbiotic relationship unexamined) who proposed spending more money on new technology to address the latest attack, (you know, like using the strategy for the last war in a new conflict that is totally different) but no real examination of what are effective strategies for the future.

So on and on it goes.  The media continues to dumb us down and most of us just take it in and don’t fight back.  And you wonder why things don’t ever get any better or old solutions get tried over and over again and still don’t work?  Maybe because we have forgotten how to do critical thinking.  If this reporting is any indication of our ability to deal with complex issues, we are screwed.

Here are a few of the tidbits of news that shed some light on where we have been and where we are going:

• “Many Republicans are already angry over the emphasis Mr. Obama placed on the public plan (health care) in last weeks letter.  Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, said Friday that ‘the key to a bipartisan bill is not to have a government plan in the bill’ (New York Times).”  Said another way, the Republican idea of bipartisanship is their way or the highway.  We have already had enough of their failures haven’t we?  I wish they would just get the hell out of the way.  The real issue here is do you want something bipartisan or something that works.
• Here is another thought on health care:  The big question is how to pay for it and one of the suggestions is to tax health care benefits.  Another is to tax sugar in soft drinks. I find this whole discussion to be an indicator of how troubled our whole tax system is.  It also indicates how entrenched are the forces to prevent any change in our tax system when the suggestions are just to pile on more obscure taxes instead of reforming the whole system.  One way or another you already pay for health care so why not just get rid of all those hidden costs and include it as part of our income tax.
• Watching the banks maneuver is always entertaining, if not somewhat appalling.  Most of us understand that derivatives got us into the financial mess we are in because they were unregulated and basically invisible to the investor to understand their makeup and risk.  The Obama administration has proposed regulating them, but left a loophole for “customized” derivatives which would leave them, let’s just say, less than transparent.  Most agree that the best way to not allow speculation to get out of control again is to be able to evaluate the risk in each investment through the transparency of trading them on an open market.  So why are we opening ourselves up to “customized” derivatives?  So the banks can once again make fabulous amounts of money by hiding their risks and preventing open competition.  Isn’t it amazing that the boys who tout competition are the first ones who try to undermine it if it impacts their goose who is laying their golden eggs?
• President Obama has told Israel no more settlements.  This apparently broke an agreement by the Bush administration (verbal) that we would continue to say that, but normal growth is okay.  I think this is the pivotal “no duh” moment.  The Israelis have a problem here because much as we have our radicalized Republicans who want no government unless it prevents a woman’s choice or two consenting adults from marrying, they have their fruit loop religious radicals that think God made them special and they can take what they want (very similar to Republicans).  Until Israel decides on an equitable swap of land, there will never be peace there.  That means marginalizing their religious nuts.  So when the Republican Party can marginalize their nuts, maybe the Israelis can marginalize thiers and there may be hope for the future.  I am not holding my breath.
• It appears the administration is considering whether they can accept guilty pleas from some of the detainees for the 9/11 murders, skip the trial, and go directly to execution.  It solves so many problems like the law explicitly prohibits accepting the plea, and the fact that much of the evidence was gathered using torture which makes it problematic.  Note I am not saying abusive interrogation techniques.  Let’s just call it what it is.  Sometimes in our rush for retribution we forget what justice is about.  Yes a trial would be messy, but it would be honest.  And it would take what everyone knows is the PR approach to what a wonderful country we are off the package and expose our ugly underside.  But it would be what the world and we American citizens are really yearning for, honesty.  It would reemphasize that we are about, justice not efficacy, and it would help to expose what animals these people are.  Oh and on the execution thing, make it life without parole.  Execution just plays into their hands and makes them martyrs.   When will we ever learn that the hard road is the only road that will get us to where we want to go?
• Liz Cheney is still making a fool of herself along with most of the media.  She is still operating under the impression that saying it is so makes it so.  The media is also helping that impression by unquestioningly repeating whatever she or her dad say.  Ah, but the problem is video of what really happened and what they really said.  Liz is claiming that there was no attempt to link the 9/11 attack with Saddam Hussein.  Roll the video.  The only thing that worries me about all this is that the press seems to have learned nothing from their failures during the run up to war in Iraq.  But we still have The Daily Show, Colbert, and MSNBC.  The rest of them just sit there like idiots and accept this garbage or repeat it endlessly like it were true.  That’s entertainment folks!
• One last thought.  A friend of mine was trying to convince me that the whole economic mess was caused by Fannie and Freddie (government) and irresponsible home buyers.  That is like blaming your kids for their bad behavior without looking at how you set up an environment in which they could act out their worst impluses.  The banks were making a fortune repackaging debt and selling it to the rest of the world.  All the rest follows from this.  It is the root cause.  Why can’t we ever remember the simple rule, “follow the money.”

