Issues with Lou Dobbs

I thought Kitty Pilgrim, Errol Louis, Keith Richburg, and James Toronto did an excellent job on Lou Dobbs tonight. Not related to my contention with many of Lou Dobbs episodes, because he really is 50/50 with his bashing of both. But on so many other shows that air on CNN, the so-called 'CNN Contributors' are just...I don't know...not even shills...they're just poorly disguised surrogates who collect a paycheck from CNN every once in a while. I thought the four people on tonight's episode did an EXCELLENT job of actually representing a news organization or a viewer rather than a party. This isn't that I agree with them, it's that when they're talking, sometimes you can't even tell what their party o' choice is.

A few others that do? In my opinion, David Gergen is fair. So is Jeffrey Toobin. I have a few others, both repub and demo, and I'll update the list as I remember who they are.


Now onto less-than-praise for "Lou Dobbs Tonight"

tonight's lou dobbs poll: Do you believe Senators Obama and McCain are both pandering to the pro-amnesty, open borders crowd in order to win Hispanic votes in November?

While pandering is an important part of politics, it's not important because a show full of self-indulgent talking heads want to blast it for ratings. Pandering is an important part because no candidate would ever get elected if he said the truth. Until the media stops trying to pick fights, and the American public is willing to accept compromise with their fellow voters, you'll never hear a candidate say "I think we need to deal with something more centrist." Moreover, I think this show is pandering to angry Americans for veiwers. Fine for American Idol, or some call-in telethon. But the last I checked, Lou Dobbs doesn't claim to be "Angry, Pointless, Pandering."

The other thing I've noticed is that, as long as both sides will take each other out of context, and the media does too for a story, we'll always have surrogates, pandering, and meaningless discussions where people are too afraid/smart to get trapped into something that will be shouted on every news station for the next 2 1/2 days.

And is Lou really an independent, or a Republican that just doesn't like any currently prominent republicans?





Late edit:

I typed this blog before watching AC360. The episode tonight featured a Republican, sorry, my memory doesn't work well at noon, let alone midnight. But the democrat was James Carville.

I have a couple questions raised by watching the interview.

1.) Why is John McCain's Military service out of bounds, but Barack Obama's religion isn't?
2.) Why do both candidates, McCain and Obama, get to take things out of context, then get to attack the other for things that, to quote a judge in the Apple music vs. Apple Ipod and Itunes, "An idiot in a hurry could tell the difference between?"

Obama keeps pulling McCain's quote about 100 years out of context. Anyone who listened to 30 seconds prior to that knows that McCain was saying, "If the fighting is over, but we need to stay to train, or help with inventory, or even just eat more of the middle eastern cuisine we've grown to like, we'll be there as long as we have a reason to be."

McCain took the entire question of this Clark military service comment out of context, then refused to say Obama wasn't behind it, much like he refused to say that Obama wasn't an undercover muslim. Obama today said "John McCain's an honorable person, and..." blah blah blah. When people attacked Obama's religious background, McCain basically said, "He says otherwise, and we know nothing to prove either way." Of course, in the world of political double-speak, that means. "I'm not gonna be the one to say things without proof, but if you want to, then go ahead."

To put it simply, acting offended about something for no reason is just as dumb as playing stupid.

And enough about the stupid flag pin...Raise your hand if you don't wear a flag pin. Put your hand down if you aren't patriotic....

All of you with your hands still up, shut up, and go away.

Introductory post...

Hello to my three fans. Don't worry, I won't tell people you clicked here on accident as long as you let me imagine you're actually fans. Yes, that inclcudes you too, Mom.

At the very least, I've tried to repay the favor with a few promises. I promise that after reading, you'll agree the post is better than a monkey could have done. I promise I'll never put on crappy music that you'll find interfering with your winamp. I promise I'll never put starbursts in the background, or crazy images, or use some text color/background color combo that makes your eyes die 5 years earlier than you do. And I promise that I'll never click the button marked "Put ads between posts."

I don't know why I created this blog. While I do have things to say, I'm under no illusion they're important or special. However, all my friends are apparently in some choir I didn't know about, and they tell me they're sick of my preaching. I have always thought, "As much as I like the sound of my own voice, I bet other people would too." Then I realized that microphones were expensive, handheld loudspeakers were ineffective after a few dozen yards, and the internet was great for saying things most people would ignore.

So now, when something gets on my nerves, or really gets me excited or hopeful, I'll post about it. My blog is open for everyone to post replies, and i'll approve all of them regardless of what they say as long as there is no profanity.

A lot of my favorite things are simple. I have a 1980 Corvette that serves as my only car and I love it, but it will never be a show car. Translation: fun, cheap and paid off. Nothing I've found beats a few good songs on the radio and a game of cards. These blogs will primarily be positive in nature, unless I see a pet peeve, or something I just need to point out, but even then, I don't ever really get too angry with things.

A few of my pet peeves:

When the media decides to cover a story a certain way and completely misses the point (sometimes intentionally). An example: The entirely stupid question "Is America ready for a black president?" What does that even mean? Are YOU ready for a black president? Do you think your NEIGHBOR would vote for a black man? Is America in such good/bad shape that a black president is okay? I hate when people dodge a question...I hate when people asking an ambiguous question to dodge the answer even more.

When we all agree that a situation exists, then the media takes the path of least resistance to a cause no one I know would agree to.

When the media in anything decides to talk for us, then acts like we said it not them. To me, this seems prominent in the automotive press most often.

When people who don't have any idea about something decide to make decisions about it. I'm not even sure if this is true, but I once heard an anecdote about people at Sony not wanting to produce a Spider-Man movie because another superhero movie, some Power Rangers film, had flopped just a few years earlier.