I just watched Steven Colbert waste the time of his viewers and his guest.
To begin with he started off saying the interview was about 'industrial hemp',
but the guest was advocating 'medical marijuana'. Then when the guest tried
to make the distinction clear Steven wouldn't let him, instead making the same
stupid and childish generalizations that the opponents make* and wasting time
with 'pot' jokes.
*Now I assume that Steven was attempting to make fun of the opponents of this
(medical marijuana/industrial hemp)
through parody, but by talking over and interrupting his guest ceaselessly the
ENTIRE message was lost/drowned out.
It pisses me off to see someone I've admired (for the most part) as one of the few who
tries to show the absurdity and BS so prevalent in Washington DC and on the "news" take an important subject and obliterate it with juvenile jokes that reinforce false stereotypes!
Is this just a product of a show that's just too convoluted for it's own good?
If I was the guest I would have asked (at the 'break') WHY I was even asked to be on.
Steven screwed up when he thought it would be (funny?) to get his viewers to go to Wikipedia and change an entry, causing a big headache, time, and money for those maintaining the site. It wasn't.
Hey Steven, we have enough of a hard time getting these subjects to the public!
Your guest only has a minute or two to at the most to speak.
You decided that it was more important to fill the ENTIRE segment with your [jokes?].
People who are dealing with chronic/deadly diseases that can be eased with medical marijuana
deserve better!
Damn it, you didn't let the guy get a single sentence in that anyone could understand, and you REINFORCED all the false stereotypes in the process.
Way to go dip shit!
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Friday, April 20, 2007
And now, the rest of the story.... (about Senator Harry Reid's statement)
All morning I've been hearing CNN and others state that Senator Harry Reid said "The War is Lost". The White House is 'outraged' and someone was interviewing Gen. Barry McCaffrey, and I thought to myself, it's true, and most people have come to the same conclusion, but to bluntly come out and say it like that...
Then I heard 'the rest of the story'... There was something missing from that quote that everyone's repeating, and it's called the beginning of his sentence.
When I heard the complete sentence I said to myself "well, now I totally agree with him. Now the 'outrage' from the White House can be seen for what it is, completely manufactured ".
I've come to expect this type of lame attempt of cutting and pasting of sound bites from media organizations like Fox and the White House Press Spokeswoman, but when CNN Headline News is repeating this misleading story every 15 minutes. That is an outrage.
The full sentence was more like "As long as we follow the President's plan, the war is lost".
It totally changes the meaning and intent of the sentence, and to only repeat the last part is dishonest and unethical.
Then I heard 'the rest of the story'... There was something missing from that quote that everyone's repeating, and it's called the beginning of his sentence.
When I heard the complete sentence I said to myself "well, now I totally agree with him. Now the 'outrage' from the White House can be seen for what it is, completely manufactured ".
I've come to expect this type of lame attempt of cutting and pasting of sound bites from media organizations like Fox and the White House Press Spokeswoman, but when CNN Headline News is repeating this misleading story every 15 minutes. That is an outrage.
The full sentence was more like "As long as we follow the President's plan, the war is lost".
It totally changes the meaning and intent of the sentence, and to only repeat the last part is dishonest and unethical.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
VT shooter slipped through some big cracks
It seems to me that one of the main failures in this tragedy is the point where the shooter was allowed to legally purchase the handguns. He had by that time a significant psychiatric history that should have been available to the gun store(s).
I doubt I'll hear anyone from the NRA claim that people with psychiatric anti-social histories should be allowed to purchase firearms, but we'll see.
They too should want firearms dealers to do a background check that determines that:
1. the person is legally allowed to own firearms
and
2. that the purchaser isn't mentally unstable or a convicted felon (and that they are who they say they are)
In this tragic case the seller wasn't aware of the troubled history including psychiatric confinement in an institution for a period and stalking/harassment complaints made against him.
If the background check system included that crucial info there's at least a chance that this tragic incident might have been avoided. Maybe he might have been able to obtain illegal weapons, but I'm talking about the legal purchasing and selling of firearms.
To be sure, none of this can alter what has happened, but what can and must be done now is to learn from it and to put those lessons learned into immediate practice.