Are we getting anywhere yet?

The media bashing I am talking about is not the GOP’s, but mine.  The mainstream media has a long way to go before they are really doing “fair and balanced” coverage, and except for FOX noise, Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs and some of the other blovators (yes even Keith Olberman from time to time), they are really trying to be balanced.  Their approach to this daunting task is fatally flawed by removing any judgment from their interviews by representing both sides with a passive moderator.  In effect they simply monitor the food fight.  They have eschewed any responsibility to ascertain the truth to avoid the appearance of bias and they will let the viewer decide.  So what is the problem?

The problem, which was described much more eloquently by Ruth Marcus in he Washington Post Op-Ed, True Whoppers, talking about misrepresentations and lies goes like this:

“All campaigns fall short, but some fall far shorter than others. And it is a phony evenhandedness, comfortable for journalists but ultimately misleading, that equates these failures without measuring the grossness of their deviation from the standard of decency.”

Said another way if the viewer isn’t given some frame of reference for the veracity of the statements being made by the participants from the moderator, he/she is left to let their own partisanship decide whose facts to believe.  If you have a debate between flat earthers and people who claim the world is round and you accord their claims equal footing, you are misleading people about the equality of the facts of each argument.  Note the media did this on the issue of Intelligent Design until the whole edifice of this faith-based system was destroyed in a Pennsylvania court room.   Now they try to avoid the whole debate because it seems rude to challenged faith with facts.  The economic argument may be proceeding in the same fashion.

At any rate, this kind of coverage is increasing the impact of the misrepresentations, and not clearing the air.  The critical thing that the journalist has to bring to these exchanges is knowledge of the facrs and push back.  Instead of allowing known misrepresentations to be voiced by one partisan spokesperson or the other, they push back where they know the facts are being misrepresented.  Of course they have to know the facts to push back which may be a reach for some of them.  The key is that the push back has to be unbiased i.e. usually David Schuster of MSNBC as opposed to Fox News or Lou Dobbs of CNN.  Then the debate would be on more level playing ground.  But because of their passive interview style of moderating debate, they are being run over by partisan flacks and their mission of balanced reporting goes out the window as they become a bullhorn for one side or the other.

I witnessed an example of what I call the passive aggressive attack on CNN’s Rick Sanchez as he was trying to inform the public about what is going on with the investigation of Sarah Palin in Alaska.  The moderator is passive, while the interviewee is agressive.  Having spent a portion of my career negotiating with bonding company lawyers in construction contract defaults, I immediately recognized the tactic.  A lawyer representing the McCain organization in Alaska was laying out their case for why the proceedings investigating Trooper Gate, in their view were tainted.  The technique is to begin a non-stop monologue/diatribe and get as many of your allegations in as quickly as possible so that the conclusion seems obvious while not allowing your opponent to question any of the allegations that makes up your argument.

The only journalist I have seen push back on this technique is Rachel Maddow, trying to stop the dialogue and examine some of the false allegations.  Well in this case poor Rick was trying to be fair and let the person state their case, but he got submarined by this technique as he let this monologue go on forever.  Worse, he appeared to not have a good grasp on the history of this investigation that could challenge some of the lawyer’s allegations.  He asked for a Democrat to come on the show to counter this argument, also showing his naiveté  in that no Democrats wants to get involved with this internal state investigation and make it a distracting (for the Democrats) campaign issue.

