On the Contrary

President Obama had a town hall meeting on Wednesday and he took on the hard questions about health care.  He answered them well and took the opportunity provided by these venues to fully explain his plan and the alternatives.  As soon as it was over in TV land, it was back to the Michael Jackson saga.  Continuous coverage of his death and the mess his life was is non-stop.  Please stop it.

What is most enlightening is the pandering going on by the media, anyone black, entertainers, and anyone else who is afraid to raise obvious questions about “the king of pop”.  It also shows us that worship of celebrity is so much more important in our society than a real examination of one’s real worth to society.  Case in point is all the fawning over what a kind and loveable person Jackson was.  Really?  That certainly was his image, but it is too dangerous to enter the territory to really examine what by any measure was a disaster of a life right now.  You might look out of touch.  But since I have been out of touch with popular America for most of my life, here goes.

Okay he could sing and dance.  And he could do it with the very best of them.  But let us not confuse the entertainer with the person, which is of course exactly what we are doing.  By all accounts Michael Jackson left his affairs in a superb mess.  The children are fathered (and for that matter mothered) by who?  Do they in fact have legitimate birth certificates, and what person in their right mind would leave the children he professed to love so dearly in total legal limbo?  His mother or Diana Ross for guardians?  Dad cut out of the will.  That ought to tell you something.

Then there is his financial mess of an estate with an estimated debt of half a billion dollars.  Kind of makes your little credit card problem very small potatoes.  In all fairness, it is possible that royalties and memorabilia will make this up in the years to come (not to mention owning half of the Beatles song collection).  Those who knew him said he could not brook discussions on economics.  Okay, hire someone.  But the trust thing was another indicator of a truly disturbed personality.  His entourage was always changing and there were continuous reports of fallings out with A or B. He had so many doctors, it was obvious he was prescription shopping.   But he was an artist and artists are temperamental.  Or he was a jerk?

Then there is, of course, his strange behavior with children, which if you were profiling a child molester, he would fit it perfectly.  Of course he was not convicted, but like O.J., that doesn’t make him innocent.  If I had his money, I would never have settled the cases he did settle out of court when my reputation was at stake.  Maybe his fans want to believe he was asexual, but where there is smoke there is fire.  Meanwhile nary a disparaging word is echoed as the press and anyone who can get airtime pines on about the wonderful Michael Jackson, his troubled life, his recently discovered will, and of course the secret wives coming out of the woodwork.  And the reality is who cares or more importantly who should care?

So what does all this tell me?  It tells me that our celebration of celebrity has robbed us of our important reasoning skills.  It shows me that the press is nothing but an echo chamber of the conventional wisdom and popular trends.  It shows me how many people will do and say anything to get face time on our TVs.  It shows me why most Americans cannot have an intelligent discussion about health care, or energy policy, or gays in the military, reforming the banking system, or the way forward in Afghanistan.  It tells me why people listen to Rush Limbaugh and other conservative demagogues.  It tells me why people still listen to Vice President Cheney, and why we elect such morons to represent us in Congress who get nothing done.  It tells me that critical thinking skills are a rare commodity these days.

Enough about Michael Jackson!  I am having serious withdrawal from the regular news otherwise titled “Republicans Say the Stupidest Things and Nobody Ever Flinches”.  But since about mid-day yesterday, it has been non-stop.  Okay Michael Jackson was an interesting and troubled man.  Back in his prime, when he hadn’t altered his appearance to the truly bizarre, he was an amazing entertainer.  But he was not a world leader and his coming and going is going to have no impact on world events or our future except on People Magazine and Variety, or if you held some of his debt.  But let’s just say the coverage is warranted.  Have you listened to it?

I kept waiting for the pool cleaning guy to call in about his close and personal relationship with Michael.  I can’t believe the number of people who did have a close relationship and yet hadn’t seen him in years.  Maybe he waved at them over a crowd at a restaurant.  What kindness!  What a tender moment! Then there was the sameness to all the interviews and that sameness which I started counting is how many times the work “I” was used.  Maybe that just comes with the territory with show business people.  Everything in the end revolves around self.  Of course who could miss Al Sharpton.  I was wondering when Jessie Jackson would show up.  I am starting to believe that the voting rights act was a product of Michael’s career.

