National News Shows, the idiot's guide
Lately I have lead to understand why so many Americans would rather watch reality TV instead of news. While most do tune into local news at least once a day, they avoid the cable news shows like FOX, CNN and MSNBC. With FOX you get Republican talking points. With MSNBC you get Democratic talking points that miss most of what we really need to know and letting the other side lead the discussion. With CNN it all depends on the day which way they will go.
I spend most of my days reading news reports from around the country, none of them are deemed important enough to replace the political discussions on any of these stations. Reality we live with everyday is not considered a hot topic.
Right now what's hot is the Tea Party, a group so small that Wiki's response when I Googled how many members in the Tea Party, is a band out of Canada and not the political storm that the media makes them out to be.
The Tea Party.
The Tea Party was a Canadian rock band with blues, progressive rock, Indian and Middle Eastern influences, dubbed "Moroccan roll" by the media. Active throughout the 1990s up until 2005 when the band broke up, The Tea Party released eight albums on EMI Music Canada, selling 1.6 million records worldwide, and achieving a #1 Canadian single "Heaven Coming Down" in 1999.
Over 80,000 showed up for Glenn Beck's rally in Washington but we cannot assume they were all members of the Tea Party since Beck draws from all Republican audiences. What they got was a lesson on what Beck thinks makes a Christian. To this day I am wondering what is in the Mormon Bible that causes him to think that Christ was for the rich, against taking care of the sick and "rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" along with everything else Christ preached about. Beck had told his audience on his radio show that if they heard a preacher say that they should do anything along the lines of what is in the Bible the rest of us read, they should walk out the door. Yet Beck never mentions the fact that what the Tea Party wants is the destruction of everything else this country needs to function.
He avoids talking about the fact that while the GOP borrowed money to supply rich people with tax cuts at the same time they said they would end up creating jobs, we lost jobs and drove up the debt while they did manage to create jobs in other countries. He avoids talking about the Tea Party agenda being adopted by the GOP is to eliminate Social Security, Medicare, the VA, the Department of Education along with ignoring the problems with our roads and bridges, de-funding the National Parks department while allowing our national treasures like the memorials in Washington to fall apart. He avoids telling his audience anything that does not fit in with the message he wants to deliver.
All of this is ok since he does not claim to be a news reporter but the problem is when the people who do in fact claim to be reporters end up repeating what he says. They just follow the flow. The national media ends up turning us into a bunch of idiots and all three are guilty. All of them focus more on politics than anything else so that stories about what is really happening across the country are not even considered worthy of their attention.
When we started to lose jobs, they were silent. When wars were not paid for or even made part of the budget they were silent. Imagine that! War in Afghanistan and Iraq were not considered important enough to pay for or even include in the budget during the Bush administration. The tax cuts for the wealthy (making over $250k) were not funded, yet none of the people in the Tea Party seemed to have noticed any of this when it was happening taking us down the road to damnation. Now, well, all that changed because there is a Democrat in the White House named Obama.
If the media has their way, succeeds in making stars out of rocks we lose. On their agenda we lose the following.
Veterans lose healthcare because they want to privatize the VA and have publicly said that they want to balance the budget by cutting VA funding.
Troops lose because they have been against the GI Bill, pay increases and most denied the reality of PTSD along with TBI, so that most of the advances we've seen in addressing these two "signature wounds" of Iraq and Afghanistan will end up suffering.
Teachers will suffer because they want to de-fund the Department of Education.
Police, firefighters and emergency responders will end up being cut in a time when we need more of them on the job.
The FDA will go away and our food supply will end up giving us more contaminated food products along with dangerous drugs.
Health insurance will win but the rest of us will not be able to get it if we cannot afford to pay for huge premiums. What part of everyone should be able to see a doctor no matter what income bracket they live in do they not understand?
Banks and credit card companies will win and the rest of us will end up in bankruptcy because no one will keep them under control and limit what they can do to us.
I have been listening to the commercials down here in Florida with politicians slamming politicians without ever facing the fact they became a politician as soon as they decided to run. This practice has been carried over onto the national news shows and no reporter wants to confront then on this point. They are just too busy making stars to draw ratings but what they end up doing is making thinking people change the channel to Pawn Stars and Swamp People instead. They live the rest of their lives never knowing that our veterans are suffering around the country right now and the people trying to replace Democrats in office are the biggest part of the problem determined to make it worse. We lost 18 veterans to suicide alone yesterday, just as we did the day before and will lose today.
Think about that. In 18 homes this very day, a family member will discover the body of someone they love, dead by suicide after serving this country and managing to survive the war we sent them to fight. 18 families and friends are hearing word of funeral plans from the ones who died yesterday. In tiny towns and huge cities, this is repeated every single day but do you hear about them being interviewed on CNN? MSNBC? FOX? Do any of them talk about something like this?