Here were some of the specific questions that Rick needed to ask to get a more balanced view of the claims of the McCain team.  The lawyer claimed the whole process was tainted by the Obama Campaign, but Rick never asked him how this could be when there was a team of twelve McCain Campaign people in Alaska helping manage this attack on the investigating board, but no personnel  with the Obama Campaign. He did press the lawyer for any evidence for contact with the Obama campaign and of course there wasn’t any except an alleged rumor.  He never asked why this investigation was biased when it started before the Governor was a candidate for VP and approved by a unanimous vote of the Republicans and Democrats in the legislature.  He never asked why the commission that was conducting this investigation made up of three Republicans and two Democrats could be biased if the majority were Republicans and could control its actions.  He never asked why the requested move to the personnel board would then be an unbiased review if the board was made up of Palin appointees that serve at her pleasure.  So all in all it was another example of nice try, but you became a soapbox for a very partisan view and participated in more disinformation.

Finally on Friday, I watched David Gregory of MSNBC (and of the famous quote, “I asked all the right questions before the invasion of Iraq” but never followed up on the lies he was told) ask his panel of commentators, isn’t this whole disaster on Wall Street due to the housing bubble?  In other words fix this problem and the rest of the system can press on which indicates to me he had little understanding of the real issues.  They had to explain to him that the housing crisis was just the effect, and the cause was the underlying structure of wall street to increase profits, short term gains and CEO compensation based upon those gains, greed and a culture of greed, and lack of regulation leading  all of which led to under capitalized and grossly leveraged firms.  I still don’t think he gets it so how is he going to help inform us of the choices for the future as each side makes their pitch and he has no basis for understanding their arguments?

I don’t know why journalists allow themselves to be abused by these partisan flacks.  I don’t know why they are so passive and allow themselves to be used to reinforce miss-information.  I don’t understand why they don’t fight back and start standing up for their profession.  I don’t know why we get pertty faces instead of smart and well informed journalists.  An interview should be a trial by fire for all concerned, not a chance to repeat your talking points.  Come on guys, get up to date, learn your subject, and start pushing back.  The fate of this country depends on you guys doing your job.  So far you get an F.

Back in 2004 when the nation was re-electing the bumbling fool we have for a President, there was one place you could turn to get real news and a perspective on events that were unfolding.  That was the Dailey Show with John Stewart and, as we all know, it is a comedy show.  Well John has stepped up once again as the mainstream media gets lead around by their noses by political hacks who invent reality while they fail to check it.  Friday night John ran a video clip of John McCain “straight talking” before he ran for President and now during the present Campaign (‘Reformed Maverick‘).  There for all to see was McCain reversing positions on Bush tax cuts, Roe vs. Wade, cake walk in Iraq, pandering to the agents of intolerance (evangelicals), and immigration policy.

Why, one has to ask, oh why is this on the comedy channel and not on mainstream news so we can make an informed decision about who John McCain really is?  Why did it take John Stewart to take on Sarah Palin’s speech point by point demonstrating she was reading from a script and that most of her claims about herself were lies?  No I didn’t mean characterizations, I meant lies.  We get this on the comedy channel while mainstream media has their finger up their nose or have been cowered into a corner by claims of eastern establishment bias.  It took John Stewart and his stalwart of “reporters” to actually go out into the Republican convention and ask them what was meant by “small town values”.  What became abundantly clear was that they did not know, but it was people who think like them.  John’s show would not be near as funny if the Republicans were not taking such liberties with reality, but mainstream media seems unable to point this out.

The failure of our TV media to be journalists is a result of five intersecting forces:

• News as Entertainment to increase ratings driven by the profit motive
• 24/7 demand for material
• Journalists as celebrities
• Careful manipulation of the press by controlling access to sources
• The loss of income for print media

A quick summary of these points I have made in earlier blogs:

• In order to attract a wider audience for their advertising, TV news media focus on stories that are sensational but lack importance or educational value that is necessary for an informed electorate.  I bet more people know who John Edwards’ girl friend is that know how much of Sarah Palin’s speech was an outright lie.  Leave it to the National Inquirer.   It has also made them cowards in that if there is push-back on one of their stories they usually fold instead of threatening a segment of their buying public
• The demand for 24/7 information dumbs us all down as journalists become “chatty Kathys” rambling on about things that are not facts, but cocktail party fodder.  This lack of discipline in what words mean and what are facts and conjecture further degrades the line between fact and political spin.  Journalists seem to live in their own world and create their own narrative which is totally a product of this 24/7 cycle than of objective reality
• Journalists have become celebrities so they must lead most interviews because they are the star.  The problem with this approach is they don’t have the in-depth knowledge on each subject and as their guest misrepresents one fact after another, it goes completely by the “personality” while they focus on the next question that will make them look tough.  The exceptions here are Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, and from time to time Anderson Cooper
• In order “to get the story” you have to have access to get the interview.  Print journalism use to, and to some extent still does do detailed research, but most TV media lives and dies by access.  The politicians are no dummies so they control access to those who will be favorable to them and not ask hard questions.  Ask yourself why there isn’t nationwide outrage that Sarah Palin will not face the press corps to answer hard questions and how they are getting away with it.  Ask yourself why when Campbell Brown pursued one of the Republicans to answer her question (Can you give me one order Sarah Palin ever gave to the National Guard) John McCain cancelled his interview with CNN
• People don’t read anymore.  I like to say the devil is in the details and you only get the truth, when you have done the research.  As print media loses its market share they will scale back on the background research necessary to get at the truth.  Here is a prime example:  David Gregory (another “personality”) likes to defend the presses coverage of the lead up to our invasion of Iraq as “We asked all the right questions.”  True enough, but then you accepted their lies as answers.  Had you done your homework like Knight-Ridder News Service did, you could have exposed their blatant misrepresentations bordering on lies and you could have pointed out those misrepresentations.  I think the rule of thumb for a journalist operating in this environment is the same as an attorney during cross-examination.  If you don’t already know the answer to the question, don’t ask it.  They are trying to create an alternate reality and you had better have reality firmly established so you can point out their lies

So what we are getting what was on display at the Republican convention.  The Republicans created a whole new reality with unsubstantiated claims.  Then political operatives claimed the press was being sexist and instruments of some fantasy liberal eastern establishment, so they had them cowering in the corner, and then repeated one outright lie after another while the press stood by broadcasting their message and not aggressively challenging their facts.  Note that a lie is an intentional misrepresentation of the facts so these weren’t miss-interpretations, they were lies.  The convention was carefully crafted so that during prime time speeches, there was no time between speeches to do an analysis.  So the untruths just laid out there un-rebutted and reinforced by political operatives as the main stream media was run over by their non-stop monologue.  The one exception was Rachel Maddow of MSNBC who kept trying to break into the monologue to point out the lies/misrepresentations.  So where were the rest of them?  Well as the foundations of our nation are crumbling, we have Andrea Mitchell with eyes upward on the balloon drop.  And that about sums it up.  None of them have their eye on the crumbling foundations of our society, but distracted on the balloon drop that was pretty  wasn’t it?.

This is what happened before we invaded Iraq and if you really want to see how badly the press failed I would suggest you watch Bill Moyer’s “Buying the War”.  Well they are about to do it again and then will, like before, accept no responsibility for their failure.  It is time for them to start pushing back.  I want journalist with teeth.  I want them to ask what is liberal eastern establishment bias and why is it bad.  I want them to ask what are small town values and how do they equip anyone for the world we live in today.  I WANT THEM TO PUSH BACK.  I want them to ask Barack what more troops in Afghanistan is going to accomplish and what is his end strategy.  They have a chance to redeem themselves, but they have to get a backbone and respect their calling, journalism.  They will have to understand how they are manipulated and plan accordingly.  If they don’t, we will lose our country for another four years of failure because we have a large segment of our population who lives in ignorance and is easily distracted and fooled.  It would appear that the last eight years was no lesson at all.

One other thought and I will call it judgment.  When your conservative friend tells you that it is their judgment that John McCain has the better judgment to be President, ask him/her the following questions:
1.    Did you vote for George Bush in 2000?
2.    Did you vote for George Bush in 2004?
3.    Did you help put in Congress the Republicans who grew our deficit and government faster than any government in our history, got us involved in an endless war in the Middle East, and have left our economy in the dumper?
Then point out to them that their judgment sucks and thank you very much, but I really do want change.