Then there was Keith Olbermann’s description of the massive crowds at UCLA medical center.  The problem with this one, at least based on the TV coverage, was that there were only several hundred readily visible.  Then Keith waxed on about how this man had impacted so many lives and thus the crowds.  I was wondering if it was just the same crowd that gathers at a crime scene, car wreck, or burning building.  Then, of course, was the coverage of the  coroner’s report which told you nothing and then the nothing was analyzed ad infinitum.  Then bring on some talking head expert to tell you what you just heard.  The reality is we will know nothing until the toxicology reports are completed in 6 weeks, so can we move on?  For my money he probably did die of a heart attack brought on by the stress of being in debt, trying to make a comeback, and over use of pain killers (because the rich can’t suffer pain like the rest of us, they are too important).  But we shall see.

But this blog is not to denigrate Michael who certainly was a pop icon, maybe one of the greatest.  This blog is denigrating the unbelievable amateurish and boorish coverage of his death, focusing on every minute detail, most of which they got wrong, and broadcasting interview after interview that was anything but insightful, much less truthful.  You really start to understand how they can be so easily manipulated by political hacks when you watch this kind of mush that masquerades as news.

But maybe I am showing my age.  Had this been Van Morrison I would have been glued to the TV.  I guess celebrity is in the eye of the beholder.

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?

I have been listening to the Republican allegations about Judge Sotomayor and it is truly repugnant.  No repugnant is not the right word, it is nuts.  Have the psychos taken over the Republican Party?  I listened  to Rush Limbaugh talk about President Obama and I thought to myself, has hate speech come into vogue?  No, I am serious.  Rush Limbaugh and some of the others are inciting to violence.  This is not entertainment.  This is encouraging the demented in our society to take up arms.

Even some Republicans have asked the mouths of Newt Gingrich and  Rush Limbaugh to tone it down.  They are realizing that these racist attacks could alienate one of the biggest voting blocks in the future, but I have no idea how Republican ideology could appeal to them anyway.  I guess what is so shocking to me is that the whole debate is one smear campaign.  Is that what the Republican Party has come to?  Instead of standing firm on their values, they just make outrageous claims about their opponent and hope the feeble minded voter buys into this slander?

I think we are seeing the bankruptcy of Republican ideas in these attacks.  I think what we are seeing is frantic behavior resulting from Republicans starting to realize that their ideas no longer have merit.  They are having a panic attack.  The debates on torture and closing Guantanamo are a case in point.  They have become shrill.  There is no more give and take, but rude interrupting and shouting.  I guess it is hard to continue the torture has value mantra as more and more evidence is mounting that it didn’t.  So out shout your adversary.  Get more frantic.  It reminds me of a discussion I had a while back where a very conservative, conservative explained to me that George Bush wasn’t a conservative, but a liberal.  They are grasping at straws and the straws they are grasping at are less and less rational.

The problem is our 24/7 news media who looks at these shouting matches as entertainment and that is how they cover them.  As Frank Rich pointed out in his column this morning (Who is to Blame for the Next Attack)  and I pointed out in my blog (We Moved On, But They Haven’t) the press is making the same mistake it made before 9/11 allowing false information to go unchallenged.  Dick Cheney’s speech last week is a case in point.  When one side is making outrageous statements, and the other is trying to be rational, the media should not be a neutral moderator of this discussion, but debunk the outrageousness instead of letting it be presented as fact.  If they keep this up, we are doomed as they repeat their errors of the post 9/11 reporting.

I think when you look at the details of some of the allegations that are being made, you really start to see the irrational emotionalism of the Republicans.  Pat Buchannan, who MSNBC keeps giving a microphone to, has attacked Judge Sotomayor about the reverse discrimination suit involving white fire fighters.  Is his emotionalism he missed the whole point of the case, which was that throwing out the test as being unfair because no black firefighters had passed it was not a question of fairness. It was a question of whether throwing out the test was legal  Had she ruled as he felt she should, she would have had to ignore current law and precedent, and in fact, be an activist judge.  For a Republican there is no definition anymore of activist judge except one that doesn’t agree with them.

