On the Contrary

My nephew Jeff thinks I am more of a cynic when I am in a little pain.  Maybe so.  As I sit here in my chair with my leg propped up, ice on my knee, listening to the news and reading all the papers, let me tell you, things are in really bad shape.  No, that is not quite right.  Until this hiatus, I don’t think I realized how crazy our country has become.  We have stopped making sense.

First there is the news.  No I take that back.  There is no news anymore.  The level of professionalism is so low it denies description.  They are so bad they have become the gossip channel where fact checking is moot and opinions are out of control.  John Stewart on the Daily Show did the nation a favor when he exposed this lunacy when he showed how CNN fact checked an Obama skit on Saturday Night Live and then showed clip after clip where Republicans would make patently false statements with Wolfe or some other blithering idiot saying, “Well we have to leave it there” instead of correcting the record.  See video (Sorry for the commercial):

Is it any wonder that our nation is so poorly informed on most of the issues?  This isn’t just bad, it is criminal.  They are misinforming the nation and are part of the Republican problem.  Today I turned on the news and got a 25 minute press conference about the escaped balloon.  There is no national story here.  The guy may be a fruitcake but we have more important things to worry about.  I think we are living in a lunatic asylum when I watch this stuff.

Then there are the actual politicians that are being interviewed.  I never realized how stupid most of these people are.  They look nice, the can use all the buzz words, but there is no there there.  They are citing information that is flat out wrong or is carefully crafted by a biased source and they don’t seem to care.  These are the people whose hands we have put our lives in?  Look at our economy.  It is in shambles as employment is the issue and we still focus on the stock market.  The banks have been made whole and we have people losing their homes.  Meanwhile the morons in Congress continue to prevent any real change whether it is bank reform, agricultural reform, finance reform, real energy policy, climate change, or health care, as though the conservative approach will somehow regain it’s vigor.  The crazies are in charge.  Meanwhile on Meet the Press they had a panel about the problems women face.  The fucking place is burning down and we can’t seem to focus on the cause of the fire.

And one last word about the health care fiasco.  It is over.  There is no reform.  Have you seen the plans?  The best one doesn’t let the average guy have a public plan.  The Achilles Heel of the Democrats is that they care about people.  So the morons will settle for a plan that covers a few more people instead of saying Hell No and fighting for real reform.  What we are going to get is a plan guaranteed to fail as cost continue to grow and health insurers get richer.  Kind of reminds you of how we reformed the banks doesn’t it?  Meanwhile the press misrepresents this one as saying the liberal Democrats want a public option.  No.  Democrats want a public option; liberal Democrats want a single payer system.  And on this one they are right.  Real reform would be Medicare for everyone.  What is so hard about this?

Finally we have a President who talks a good game, but has done little.  The Saturday Night Live skit about President Obama that CNN fact checked didn’t need to be fact checked. Yes he has made some changes but where it counts he has failed to step up and lead us.  I don’t know if he understands yet that marginal changes from George Bush are just not good enough.  As he approves more troops for Afghanistan in a country that has no government and has no end game except some Republican dream about security for the locals (the Taliban are locals), this country sinks further into its own self-made quagmire.  The day we finally shrug off conservative lunacy, take charge of our country, and really change things will be the day I cheer up.  Other than Congressman Grayson, nobody is speaking for me these days.  The lunatics are in charge of the asylum and the country is running amok.

Oh, did I mention my crutches were made in China?  Insane asylum.

Today I purposely tuned into CNN’s Reliable Sources to see if Howard Kutz would discuss John Stewart’s demonstration of their total lack of journalistic professionalism by again and again failing to fact test the wild claims Republicans have been making, while they did take some of their busy time to fact check a SNL sketch of Obama failures.  The piece that John did was instructive of how the media fails to correct obvious inaccuracies (See Monday’s Blog, Tis the Winter of My Discontent) leaving false impressions of credibility to outright lies or miss-characterizations. It is probably the most important thing the press could have examined about how they are manipulated by politicians and become simply megaphones for the message.

In one of the more cowardly moves by CNN, they ignored the story, probably because it reflects so badly on the professionalism of their journalists.  What was demonstrated is that these guys and gals are too lazy to do their homework and are just there to echo whatever is said.  It is why we went to war in Iraq for non-existent weapons of mass destruction and it is why the American public is so poorly informed on issues today.  CNN will be the last place I will be getting my news and once again, John Stewart stands as a giant among real journalists, and is the only trusted news source left.