It is amazing to me to watch and read about the Republican Convention, McCain and Palin’s speeches, and wonder if they noticed that it was Alice in Wonderland?  Neither the President nor the Vice-President attended the proceedings.  No one mentioned them.  The power structure that put them in place was in that Convention center and they were blaming someone else for the dismal state of our government.  It was the liberal eastern establishment, except that there is no liberal eastern establishment and all those people were the establishment that has run Congress for twelve years and the White House, going on eight.  The lobbying scandal was not about Democrats (simply because Democrats had no power) nor were any of the other scandals about Democrats except for that fruit loop from Louisiana who put the money in the freezer.  Louisiana Democrats are really Republicans lite.  But the speeches went on and on and on and our media never pushed back and said, “Wait a minute, weren’t you guys controlling government for the last eight years in the Congress and Executive?”

It gets worse.  Sarah Palin is being stroked for such a fine speech and a new force on the political front and it was obvious she was mouthing the words someone else wrote, many were outright lies, and we have no idea what she knows or does not know.  When her lack of experience was raised, it was sexism and our brave press folded like a lawn chair.  Oh aren’t they the tool of the liberal media?  Where is she and why won’t she face a press conference to see if she can really think for herself on her own two feet?  She doesn’t like the extreme examination, but as Barrack said, welcome to what I have been facing for 17 months.  Would we say that Geena Davis could be a great politician and ready to step into the White House after she played the part in a TV series.  What pray tell was the difference?

Everybody thought the speech was great in her attack of the Democrats, but many of the facts weren;t just distortions, they were lies, and there was no substance.  If you don’t like the Democrats approach to change what is your plan?  She made mean little sarcastic comments that in polite conversation would be recognized for what is was, a mean spirited attack with no intent other than inflaming hate and intolerance.  No I do not think her small town values have anything to do with running this very cosmopolitan world and the press ought to have enough backbone to pursue that line of questioning.  John Steward did on the Daily Show and it was quite revealing.  Simple country folks like that country bumpkin we have for a President are the reason this country is in trouble.  Appealing to their need to feel valued with simple minded solutions like drill, drill drill, will not solve the complex problems we face.  What she did was guarantee that the message of working together to solve problems would be the furthest from the bases mind as she reinvigorated the cultural wars that belong in the last century.  Great speech though, didn’t you think?  You people in the press are morons.

Then we have John McCain standing up there and telling us, after the hate Democrats speech the night before, we will work with them.  The silence in the convention center and the luke warm response to that line tells you everything you need to know about how great Sarah Palin’s speech was.  She is a great American if you think inciting intolerance is a good thing.  We listened as they claimed they would bring about real change yet they offer us nothing in programs to demonstrate that change other than the same conservative dogma, and will continue with the same good old boys that brought us the last eight years. Fat old white men thinking in the last century and protecting their status quo is what we saw on display.   We are just going to be better conservatives and get rid of the straying ones.  Did it ever dawn on anyone that it is conservative ideas not the straying morons of the party that are really bankrupt?

I am sorry, the emperor has no clothes.  The rest of you, especially the media morons, stood there gaping and commenting on what a great convention it was and I am wondering if we saw the same event.  The attendees were a sea of fat white people totally unrepresentative of this country (except for maybe the fat thing) and you never said a word.  You stood there mute while their political operatives spouted out their talking points that were blatantly false.  Here are the Republicans trying to incite hatred of the Democrats and the liberal eastern media that doesn’t exist, and you guys went along with it.  Their failed conservative philosophy is what has brought us to the brink.

They were the only ones that had the power to change things in the last eight years and the change they brought is for all to behold.  John McCain promised to bring us real change.  His VP is an attack dog radical conservative that wants to ban gay marriage, ban all abortions (and that would be in vitro fertilizations also since life begins with the first cell), deny Constitutional rights guaranteed by the Supreme Court to detainees, and teach creationism in the schools in defiance of the Constitution, and she gave a great speech?  She showed the pluck to be VP?  John himself has changed his position on the major issues of torture, immigration, taxes, and evangelicals to get this nomination, but he was touting himself as the maverick who you can trust?  He will bring about change with the same conservative philosophy and the same cast of character that brought you the change in the last eight years?   We will get change all right, things will get worse.  He is wearing no clothes.  Can’t you see it?  Look closer.  Jesus, pay attention.