I don't believe that in a free society such as ours this type of attack is totally preventable. What can and should be done is to make sure that within the laws of this country everyone who wants to purchase a firearm is thoroughly vetted before being allowed to take possession. Anyone who would oppose that (NRA?) would appear to care more about fighting any and all changes to existing law than working towards thoughtfully enhancing the law to prevent untrustworthy/unstable people from buying them (legally). Let's watch and see what [they] say.
Really, the best we in the US can hope for (as far as the gun laws go) aside from a change in our culture, is to minimize the ways for people who absolutely should NOT be allowed to own firearms to obtain them. I want to know as much up-to-date pertinent information about the individual attempting to purchase a firearm as is available.
It's incredible to me that with all the technologies available to law enforcement today, the knowledge of this young man's troubled history wasn't known by the seller (I'm betting that he feels the same way).
There are cracks in the system that need to be addressed.
How do we deal with an individual who exhibits this behavior?
As far as I know legally, unless someone vocalizes direct threats, the police can't take action, and the most that can be done is a misdemeanor threat of something like harassment.
This should be a topic of national public discussion and by our representatives in Congress and in Statehouses around the country.
Note: Unfortunately, this issue will by and large pass from our public discourse with things like the War and all the ongoing scandals that are finally being taken care of now that checks and balances have been restored to [our] government. Not all the voices will fade away though, many dedicated folks will undoubtedly press to keep the issue moving forward and will be working behind the scenes to improve the communication of pertinent to the background check system.
Hopefully that will translate into building a more effective (and exhaustive) system of background checks.
That seems [to me] to be a 'no brainer'. Why that kind of (incredibly pertinent) information wasn't available to the gun dealer during the background check has to be accessed and remedied ASAP.
I doubt I'll hear anyone from the NRA claim that people with psychiatric anti-social histories should be allowed to purchase firearms, but we'll see.
They too should want firearms dealers to do a background check that determines that:
1. the person is legally allowed to own firearms
and
2. that the purchaser isn't mentally unstable or a convicted felon (and that they are who they say they are)
In this tragic case the seller wasn't aware of the troubled history including psychiatric confinement in an institution for a period and stalking/harassment complaints made against him.
If the background check system included that crucial info there's at least a chance that this tragic incident might have been avoided. Maybe he might have been able to obtain illegal weapons, but I'm talking about the legal purchasing and selling of firearms.
To be sure, none of this can alter what has happened, but what can and must be done now is to learn from it and to put those lessons learned into immediate practice.
I don't believe that in a free society such as ours this type of attack is totally preventable. What can and should be done is to make sure that within the laws of this country everyone who wants to purchase a firearm is thoroughly vetted before being allowed to take possession. Anyone who would oppose that (NRA?) would appear to care more about fighting any and all changes to existing law than working towards thoughtfully enhancing the law to prevent untrustworthy/unstable people from buying them (legally). Let's watch and see what [they] say.
Really, the best we in the US can hope for (as far as the gun laws go) aside from a change in our culture, is to minimize the ways for people who absolutely should NOT be allowed to own firearms to obtain them. I want to know as much up-to-date pertinent information about the individual attempting to purchase a firearm as is available.
It's incredible to me that with all the technologies available to law enforcement today, the knowledge of this young man's troubled history wasn't known by the seller (I'm betting that he feels the same way).
There are cracks in the system that need to be addressed.
How do we deal with an individual who exhibits this behavior?
As far as I know legally, unless someone vocalizes direct threats, the police can't take action, and the most that can be done is a misdemeanor threat of something like harassment.
This should be a topic of national public discussion and by our representatives in Congress and in Statehouses around the country.
Note: Unfortunately, this issue will by and large pass from our public discourse with things like the War and all the ongoing scandals that are finally being taken care of now that checks and balances have been restored to [our] government. Not all the voices will fade away though, many dedicated folks will undoubtedly press to keep the issue moving forward and will be working behind the scenes to improve the communication of pertinent to the background check system.
Hopefully that will translate into building a more effective (and exhaustive) system of background checks.
That seems [to me] to be a 'no brainer'. Why that kind of (incredibly pertinent) information wasn't available to the gun dealer during the background check has to be accessed and remedied ASAP.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Why won't Wolf Blitzer do his job?