What we are finding is that Republicans have no argument on the issues based upon the facts because more and more, the facts are not supporting their arguments.  So they are turning to fear and wild emotional appeals not based upon a rational considerations of the actual reality.  Their mantra of small government, low taxes, and faith in the market place with minimal regulation has failed miserably.  That doesn’t mean there isn’t merit in these ideas, but they need to evolve to meet the reality we find ourselves in.  In order to do this, they must jettison their base because it is what mires them in their intransigence.  Right now the Republican’s base are the irrational psychos that need to be marginalized.  Said another way, If the Republican Party is going to be rejuvenated and become a big tent organization, then this base will have to be jettisoned. They are going to have to accept some moderation that their base will never stand for.  Until they are up to this task, we will continue to see the kinds of irrational and emotional attacks and wild claims instead of reasoned and thoughtful debate about our problems.  As long as the 24/7 cable media continues to feed on this circus, we are all done a great disservice and if we fall for it, we are doomed.

I watched the two speeches on torture and detainees by President Obama, and Ex-Vice President Cheney, the media coverage of the event, and I was appalled.  President Obama laid out a path forward for us and unequivocally restated our values.  Although I found some things in his way forward I will take issue with such as continued use of tweaked military commissions and more fundamentally flawed, the idea of prolonged detention, I found his speech a restating of our basic values and a breath of fresh air.  Then came Dick Cheney’s speech which was full of basic assumptions and assertions that were flawed or have been thoroughly discredited, and yet the media played them over and over without pointing out their misrepresentations.  Thankfully MSNBC did do some fact checking.  You would think that after the rush to war in Iraq the media would learn not to be the bullhorn for misrepresentations wouldn’t you.

Here was Dick Cheney arguing an argument that he has already lost once.  First and foremost is his assertion that torture saved lives and he has the memos to prove it.  This is the man who had the memos to prove WMD in Iraq and a connection to Al-Qaeda.  I am sure there are memos that exist and they were written just as the memos documenting WMD in Iraq, culling only intelligence he wanted to hear and not presenting any of the information that might cast doubt on the veracity of the claims.  I am not going to g:o into all of the outright lies in his speech, but I would refer you to a McClatchy News report that did lay out his assertions and the reality.  Just click on this link: Cheney’s speech contained omissions, misstatements.   Sadly what we have here is a man who so denies reality that in his mind, everything he says is fact.  He will go to his grave grasping his precious memos that were written to make him happy, not find the facts.  Meanwhile his daughter continues to argue that we did not torture because they found some flunkies to say in legal memos it was not torture.  You have to wonder what twisted minds could still accept this as rational.

But there are two other events that really make this a giant step back.  First was the 24/7 cable news failing to debunk his statements as they were made.  In their attempt to entertain by having dueling speeches, they failed to properly vet his statements, playing one against the other as though this were an honest difference of opinion.  This was further magnified by the fact that most of the spectrum of American political thought is now in the Democratic Party.  That means when you put up a Republican against a Democrat to discuss who “won”, by saying the Republican argument is equal to the Democrat’s is lending credence to the Republican argument that it doesn’t deserve.  Since the Republican Party represents now the marginalized radical right, the veracity of their “facts” should not carry the same weight as more moderate members of our society.  In other words the press still treats the Republicans as having an equal and balancing opinion that deserves respect instead of a marginalized segment of our society.  The Public would be better served by a debate between conservative Democrats and Progressives as more representative of public opinion these days.

The second failure was by Democrats and it was huge.  This small group of radical Republicans who are not making any sense on any issue, except to say no, decided to try the fear card again with the scare tactics of bringing the detainees to U.S. prisons.  Note this is just another form of their primary policy statement of just saying no to any change.  Had the Democrats stood firm and laughed at them, it could have been the final blow in their failed politics of fear.  Instead the Democrats acted like frighten children who do not want to look weak on terrorism.  While the rest of us have moved on from reacting to this fear card, the Democrats in Congress cringed and ran for cover, validating the Republicans tactic and putting them back in the game.  It was shameful and disgraceful and it may signal their ultimate demise.  Had the Democrats stood tall and made the obvious arguments that President Obama had to make in his speech because they were so craven, they would now be leading the country.  Sadly they put the Republicans and their scare tactics, which might I add emboldens Dick Cheney, right back in the game.

So all in all in was a bad week for change and seeing the Democratic Party finally lead anywhere.  I don’t know why Congress is always the last to understand what the rest of us think is obvious.

