On the Contrary

If you haven’t seen Alan Grayson’s interview of CNN please click on this video below .  Congressman Grayson is the newly elected (8 months ago) Democrat from Orlando Florida who finally took on the Republicans on health care and said what we were all thinking.  In this interview the “balanced” panel attacked Congressman Grayson for lowering the level of the debate by calling Republicans knuckle dragging Neanderthals and saying Republicans want sick people  just to die.  Now this is interesting as they had guest after guest reinforce the death panel lies, and they never challenged them for these outright lies.  So much for the liberal biased media.  Here is the video:

But Congressman Grayson stood his ground, and for the first time we Democrats saw a Democrat fight back.  What has happened in our discourse is that the Republicans have been making outrageous statements that these CNN morons cover and create an aura of truth around these statements by repeating them over and over again.  Remember “You Lie”.  It took them a whole day to point out that Congressman Joe Wilson was the liar.  So now their hypocrisy at accusing Congressman Grayson of lowering the level of discourse is almost laughable if it weren’t so tragic.  These people, CNN, Wolfe Blitzer, and his band of “balanced” jackals are the problem.

Gloria, “repeat every conventional wisdom without an original thought”, Borger asked why this wasn’t the same as the “You lie” shout out.  Gee Gloria, one was a personal insult to the President before the body and the President and a clear violation of house decorum rules.  The other was what Republicans have been doing (death panels, kill off seniors, etc.) since time began and is the meat and potatoes of the House and no violation of the rules.  Oh, and did I mention, what he said was true?  Duh!

The best defense Mr. Grayson’s gave of his comments were that they were true.  While the Republican sycophant on the panel argued that the Republicans really did have a plan for health care, tort reform and more competition, albeit no public plan, Congressman Grayson simply laughed at him and said that was no plan.  He said he was sorry but in his eight months in Congress all he had seen was the word NO.  What amazes me is that these buffoons who were interviewing him never asked why when the Republicans were in power and could have done all these things they didn’t legislate them.

What Congressman Grayson did in his little presentation to Congress was state the obvious.  No, if you ask Republicans, they don’t want to see anyone die, but their actions do just that so what is the difference?  Is the reality in their words or their actions?  And somewhere deep in their little empathetically challenged hearts, they believe that these people don’t really count because if they just worked hard and had discipline, this would not befall them.  The reality is that they dehumanize the rest of us because they believe at some level that we deserve our fates.

So thank you Congressman Grayson.  You made me as a Democrat proud.  If more of you would look these Republicans in the eye and call them what they are, the level of debate would be raised, not lowered.  They lowered to the gutter with untruths and lies that our media repeated over and over.  So they got away with it.  Now we are taking them on by telling them the truth about themselves.  The media is shocked, shocked, shocked, I tell you. Keep it up Alan. Maybe we will embolden a few more Democrats to come out fighting.  If we do, the level of debate will get raised not lowered as we no longer stand for these attacks.

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.

I was out in the garage lifting weights and listening to CNN and what masquerades as news when Wolfe Blitzer announced that we would have a special report on whether tax cuts were effective stimulus.  I was excited.  Finally a rational discussion about this important topic.  What did we get?  The political reporter.  You can guess from this alone that this would be worthless.  I guess it was too hard to talk to economists.  Basically she said some (she didn’t say who except political flacks) say yes and some say no.  And this passes for news or information?  I almost hurt myself throwing my curl bar across the garage.  I will repair the hole in the sheet rock tomorrow.

Dr. Jeffery Sachs of Columbia University, and a respected economist, was on Rachel Maddow this evening and he pointed out that tax cuts are very ineffective in this kind of economy as the money is likely to be saved and these tax cuts were driven by our moderate Republicans in lieu of real stimulus spending.  He also noted that this package was way too small, but was reasonably sized if we don’t want to spend 10 years digging our way out of a deficit hole.  But then he noted that the spending needed to be focused on real stimulus and the “gang of three” had greatly reduce its effectiveness.  I stand by my earlier blog.

It would be really interesting if some of these political hacks who are spouting tax cut for everything would actually have to face grilling by a  panel of economists.  But then the truth would be out and where would the fun be in that Wolfe?  It is much more fun to continue the misinformation while the country burns.