I was watching Wolf Blitzer on Sunday, and he had Dan Bartlett the WH guy on.
Now please tell me why Mr. Bartlett was allowed to state pure WH talking points without Wolf once challenging him?
Either Wolf doesn't know the facts, in which case he's not doing his job,
or he does know the facts, and he allowed Mr. Bartlett to mislead the viewers
with no clarification/correction.
Either case is unacceptable.
Now multiply that by the number of times CNN and CNN Headline News repeat what are basically WH talking points (in tiny little bites with little to no context)...
You could also multiply that by all the other channels and news outlets that do the same thing daily.
What I'm getting at is why even bother to pretend to call it "news"?
As far as Wolf Blitzer goes, he can't ask the tough questions every once in a while, he's responsible for what the viewer takes away from every show.
I'm always afraid that a considerable percentage of the viewers aren't informed enough to know how to tell the spin from the facts, and if the difference isn't made clear at that time by [people like] Wolf then the viewer could be left believing statements that are untrue (aka lies).
And really that's what is happening all the time. The people we should be able to trust to weed out the spin from the facts are letting the American people down on a daily basis!
Another of the things that really burns my ass is the veteran political reporters who see political dirty tricks and all the crap that goes on as 'tradition' and sometimes talk about it in a semi-romantic way.
Things they should be condemning, not brushing it off as 'business as usual'.
Now please tell me why Mr. Bartlett was allowed to state pure WH talking points without Wolf once challenging him?
Either Wolf doesn't know the facts, in which case he's not doing his job,
or he does know the facts, and he allowed Mr. Bartlett to mislead the viewers
with no clarification/correction.
Either case is unacceptable.
Now multiply that by the number of times CNN and CNN Headline News repeat what are basically WH talking points (in tiny little bites with little to no context)...
You could also multiply that by all the other channels and news outlets that do the same thing daily.
What I'm getting at is why even bother to pretend to call it "news"?
As far as Wolf Blitzer goes, he can't ask the tough questions every once in a while, he's responsible for what the viewer takes away from every show.
I'm always afraid that a considerable percentage of the viewers aren't informed enough to know how to tell the spin from the facts, and if the difference isn't made clear at that time by [people like] Wolf then the viewer could be left believing statements that are untrue (aka lies).
And really that's what is happening all the time. The people we should be able to trust to weed out the spin from the facts are letting the American people down on a daily basis!
Another of the things that really burns my ass is the veteran political reporters who see political dirty tricks and all the crap that goes on as 'tradition' and sometimes talk about it in a semi-romantic way.
Things they should be condemning, not brushing it off as 'business as usual'.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Put the microphones where they belong
I'm watching the hearings on C-SPAN regarding the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's covert status.
Aside from the witnesses evading most of the hard questions (not all...) some made it very hard to hear their testimony. The reason for that could be the fact that most of the witnesses (and the questions/comments from the Republican members of the committee) were coming out of their butts!
Yes, just like the commercial seen currently about sports fans talking out their asses!
------------------------------------------------------------------
I have to applaud the freshman congressman from NH, Paul Hodes for asking some great questions!
What I didn't hear asked (to the Director of Security at the White House) was whether anyone from the administration directed/intimated to him in any way not to investigate the leaks.
Now that the criminal investigation and court proceedings are over (although [he, the Director of WH Security] stated that "I don't know that", [maybe he should call Patrick Fitzgerald]) and it's on the court record that Karl Rove and others still working at/for the White House improperly disclosed a CIA officer's identity to several journalists (I'm using that term loosely) still have security clearances!
And there's Rep. Tom Davis (R) trying his best to maintain the WH's talking points, and trying his best to 'rehabilitate' the witnesses like a defense attorney would.
I'm sorry, this is like the theater of the absurd.
Unless you're in serious denial (or you're in collusion with the cover-up) you know what happened. Joe Wilson wrote an article that showed that the WH's most serious claim, that of Iraq being close to having active nuclear offensive capability (remember the Smoking gun turning into a Mushroom cloud statements made by top administration officials?) was wrong, and suspect at best.
