He's Got a Point...

I shouldn't be up this early. After all, Monday morning is my one day to sleep in, between 8:30 classes and 9:00 a.m. morning call at the court house the rest of the week. This clearly did not prevent the gentleman towing a jackhammer behind his truck from blasting away around 7:00 this morning. So now I'm up about the house doing house-husband things. In between taking the wife to work and cleaning the dishes from last night, however, I wanted to take a moment and give some credit where it's due (also, I don't feel like doing dishes). Our good president Barry O. took to the small screen yesterday, making the rounds on five different shows pimping the need for health care reform. He turned in a few nice tidbits, however, about his beef with mass media. Instead of a link, I'm just going to paste the quotes he made on different shows. The original article I read was too grammatically hilarious to warrant posting, and I don't want to link to a FOX News article, which is where I found these quotes after a quick Google.

On CNN's "State of the Union": "I think it's important for the media -- you know, not to do any media-bashing here -- to recognize that right now, in this 24-hour news cycle, the easiest way to get on CNN or FOX or any of the other stations, MSNBC, is to say something rude and outrageous...And, you know, part of what I'd like to see is, is all of us reward decency and civility in our political discourse."

On ABC, to George Stephanopoulos: "I think, that, frankly, the media encourages some of the outliers in behavior, because, let's face it, the easiest way to get on television right now is to be really rude. If you're just being sensible and giving people the benefit of the doubt and you're making your arguments, you don't . . . get time on the nightly news."

I have to give props to el Presidente for his comments, because he's absolutely on point here. The political discourse in this country is becoming increasingly coarse, and I think a lot of it is fueled and perpetuated by a bloodthirsty quest for ratings. People like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Keith Olbermann, and whoever else you can think of wouldn't be nearly as popular if the major news outlets were more concerned with disseminating fact rather than opinion. Look, media does some wonderful things, and I think Barack Obama, if anybody, partly has the media to thank for putting him in the position that he's in. That said, it seems kind of sad to me that the news source I prefer most (BBC) doesn't even reside in the U.S. There's just too much spin, too much vitriol, and too much worthless junk that barely rises to the level of "news" and is probably better categorized as "blather." Yes, I'm talking to you too, Nancy Grace, Anne Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore, Al Sharpton, and Al Gore.

You'd think (at least, I would), with comments like this, that Obama would be a little more successful with his bipartisan efforts than he has been to this point. He's been reduced to playing party politics as usual in Washington to get his agenda through, and I think that disappoints him quite a bit. It seems his efforts to extend the olive branch have gone virtually uncovered by the media, and the only comments of his that show up on the news are the ones that are more politically divisive. Now he looks just like any other president toeing the party line.

Unfortunate.

Please tell me...

why I should trust any promise the President makes about health care. Last I checked, he hasn't brought Congress together like he said he would, hasn't shown much concern for bipartisanship (the bailout was basically a party-line vote and he takes every chance to vilify the GOP), and unemployment sits around 10% when he promised it wouldn't go above 8% if we passed the bailout. Toss in the fact that he's the President, not a member of Congress. How can he possibly say with any surety that the health reform bill will or won't do what he says it will? He has no voting power, no leverage, absolutely no way to make sure this bill does what he says it will! And on top of that, he's got a vested interest in getting this thing passed, which makes it all the more likely that he would write checks that this bill can't pass. So basically, if he hasn't lived up to his rhetoric up to now, and he has a significant interest in the passage of this bill, why should I believe the promises he's making?

Rights Talk

I'm noticing more people talking about their "rights" these days, asking whether we hold our rights dear in the face of Obama's health care plan, or how people are denied their "rights" if they don't get to do this or that. I just want to get out in the open that I'm tired of people thinking they have a "right" to have or do whatever they want. I'm tired of people using rights talk to back up outlandish agendas. That goes for both sides. And I'm really tired of single-minded zealots who yak about their rights all day long and probably couldn't name the rights granted in the Bill of Rights if I asked them. Shut up, all of you, please.