Another Sunday morning getting the straight story from our tireless media, or is that tiresome?  So I watched my usual compliment of morning news shows and got filled up with a lot of nothing.  Well there is always one exception, but I will get to that.  So without further ado:

• Arlen Specter was the guest on Meet the Press and he did not disappoint.  I do have to hand it to David Gregory, he is getting better.  He asked Arlen all the right questions and Arlen did not dodge any of them.  Arlen is definitely a Republican in the Democratic Party.  Well not the new incarnation of Republicans, but even the moderate kind are still going to be a real hindrance to change.  I am not sure what the Democrats got out of this deal if he is going to vote as he always did.  The big one is health care and he is against a government single payer system along side private insurers.  This is change?  So exactly why is President Obama going to go to Pennsylvania and campaign for this guy?  The reality is that Arlen Specter is where the Republicans were back in the 80’s and I am not sure what we would gain from trying to recreate an era that isn’t worth recreating.
• The other two guests were Joe Scarborough and Ed Gillespie, both Republicans, who were there to talk about resurrecting the Republican Party.  This was also a topic on CNN with John King.  There was no new ground here.  Joe and Ed have obviously been drinking the Republican Kool-Aid.  They think that if the party gets out of the social issues, then the conservative message can be a big tent again.  They pointed out how in the 70’s the party was left for dead, and the same in the early nineties, but they made their comeback and it will happen again.   Uh Joe, Ed?   The world has changed and small government and miniscule spending doesn’t address this new world.  The social issue of abortion, gay marriage, and religion, are not the Republican Party’s big problem.  Their problem is that the conservative mantra of small government, free markets, and cutting taxes don’t address any of our real challenges.  If they did, they would have valid alternate strategies to what the Democrats are proposing. Sadly they think that present day Republicans just lost their way allowing deficits (mainly from cutting taxes) and big government (but little regulation). The reality is that the message no longer is viable.  I wonder why reporters don’t challenge them on this instead of going along with their fiction that they just need to find a new spokesperson.  Oh well.
• Then there were the endless discussions about who President Obama would choose for replacing David Souter.  I have to tell you I hate these discussions.  They are akin to metal masturbation.  No that is not quite correct, they are mental masturbation.  It is like sitting around listening to guys talk about the perfect football team.  It means nothing and it gets you nowhere.  Instead of endless what if scenarios why don’t we just let the President fill the position and then we can carefully dissect that person and ask all kinds of inane and embarrassing questions instead of wasting them on pretend candidates who may never make the cut.  Oh I forgot.  Watching the NFL draft is great drama so I guess this fills airtime.
• Let us not forget the discussions/hysteria about the swine flu.  Oh forgive me.  For the morons who think eating pigs is dangerous, it is the H1N1 influenza.  We have had one death in the United States and the way we are reacting to this, I am beginning to understand the panic around 9/11.  Thank god we have not had another terrorist attack or judging from our over reaction to this minor scare, we would have been burning the constitution in the street.  I grant you it can be scary, but in the meantime can we just stay home if we are sick, sneeze into our sleeves, and get on with our lives?
• Finally, Fareed Zackaria on CNN’s GPS interviewed Defense Secretary William Gates and this guy is one down to earth and honest human being.  We are very lucky to have him as our Secretary of Defense.  Afghanistan is a very difficult problem and listening to Secretary Gates let me know he knows what I know.  As I listened to his descriptions of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and what was really possible there, I know that we are in good hands.  He is keenly aware of the Russian experience in Afghanistan and understands that troops are not the answer.  We are in for a long ride, but our troops can be very proud of their leadership.

So another Sunday morning talking about going nowhere fast.

With Arlen Specter’s switch to the Democratic Party, one has to wonder what is going on.  Well for one thing with the Republican Party only representing 21% of the population and shrinking, the math for the primary in Pennsylvania was fairly straightforward.  He could not win the primary against a hard-line conservative, but could probably win the general election.  So from this calculation, it was the only choice for a chance to survive.  But this raises all kinds of issues.

First is how Pennsylvania would see this.  From the Democratic point of view, they had a good chance to run a more liberal Democrat to win against a hard-line conservative.  This scenario presented the Democrats with someone more supportive of their agenda. Whoever was going to run for that seat from the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania must feel like he just got his legs cut out from under him.  Is Senator Specter moderate enough to be elected?  I don’t know and this is the chance the Democrats are taking.

The press is making a big deal about getting the 60th vote in the Senate to be filibuster proof, but it is a foolish claim.  Senator Specter will vote as he always does, and that is independently.  Additionally, the Democratic Party has a large spectrum of political beliefs from liberal to conservative.  They usually don’t vote in a block.  It may help, but probably not when it really counts.