Cheney got really pissed off, and started the whole [vengeance] ball rolling, ending in a concerted effort to discredit Joe Wilson's conclusions based on the assertion that his Niger-yellowcake investigation was conceived by his wife at the CIA and therefore somehow suspect. Anyone with even half a brain can see that.
Yet still people who still support the president continue to make assertions that have been dis-proven and debunked. They still assert that her covert status wasn't 'known' by the officials purposely leaking her name. Bull!
That argument 'I didn't know she was 'covert'... just doesn't fly and is a childish excuse.
Here's a good guide to go by even a CHILD can understand:
If you know of *anyone* who works for the CIA (in ANY capacity) and you're thinking of talking to other people about them, DON'T!
ESPECIALLY a reporter, and especially a reporter like Robert Novak who's a partisan hack for the right wing. Of course that's EXACTLY why he was used.
We know that the results of this disclosure are that an important covert CIA operation regarding nuclear proliferation was compromised, and hence all the people involved in that operation.
We know that since then people's lives have been threatened as a result of the disclosure.
Now we just heard that no investigation whatsoever was initiated by the White House, including the Head of Security at the White House, whose job it is to maintain SECURITY!
Since then, despite a promise by the President that he would fire anyone found involved in the leak, and denials by the [then] press secretary Scott McClellan that anyone in the White House had anything to do with it, AND a conviction of Scooter Libby along with testimony from multiple witnesses that Karl Rove and others were involved, absolutely nobody known to be involved has had their security clearances revoked!
If this great country lets this egregious act (and all the other lies and ignoring of the Constitution) pass without redress and punishment we're all going to suffer for it.
Damn it, neither this nor any other administration is above the law.
It HAS to be that way.
Otherwise there is no trust, and like Nixon said 'the people want to know if their President is a crook'... He was, and THIS administration has done far worse things than he ever did (stated by John Dean on Countdown with Keith Olbermann) and the main man behind most if not all of it is Vice President Cheney.
They thought that they could get away with all this because of their plan to hold onto power.
They planned for a Republican majority to be maintained (for a thousand years maybe?) and were well on their way to making that a reality, but their greed, gutter ethics, and obvoius contempt for the rule of law did them in.
And you know what the worst of it is?
So few journalists and talking heads in the MSM show any outrage! This is just the 'game' of politics... 'Business as usual', and besides, 'if we show the appropriate outrage we won't get invited to the dinners and parties, and people won't be as willing to talk to us'... Only one nightly show on TV has dared to speak truth to power on a consistent basis, and that's Countdown with Keith Olbermann the rest are pathetic enablers parroting long-since debunked WH talking points, sometimes nibbling around the edges of the actual truth, but rarely stating what is obvious to anyone not in a state of denial or biased.
The frickin emperor HAS NO CLOTHES!
But the MSM, especially the water-carriers for the administration (they're obvious) keep pretending that he does. The majority of Americans have finally realized it, but many in the MSM keep repeating the White House BS.
What's wrong with this picture?
Whether or not they admit it, the lives of THOUSANDS of our fellow Americans (and many innocent Iraqis) have been WASTED to further the distorted wishes of this president and others. The evidence is there if your eyes are open to the truth. And bottom line, the Bush administration AND the overwhelming majority of MSM news outlets are directly/indirectly responsible for those deaths...
I know, it's hard to believe that any President, or any group of people associated with them would do something like this. It really SHOULD be unthinkable, but guess what folks, THEY DID IT!
The big question now is, will we let them get away with it?
Aside from the witnesses evading most of the hard questions (not all...) some made it very hard to hear their testimony. The reason for that could be the fact that most of the witnesses (and the questions/comments from the Republican members of the committee) were coming out of their butts!
Yes, just like the commercial seen currently about sports fans talking out their asses!
------------------------------------------------------------------
I have to applaud the freshman congressman from NH, Paul Hodes for asking some great questions!
What I didn't hear asked (to the Director of Security at the White House) was whether anyone from the administration directed/intimated to him in any way not to investigate the leaks.
Now that the criminal investigation and court proceedings are over (although [he, the Director of WH Security] stated that "I don't know that", [maybe he should call Patrick Fitzgerald]) and it's on the court record that Karl Rove and others still working at/for the White House improperly disclosed a CIA officer's identity to several journalists (I'm using that term loosely) still have security clearances!