For those of you who are repeat readers you know that I like to sum up the Sunday talk show chatter and see if anything besides the usual Washington echo chamber is on anybody’s agenda.  So I started with Meet the Press who had White House Chief Economist Christina Romer and House demagogue Eric Cantor (R-VA).  It was two interviews you could fast forward through.  Dr. Romer pitched the administrations way forward and Representative Cantor told us they had it all wrong.  Yawn.  Once again we had politicos pitching their politics instead of a reasoned discussion about the way forward.  Let’s face it, if Christina thought we ought to be more aggressive she would never say it since she must push the administration plan, and Cantor, while full of criticism, had no plan of his own.  This interview is a reflection of the chattering classes on cable.  No new ground or any rational look at the policies and the way forward, just the same old dueling political ideologies.  No wonder we never make any progress.

I then ran through (DVR) Reliable Sources (no transcript available) because I knew they were going to talk about John Stewart’s roasting of CNBC and Jim Cramer in particular.  The reason the Daily Show and John Stewart are so important to this country is that he takes the obvious, points it out, and makes fun of it.  Mainstream media is locked in their echo chamber and they are missing the real stories that are staring us in the face.  Enter John Stewart.

Well the panel discussion was interesting with most of panelists recognizing that Stewart was calling out mainstream media for not paying attention to the real story, how did all the experts miss the coming downturn.  Of course, there was Tucker Carlson claiming that this was just a liberal hack job on Cramer.  My how the Right continues to be blinded by their politics.  Sooner or later one would have to ask how this coming major catastrophe in our economic lives was so ignored by the financial community.  But Tucker can’t go there since all he sees is liberals ruining his perfect country.  Why do they have this guy on anything?

To me this story was the epitome of all that is wrong with our media.  The conventional wisdom is that nobody saw the economic disaster coming, but this is belied by a little research on the actual reporting which shows that there were financial journalists (and economists) who were warning of this coming meltdown.  But what became painfully obvious in the Camer interview is that most of the mainstream financial journalists were tools of the financial community.  Their reporting depended on access to the movers and shakers in the financial community and their access was dependent on their echoing what their masters were telling them.

Sadly this same dynamic is at work in the mainstream media as well and is why reporting is so much an echo chamber.  What we get are media talking heads who are tools of the political parties.  Their talking points, questions, and criticisms are part of the carefully crafted political dialogue that they just parrot.  So what we get for news is that same old arguments with no real factual or rational basis to judge them.  I guess the best way to say it is that our news has degenerated into a game of spin with the media nothing more that echo chambers for that spin.  Puppets driven by their puppet masters.  At least it is cheaper than doing real research and background.

Then there was Dick Cheney on CNN telling us that we are less safe today because of the Obama administration following the rule of law and even more important, that the administration is using this economic crisis as an opportunity to expand government.  I have a feeling that you need to watch John Stewart tonight, because the irony here is unbelievable and John King (CNN correspondent) just went along for the ride instead of questioning any of these highly dubious claims from a man who has almost destroyed law and order.  Is it just me or did waiving habeas corpus, rendition, torture, warrantless wire tapping, enemy combatants, and military tribunals not expand the power of government beyond anything we have ever seen?  Did attacking Iraq and now seven years of unending war while al Qaeda rebuilt in Pakistan make us more or less safe?  It is incomprehensible that we still give this man deference instead of challenging his “facts” every step of the way.

There was as usual a bright side and it was once again from Fareed Zacharia on GPS.  I cannot say enough about his approach to discussing important issues.  He rarely ever has on political flacks pitching their spin, but international subject matter experts to give their perspective on various issues.   I won’t bore you with the details, but this is one show where you can really learn something and question some of your own preconceptions.

Alas, this morning the news was all about public anger over AIG and the bank bail out.  Anger, anger, anger.  Although it is a real emotion that many of us are feeling, emotion is not what is going to solve this crisis and I have yet to hear (except on blogs such as the Baseline Scenario) what our real options are.  Do we have an option to public spending for stimulus and is what we have done enough?  What does history from the Great Depression or the Japanese lost decade tell us?  What are possible scenarios to bailing out the banks and what are the pros and cons?  What happens if we do nothing?

Oh, I agree we have heard these arguments, but only as political talking points.  Where are the economists (mainstream) and what can they teach us?  We are not being educated by our press.  They are failing as journalists.  How many of you know the real crisis in Europe that could make our problems infinitely worse?  The press once again are simply acting as an echo chamber of the political spin.  Oh by the way did I mention that the financial analysis and advice for our way forward is being giving by the same talking heads that missed the whole economic crisis?  When will it ever end? When will we ever learn?  Where have all the flowers gone?