Here is the really sad thing.  There is no room for moderate Republicans in the Republican Party.  They have moved to a party of litmus tests for the radical right.  On the other hand, the Democratic Party is really a party of three camps.  You have the very liberal side, which is how the Republicans paint everyone in the Democratic Party and is actually a small minority of it; then you have the moderates who are really progressives, which is the majority of the party; and then you have the conservative Democrats who really can not be distinguished from moderate Republicans a few years ago.  No there aren’t any socialists in there.  The Republican Party is being made irrelevant by their hard-line dogma, which they refuse to examine.  More about that in a moment.

The final issue that is raised by Senator Specter’s defection is what does this say about primary elections?  If the primaries are really a function of the hard left and the hard right, the nation is not getting choices that represent their views.  If hard-line Democrats or hard-line Republicans control the primaries, the choices we all get at election time are no choice at all.  In this environment where the Republican Party is a small and radicalized party, it may be time to rethink open primaries.  California is moving in that direction at the behest of the Republicans here because they feel disenfranchised in a Democrat controlled State legislature.  But they may rue their plan when they find out that the independents will vote most of their radical brethren out of office and instead move much more to the center.  In my small mind I would like to see an open primary and top two run off for the office in November even if it turns out they are both from the same party..

Finally, what do the Republicans have to do to stem what is going to be an ongoing desertion of their party members?  First they have to understand, as well as the press, that the middle is in the Democratic Party and the Republicans are a right fringe party.  If Arlen Specter is center right and he has moved to the Democratic Party, just where do you think the center is?

I listened to Michelle Bernard, a conservative political analyst on MSNBC, tell us that the Republicans need to find their soul: “That doesn’t mean Republicans should give up their belief in limited government or free markets. I don’t think that’s the case at all. But the Republican Party needs to find a way to reach out to many, many people, not just the religious right.” The problem with that prescription is that in order to reach out to more people, their basic belief in limited government and the free market needs major modifications and just dropping the right wing and the religious nuts isn’t going to solve that because it just makes them smaller without solving the root problem.  Limited government and what they mean by free markets is no longer selling in the market place.

First, right now we are having two immediate crises, economic and medical (swine flu).  In both cases the people expect our government to be there to resolve these crises.  How does that fit into limited government?   Republicans want to starve so it will never have the resources to help anyone.  Remember Katrina?  If this argument is going to have any credibility at all in the future, then the Republicans have to stop their knee jerk reaction to government programs and understand that government is part of the solution.  Then looking at what is appropriate to government and what is appropriate to the private sector might have a little more credence.  The swine flu epidemic is a case in point.  They cut funds for the CDC and preparation for just such a disaster.  Now they see a need, but their present ideology doesn’t allow for government planning and funding of the results of that planning.  By hating all things government except the military, thinking the private sector will provide all the solutions, the are emasculating the very solutions people are crying out for and we have found we need to address many of our complex problems that face us in our future.

On the free market thing, who ever said Democrats were against the free market?  What this is code for is little or no regulation or interference in business.  Think about the economic crisis we are in and then consider why no regulation is such a jim dandy idea.  It is out of touch with the reality of what is happening around us and our changing world.  A moderate approach, which may I add many Democrats are proposing, is smart regulations.  If Republicans could get off their “No” soapbox and say that the free market needs some fixing and requires more regulations to make our economy more stable, then we can have an honest debate on what those controls should be.    But they still hold to climate change isn’t happening, regulation of the environment is unnecessary, anything that impacts business is bad, and government is bad at everything.  These beliefs make them irrelevant in today’s world.  And it is forcing moderates to move to the Democratic Party where dissent and real debate are still allowed and real solutions to our problems can be proposed.

So what have is real diversity of both race and ideas in the Democratic party on all issues from health care to stimulus.  The Republicans have become the party of the white southern bigot.  The Republican Party has made themselves irrelevant by their hard-line, no compromise positions and until they change their own ideology to reflect a changing world, they are irrelevant.  The only way they are going to appeal to a wider electorate is take this radical step to reinvent themselves.  I don’t think they can do it because it requires tolerance and they don’t have any.  It’s like giving up religion for them and they are Republican bible thumpers.  Without their dogmatic beliefs, their world would crumble.  Suprise!  It is crumbling.