And there's Rep. Tom Davis (R) trying his best to maintain the WH's talking points, and trying his best to 'rehabilitate' the witnesses like a defense attorney would.
I'm sorry, this is like the theater of the absurd.
Unless you're in serious denial (or you're in collusion with the cover-up) you know what happened. Joe Wilson wrote an article that showed that the WH's most serious claim, that of Iraq being close to having active nuclear offensive capability (remember the Smoking gun turning into a Mushroom cloud statements made by top administration officials?) was wrong, and suspect at best.
Cheney got really pissed off, and started the whole [vengeance] ball rolling, ending in a concerted effort to discredit Joe Wilson's conclusions based on the assertion that his Niger-yellowcake investigation was conceived by his wife at the CIA and therefore somehow suspect. Anyone with even half a brain can see that.
Yet still people who still support the president continue to make assertions that have been dis-proven and debunked. They still assert that her covert status wasn't 'known' by the officials purposely leaking her name. Bull!
That argument 'I didn't know she was 'covert'... just doesn't fly and is a childish excuse.
Here's a good guide to go by even a CHILD can understand:
If you know of *anyone* who works for the CIA (in ANY capacity) and you're thinking of talking to other people about them, DON'T!
ESPECIALLY a reporter, and especially a reporter like Robert Novak who's a partisan hack for the right wing. Of course that's EXACTLY why he was used.
We know that the results of this disclosure are that an important covert CIA operation regarding nuclear proliferation was compromised, and hence all the people involved in that operation.
We know that since then people's lives have been threatened as a result of the disclosure.
Now we just heard that no investigation whatsoever was initiated by the White House, including the Head of Security at the White House, whose job it is to maintain SECURITY!
Since then, despite a promise by the President that he would fire anyone found involved in the leak, and denials by the [then] press secretary Scott McClellan that anyone in the White House had anything to do with it, AND a conviction of Scooter Libby along with testimony from multiple witnesses that Karl Rove and others were involved, absolutely nobody known to be involved has had their security clearances revoked!
If this great country lets this egregious act (and all the other lies and ignoring of the Constitution) pass without redress and punishment we're all going to suffer for it.
Damn it, neither this nor any other administration is above the law.
It HAS to be that way.
Otherwise there is no trust, and like Nixon said 'the people want to know if their President is a crook'... He was, and THIS administration has done far worse things than he ever did (stated by John Dean on Countdown with Keith Olbermann) and the main man behind most if not all of it is Vice President Cheney.
They thought that they could get away with all this because of their plan to hold onto power.
They planned for a Republican majority to be maintained (for a thousand years maybe?) and were well on their way to making that a reality, but their greed, gutter ethics, and obvoius contempt for the rule of law did them in.
And you know what the worst of it is?
So few journalists and talking heads in the MSM show any outrage! This is just the 'game' of politics... 'Business as usual', and besides, 'if we show the appropriate outrage we won't get invited to the dinners and parties, and people won't be as willing to talk to us'... Only one nightly show on TV has dared to speak truth to power on a consistent basis, and that's Countdown with Keith Olbermann the rest are pathetic enablers parroting long-since debunked WH talking points, sometimes nibbling around the edges of the actual truth, but rarely stating what is obvious to anyone not in a state of denial or biased.
The frickin emperor HAS NO CLOTHES!
But the MSM, especially the water-carriers for the administration (they're obvious) keep pretending that he does. The majority of Americans have finally realized it, but many in the MSM keep repeating the White House BS.
What's wrong with this picture?
Whether or not they admit it, the lives of THOUSANDS of our fellow Americans (and many innocent Iraqis) have been WASTED to further the distorted wishes of this president and others. The evidence is there if your eyes are open to the truth. And bottom line, the Bush administration AND the overwhelming majority of MSM news outlets are directly/indirectly responsible for those deaths...
I know, it's hard to believe that any President, or any group of people associated with them would do something like this. It really SHOULD be unthinkable, but guess what folks, THEY DID IT!
The big question now is, will we let them get away with it?
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