Change We Can Believe In?

Ninety year-old man sentenced
for beating wife of 68 years to death
with hammer in domestic dispute.

Are we now witnessing change we can believe in? I am not talking about changing our country here, but, rather what appears to be the recent change in President Obama. It is no secret that Progressives and the more liberal among us have been disappointed in Obama. His bailouts for big business and Wall Street have not been received well by the left. There has been some doubt as to just which side Obama is on. If we can believe what he is now saying, especially after his rousing speech of today, it would seem he has now come out clearly on the side of labor and the middle class. He has finally given up on his futile attempts at bipartisanship and apparently has learned his lessons; Republicans are not going to cooperate with him no matter what he does. The six year plan he has outlined clearly favors small business and the middle class and makes it clear he is not interested in keeping the tax breaks for the obscenely wealthy. And he has now singled out Boehner (dreaming of becoming the next Speaker of the House) as representative of the Republican Party agenda in general. Obama is now stating clearly what he believes to be the real differences between Republicans and Democrats and also seems prepared to fight vigorously for his position. What a change from a year ago when he was still extending his hand to the opposition even though they continued to spit in his face. If he sticks to his position and does not continue the ridiculous tax cuts for the wealthy, and if he also appoints Elizabeth Warren, we will know that he is serious about fighting for what is right. If he continues along this path and can convince his Progressive base to once again get on board and vote there is no reason to suspect a major Republican victory in November (or in 2012, for that matter). I still hate his completely unnecessary and foolish “war” in Afghanistan, as well as his failure to hold Bush/Cheney accountable for their terrible and unforgivable war crimes, but at the same time I cannot bear to think of our wonderful country back in the hands of the criminal conspiracy that got us into this horrible mess. If the changes I see in Obama are real they will eventually lead to the changes he promised during his campaign for the Presidency. Go Obama!

Do we really have to be told about every insignificant act of insanity? If the MSM had just responsibly ignored this nitwit preacher who wants to burn the Koran who would have been the wiser? This guy is a nobody preacher with a nothing church in an obscure location and yet he has now achieved international attention by threatening to commit a childishly stupid act, all because some news organization decided it was of monumental importance, so important we have heard all about it every day for several days now. There seems to be no sense of responsibility anymore in any part of American society. Surely there must have been some news somewhere that should have had priority over this ridiculously simple-minded act. In fact there seems to be no concept of (serious or important) news at all anymore. Oh, by the way, don’t forget that the skinny, sort of so-so blond, who apparently tried to crash a White House event is going to pose nude for Playboy. This vital information has flashed across the screen of my TV for the past two or three days. Now it turns out this is probably just a rumor anyway. Should reporters and newspapers and TV not have to be held accountable for irresponsible stupidity? The fact is the Fourth Estate has long since abdicated any responsibility for providing news that is of importance in favor of what is now termed infotainment. I do not believe this is accidental. I think it has been done on purpose by the very few corporations that control our media. It is in their interest to keep us as uninformed as possible for a variety of reasons. No doubt one of them has to do with their fear that if we really understood what they were up to we might revolt. Related to that is the fact that it is easier for them to skew the vote through propaganda and dumbing us down. The media is no longer responsible for holding our leaders accountable, they now just openly control the news for their own purposes. This is a fact of tremendous importance and has much to do with the intensifying demise of our democracy. We are allowed to be told only what they wish us to be told. We get very little international news and what we do get is carefully selected to favor the special interests. About the only place one can find any genuine news is either in articles or books, but as hardly anyone reads anymore this is relatively inconsequential (and may itself be more and more in the hands of a very few). There may well be economies of scale but it has become clear that bigger is not better and in fact can be undesirable in the extreme.

LKBIQ:
It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
Rod Serling

TILT:
All male mules and most female mules are infertile.