Okay, I admit it.  I am a news junkie.  Usually while I work in the afternoon I alternate between MSNBC and CNN depending on which one has interesting guests, or is not engaging in banal banter, or is not giving me advice about my health or my money which I don’t have any of.  Fox News I avoid like the plague because it does really represent a very biased point of view and the amount of miss reporting far exceeds the other two.

But in a New York Times article on Monday I find I am fairly out of step. The gist of the article was that with MSNBC tilting left, and Fox right, CNN, who they claim holds the middle, is losing viewership.  What was shocking if we look at the April numbers is that CNN has been fourth. Fox has 668,000 viewers; MSNBC has 300,000; and CNN has 271,000. HLN has 277,000.  Fox has over double the numbers of MSNBC.  So let’s do some critical thinking here.

First, is CNN really in the middle?  They get this label by claiming that they give both sides a fair hearing.  But as pointed out in yesterday’s blog and by Fareed Zakaria and others, we have 1 ½ political parties and the ½ are the Republicans.  So if you give the Flat Earthers the same credence in a debate with Round Earthers, isn’t the debate slanted?  If you are giving the Republican No Machine the same footing with the policies put forward by the Democrats, are you not actually giving more weight than is due to their arguments?  By not being aggressive enough at challenging these Republicans and their ideas and having the two pundit debate, CNN is actually more conservative leaning than middle of the road because they are lending credence to the arguments having equal weight.  Besides, remember where Glenn Beck came from, that Lou Dobbs continues to bash immigrants, and the business interviews are decidedly conservative and the net result is a right leaning news organization.

My point here is that if you are conservative you will watch Fox News, and if you are independent or liberal, you are probably going to watch MSNBC where old thinking is challenge by new thinking from Rachel Maddow, David Schuster, and Keith Olbermann.  Instead of just accepting their guest’s statements, they are well informed and ask penetrating questions.  CNN is really competing with Fox News for viewers.  Now in all fairness, this does not apply to CNN’s international reporting, which I don’t think anyone does a better job.  Lets just hope they continue to hold on to these reporters and journalists because they do a great service for us.

The article implied that one has to pick a bias to gain readership.  Is MSNBC really that left leaning or has the middle shifted which leaves CNN looking conservative?  I will give you that Keith Olbermann does very definitely have a bias, but Rachel and David reflect more what I think the younger nation is thinking.

But there is something else to consider about these numbers.  News junkies are old like me but the majority of our nation is younger and does not watch these shows.  What the 2:1 ratio of Fox watchers to MSNBC watchers tells me is that we have an older generation that is mostly conservative watching these shows.  Old people find change much more difficult to deal with and Fox reassures them that nothing is changing and the old ideas still are viable.  It’s a lie of course, but in the world of making money, it is profitable.  In the world of let the market place decide, if lies, shrillness, conflict and misinformation sell better than truth and rational consideration of reality, then that is what we get.  But some of us still like to use our brains, and MSNBC usually is better at questioning the conventional wisdom so it is my choice, the exception being Chris Mathews.

Just a short note as I work on Vine/Wine Friday:  The Press is finally being the press and it is a welcome surprise.  The Republicans have been out on one of their talking point drives trying to tamp down the outrage about their sactioned torture.  In the past the press has gladly lent their stage for these conservative talking points, but on the torture issue they are confronting these Republicans with a few facts that don’t quite jive with their story.  A case in point was yesterday’s Nora O’Donnell (MSNBC) interview with Liz Cheney, the daughter of Vice President Cheney.  Liz Cheney was spewing all the misinformation about torture and with the memos and other information we now know about what actually happened, Nora was able to point out most of the out right lies in the talking points or the failures in logic.  Later Lawrence O’Donnell was interviewed and he trashed the rest of the logic including the claims of preventing terrorist attacks.  On that one, the attack was prevented 6 months before we captured the terrorist they purported to have tortured to prevent the attack.  You can see all the interviews on the Daily Kos.

There was another interesting tidbit on the Olbermann show (Countdown MSNBC) when Keith was interviewing Chris Hayes the Washington Editor from the Nation Magazine about whether Nancy Pelosi had, as John Boehner claimed, known about what was going on (which she denied).  Chris said, “I am inclined to believe Speaker Pelosi over John Boehner, but I don’ really care from a partisan standpoint, who sign off on all this.  Let it all be brought to light.  If it were the case that there were Democratic law makers who knew what was happening and gave it the thumps up whether tacit or explicit, we should know about that…” This is the primary difference between Democrats and Republicans.  They are protecting their own at all costs, most Democrats are standing up for a principal that torture is immoral.