13 Veterans in one day for Veterans Court in Spokane WashingtonThere are veterans' courts all over the country because the problem is so bad for our veterans that the local law enforcement departments had to do something to treat them fairly instead of locking them up when most of what they are doing can be tied back to combat. 13 veterans in one day in a courtroom in Spokane? That was not a huge story on the national news? Excuse me but these men and yes, women, served this nation and were not sent into combat to defend Spokane alone! Veterans are a national issue and there are more and more of them added to their numbers everyday growing a lot faster than population of the Tea Party folks determined to take away what they need to recover from combat.
When the GOP was in charge veterans were last on their list of things to take care of. Right at the top was tax cuts for the rich. Then came defense contractors. Ever watch CSPAN when they cover the debates from the floor? They said they couldn't increase funding for the VA because they had two wars to pay for but this was right after they were screaming about giving Bush all he asked for to pay to keep the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan along with equal numbers of contractors. Now there are some in congress who want to cut funding of the VA so they can reduce the deficit they created in the first place. Does CNN tell veterans about this? Does MSNBC tell them? Does FOX tell them?
John McCain managed to pull off being a friend to veterans for years simply because the media allowed him to. They never once challenged him as a Vietnam Vet/POW on what he actually voted against and the rest of the country was left in the dark about what he was doing when the camera was on someone else. His voting record on veterans is terrible. He fought against the GI Bill because he said it was too generous and would end up getting more troops to leave the military. Did the media report on this?
FOX does a great job saying they support the troops with a lot of their stars taking off to go to Iraq for a show but then when they got back home what the troops were suffering from including having to dig through trash from metal to take care of their Humvees, FOX ignored it. When the reports came out on the deplorable treatment at Walter Reed, FOX stars attacked the reporters. O'Reilly denied there were homeless veterans. I mean the list just goes on and on but it isn't just FOX. It's all of the national news shows. They used to keep us informed but over the last ten years or so, they have been following the ratings instead of the news and have left this nation filled with idiots. To this day, no matter where I go or who I talk to people are still unaware of what PTSD is. How is this possible? None of them know what else is going on and they look at me stunned because they didn't hear it on CNN, MSNBC or FOX. If it isn't there then they think there is no need to care. It must be a tiny story or the news they trust would cover it. That's how bad things are in this country.
Now we face yet another election. It seems as if the national news shows just finished covering the Presidential election. Still they are not really informing voters what is going on, what the candidates really want to do or how they really think. They expect the viewers to actually spend time looking up facts online? Isn't it their job to let us all know what the facts are and confront these people when they lie?
They vilify the Dems for what? Thinking people show be able to go to a doctor when they are sick without having to declare bankruptcy to do it? That is what health insurance reform was all about. So if people were against it then they were actually fighting for the insurance companies and not humans. They wanted to protect consumers from banks and credit card companies from ripping us off. How is that a bad thing? They fought to give the troops pay raises. Is that a wrong thing to do considering how many times they've been sent into combat in Iraq and Afghanistan? They wanted to take care of the wounded neglected over the last 10 years. Is that an expense the GOP does not want to pay? Then they shouldn't have sent any of them into combat in the first place.
There is so much we're missing when we trust national news shows. We may take a couple of minutes out of our busy day and our own problems to see what's going on in the nation but end up with a bunch of people talking about what the news station determines we should know. The next time you turn on CNN, FOX or MSNBC, ask yourself why they are telling you what they are telling you then ask yourself why they are focused on it. The chances are, they have an agenda all their own and informing you has nothing to do with any of it. They want to manipulate how you think with what they tell you is important and we are all guided to be idiots in the process.
I was one of you but hardly ever tune into these shows now. I'd rather read news from across the country and at night, when I want to relax, I put on Pawn Stars to know that the economy is so bad that people have to sell things that have been important to them and Swamp People so that I know how other people live ready to risk their lives to catch gators. At least when it comes to real events, these shows come closer than the news.
Here's a few links to let you know that not only do they plan on cutting the VA they are proud of it. The VA has the best care for our veterans but they want to turn it over to companies that want to make money instead of fixing the VA problems?
Tea Party Candidate Ken Buck Called For Privatizing Veterans’ Health Care Reid out with new ad attacking Angle on veterans’ issuesThey don't think there is anything wrong with this at all. Then again, they may even believe that turning the DOD over to contractors is a good thing too. After all their attitude was paying the contractors was a good thing but taking care of the troops just cost too much. Taking care of veterans, well, that's something they say but never seem to get around to it.
