A Different CNN

et tu liberale?

Being a News junky (at least before 8 am) I'm usually drawn to CNN and FNC and like to compare the two shows, styles and the deliveries of the same story. There is definately a difference between the two politically though up until now it hasn't been that obvious unless the person watching was a raving Liberal or raving Conservative.

What I did notice was the supposed "Chemestry" of O'Brien and O'Brien on CNN leaves me flat - like mashed potato without the salt or butter. First, Miles O'Brien is MUCH more liberal politically than the person he replaced. Both O'Briens inject much of their own (maybe their editors/producers?) viewpoints, comments, remarks, etc. in the story. This usually isn't that bad of a deal unless it gets in the way of actually delivering the copy.

First lets get something straight. Watching news is watching a trained monkey read copy from a teleprompter - that's it. While it may be a skill that takes time and effort to do well, the monkey needs to also be good looking (as who wants to see an ugly monkey read copy?) as well as read good copy. It's like anything else, either you are really good at it and you are one of the "beautiful" people or your not. If your not, you get to be a field reporter or an editor - if you are, you get camera time and the big bucks for looking good.

My beef isn't so much about the looking good but the injection of politics in the "news". Now we really haven't had hard news on television for a while. 60 minutes masquerades as a hard news program, but their editors and monkeys are so blindly liberal it's difficult to get facts on certain subjects. I would say it's like watching the 700 club for the left - you ever think Pat Robertson will come out and say "Gee - maybe abortion isn't so bad after all!" - Not. Nor should we expect a 60 minutes to report the facts on say, guns in America without getting a huge bug up their butts.




Back to O'Brien - he bugs me. He and one of his toady not-good-looking field reporters in Florida were camped outside of a Citgo gas station in Florida this morning kabitzing and complaining like two old jewish women. The setting is, there's a line 5 miles around the block waiting to get into the gas station - it's one of the few stations that has power and can pump gas - so naturally it's popular right now since Hurricane Wilma knocked out the power in southern Florida. So O'Brien and said field reporter camped in front of the gas station comment how absurd and unfathomable it is this guy gets to the station fills up his car and actually gets 20 gallons of additional gas (Hoarding O'Brien and toady say) in containers. "Absurd!" They say. "Unconcionable!". "This guy paid over a hundred dollars for gas this morning!" the toady squawks with this unbelieving face.



Uhh... what's so absurd? 20 extra gallons is one more fill-up of your car (approximately). Now if he came in and filled up four 20 gallon containers, or went out and bought one of those tanks you can attach to your pick-up that holds like 60 gallons - yeah, that'd be a little much and he should be slapped around. But 20 extra gallons? Let's see how long that would last in a generator? Ever think he was also getting this gas for his neighbors or is sharing his generator's power with neighbors? Why is this guy the bad guy?

The socialist twist that everyone should provide for everyone and that an extra 20 gallons in this case should be punished is scary. I think Miles needs to be slapped around - report the news bozo! Read the copy and go home you trained baboon. I'll make up my own mind if I think it's "not in good taste" for the guy to get an extra 20 gallons. All those bozo's in line should have stocked up on gas BEFORE the stupid hurricane hit - it's not like it didn't spin over Cancun for 3 friggin days before it hit. It's not like every weather station in the country kept saying "Wilma will eventually move towards Florida" for 3 friggin days. Not enough time for these people to go get a few jerry cans of their own and get some extra gas? Too busy curing cancer were they?

I say good for the guy who brought his cans and filled them up. He was probably in line very early and decided he wants the insurance of a few extra gallons of gas. Shame on them all for not planning ahead. If it were up to me I'd put them out of gas for a week just because they were stupid and didn't plan very well. Serves them right for waiting.

A message for CNN - FNC and their insipid morning show Fox and Friends is still beating the hell out of CNN in the ratings. If FNC decided to actually put some actual news people in front of the camera CNN would be gone in week. As bad as Fox is, more people still prefer it over CNN. So you have to ask youself, why? CNN has better monkey readers, better sets, better backgrounds, prettier people, better music (the list goes on) so why is Fox kicking their keester? It's the slanted comments, injected conversational bits and marked "left" slanted stories that just bug people.

Here's a novel idea. Report the facts, who, what, when and where. Leave the "why" to the magazine and opinion shows. At least you know what you're getting with those. While those lost souls and oblivious people who think CNN is non-biased, you really need to look again and not even closely. EVERY news outlet is biased, NPR, CNN, FNC, BBC (hugely BBC) they are all spewing out their take on what the news story is and not the facts. HINT: Skim out the biased crap and make up your own mind.

Here's some other examples from other blogs and sources:
Newsbusters
This one's good - a game development forum talking about CNN
Gamedev
Arse Poetica

Why does anyone care?

I'm so very tired of watching specials on Mohammad Atta on A&E. I should stop complaining and just turn the channel. I particularly like A&E and especially the Crime & Punishment series, but both this morning and this evening we have the Mohammad Atta specials.



Sure, I watched a while, but these idiots that are making all these comments, like the BBC's German Reporter going into the apartment that Atta stayed at, listening to how difficult Atta had it at home, that he didn't have an easy time finding work, blah blah blah. Who the freak cares? He was a LOOSER and couldn't find work so he became a terrorist who killed 3,000+ innocent people. Why would anyone care what he thought about, or how he felt?