So here is a hearty thank you to Nora O’Donnell and we hope the beginning of a new chapter in Press coverage where instead of just letting the pundit spout his talking points, the interviewer is well enough prepared to raise critical questions about them instead of just moving on to the next question, letting the false claims go unchallenged, and lending credibility to them.  I would love to see the same type of interview about the economy or energy.  It truly would be a new day

As is my habit on Sunday, I try to watch the Sunday news shows to see what the topics of the day are and how the press is covering them.  It was an exercise in futility.  There was Larry Summers on Meet the Press explaining that we would not relieve any constraints on Cuba until we get tit for tat.  The first question you have to ask is why is Larry Summers commenting on Cuba?  Shouldn’t that be Hillary?  Secondly, that is exactly the policy we have followed for the last 50 years that has been such a failure.  Then there was Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard commenting on CNN that this policy was wildly successful because Cuba has never been a threat.  Cuba a threat?  I think if you define success in this manner (much like we have never been attacked again by al-Qaeda in the U.S. after 9/11, therefore everything we have done is the right policy), then you can justify almost anything.  The fact that the Cubans are not free gets left out of the equation.

Then there was the discussion of whether President Obama should have been civil to Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.  Since Chavez has said some outrageous things about the United States, we should act equally childish and see who can be the bigger diva?  Isn’t that exactly what President Bush did and just gave Chavez ammunition?  Anyone who is an experienced negotiator knows that the first key element to negotiations is to establish mutual respect.  If being civil is a disadvantage, I don’t want to live in the world these people think is appropriate.  Bring on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as a model for our way forward.  At least in President Obama’s news conference, he took this whole foolish discussion on and set it straight.

So why can’t our news media see common sense?  Why do they continue to focus on these frivolous issues and arguments?  I think the answer here is that our news media is woefully out of touch with where most of us are now.  They continue to parade the same old tired pundits on the screen locked in the Washington bubble while most of us yearn for some new thinking.  We have witnessed the old approaches fail and we want to try something different.  But our news media continues to give the old arguments and old politicians a forum for throwing out old ideas and protecting the status quo.  What are Dick Armey and Tom Delay doing giving the country advice on the way forward (Meet the Press and Hardball)?  They are the kings of a failed approach. What the hell do they have to say to us about anything?   Well it would appear that the only people interested in what they have to say are the press.  The rest of us are thinking, “Done that, didn’t work, got a new idea?”  At least Gloria Borger on CNN said one common sense thing, “President Obama is trying a new approach to see if it will work.”  What an insight!  The country is in a mess, the old solutions don’t work, and most of us are willing to try a new approach and see if can work.

My point is simply this:  The talking head news media is focusing on political back and forth that most of us have moved on from.  Most Americans are looking for a new approach and our media is focused on yesterday’s arguments.  For instance in the Cuba discussion, what if the U.S. just ignored Cuba.  Forget the carrot and stick.  It just gives these dictators someone to blame for their problems.  Just open up the country to free trade and travel and let events take their own course.  What a novel idea.  But the discussion you get is the old carrot and stick.  Where is the discussion about new ideas?  These are not going to take place as long as we continue to give the same old talking heads and pundits the microphone.  So please stop it.  The job of the press is to challenge these old ideas instead of giving them a podium from which to bore us to death with them and pretend they are somehow stewards of old wisdom.

I guess change is a scary thing for many people.  That in my mind is why the Republicans sound so shrill today and desperately want to establish the old order.  It would also appear that our media can’t stand change either as it would change the whole dynamic of their coverage and discussions.  They would have to bring in some new people with new ideas and do something new.  As evidenced by most of today’s discussions, they are resisting it mightily.

Note:  One exception as always was Fareed Zackaria’s GPS where he was asking real and substantial questions about our way forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  There is a real fear that Pakistan could become a failed government.  What he doesn’t give us is politicians with some ideological bent, but thoughtful diplomats (Richard Holbrooke) and knowledgeable journalists who can give us a real sense of the issues and what is possible.  And of course let us not forget Rachel Maddow whose show is breaking new ground for being rational.  It is such a breath of fresh air.