Do you sit and think seriously about how Jeffry Dahmer was feeling when he ate part of the arm of his third victim? Why he would do such a thing and what a great life he had? No, he was a rabid dog that needed to be shot - end of story. Atta is the same or even worse. The A&E show started to then re-trace every step they made, where they went, what they ate, how they acted. *sigh*

Why not have some shows about honorable people? Atta should be stricken from the populations memory with one of those little red light pen thingies from Men in Black. That they're all murderous bastard fanatics isn't enough - the panty wastes have to document every time Atta farted and how he felt about it and how it was all because he had such a tough life... awww... pity party for poor little Atta.

I'm not interested in why they feel they needed to do it, what they felt like when they did it, or when they were leading up to it, or what they ate before they did it. The only thing I wanna see is them suffering the way those people did in the twin towers.

"But dude", you say, "that's so uncivilized and you're putting yourself on their level! You must rise above them and seek to understand why they feel they must kill themselves. We have to seek to understand". Pardon my french but Bullshit. It may be wrong, but if death is what they want, I say we give it to them. After all, America makes deams come true - and we should probably give them the paradise they so richly deserve. What we NEED to do is get medieval on their asses. I wish to quote Pulp Fiction here:

"What now? Let me tell you what now. I'm gonna call a coupla hard, pipe-hittin' niggers, who'll go to work on the homes here with a pair of pliers and a blow torch. You hear me talkin', hillbilly boy? I ain't through with you by a damn sight. I'ma get medieval on your ass."

Bird Flu Review Pooh

It used to be that some thought there was an elite group of people who run the entire world economy, politics and power like the Illuminati, Skull & Bones, The Bilderberg Group or even the Masons. These secret organizations had their own designs on how things should be run, and have infiltrated not only world governments but were the Presidents, Prime Ministers, Corporation CEO's and could have even been your plumber or electrician.

They have their own designs and agendas apart from what you and I see, hear and live in our own little worlds.

So you think I've finally gone off the deep end then. I've read the Da Vinci Code one too many times and have popped a gasket and have bought into the whole conspiracy belief system and soon I'll be living in a box in St. Louis eating old out of garbage cans with my pet rat "skippy" because the "MAN" is after me. Not really.

What I am confused about is all the flap we hear every hear about "FLU". Last year it was the media, newspapers, radio and television. "Worst Flu Season Ever" the headlines screamed! "Epidemic Imminent!" the television said. All of the arm-chair quarterback and wannabe news magazine shows shoved it down our throats every hour on the hour for a month - "Where's the vaccine? Why don't we have enough? Why was the batch in Britain last year thrown out? Will it happen again? Who's overseeing this? We're all going to DIE!!!



I don't know about your areas, but here in the North East we're getting pummeled by the "Bird Flu". Everyone's getting all whipped into a frenzy about a possible Pandemic (that's an Epidemic of infectious disease on a Global scale - usually killing millions. Such was the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 which killed an estimated 25 million world wide and 500,000 in the U.S.


"Here chicky chicky, I've got a nice flamethrower for you"

Remember SARS? While it made a splash in the media as the next killer of every baby in North America, it fizzled and went away. The bottom line is, every few years a new superbug comes out that threatens to kill everyone on earth - it's been that way since life began and it's the same way now. Getting whipped into a froth about what "might" happen is the biggest waste of time I've ever heard of and the media should be ashamed at shoving this down our throats?

Do they get their jolly's watching people squirm and get panic sweats by broadcasting this "fantasy" 24 hours a day? And let's be honest here - at this moment in time, it's a fantasy.

"There is also a historical record of Influenza pandemics of varying severity at 20-40 year intervals. In February 2004, avian influenza virus was detected in pigs in Vietnam, increasing fears of the emergence of new variant strains. It is feared that if the avian influenza virus undergoes antigenic shift with a human influenza virus, the new subtype created could be both highly contagious and highly lethal in humans. Such a subtype could cause a global influenza pandemic, similar to the Spanish Flu, or the lower mortality pandemics the Asian Flue and the Hong Kong Flu. In November 2004 the director for the western region of the World Health Organization said that an influenza pandemic was inevitable and called for urgent plans to combat the virus."

"...urgent plans to combat the virus." that doesn't even exist. So tell me my readers, who are much smarter than I... how do you combat a virus that doesn't exist? Should we purposely combine the two viruses and man-make the superbug which will kill us all so we can create a vaccine? The reason these people are all freaked out is (they reason) if Pigs can get the virus than so can humans. Swine Flu (for everyone who's old enough to remember THAT one) was a scare back in the 1970's that also fizzled after a brief appearance. It was that swine flu was given to humans and bridged the DNA gap similar to the Avian Flu. I'm sure there has been or soon will be, Monkey Flu, Puppy Flu, Ewe Flu, Duck Flu, Honk Flu (given by Geese or stepping in Geese poo), and any other type of animal flu you could think of.

Right now the Bird Flu or "Avian" Flu is controlled by killing and burning the infected birds (usually Ducks and Chickens) and most of the infected species has been in Asia.

Side Bar: Ok, so why do all these nasty diseases come out of Asia? China, Taiwan, Indonesia? What the hell are they doing over there that's so conducive to these new strains of flu? Sick bastards.

So the WHO (World Health Organization) is having a meeting in Switzerland Nov 7-9 2005 on what to do about the human pandemic of Avian flu, which doesn't yet exist. While planning is nice - the bottom line is if there wasn't a new flu or naughty bug every once in a while, the WHO and other organizations like them would be playing checkers or computer solitaire, wishing and hoping for the salad days of Mad Cow Disease and Bubonic Plague.


"You see Jane, you put the lime WITH the coconut..."

My other thought here is the the North American Media is in kahoots with the drug companies! (Canada is already estimating 2 million dead in America by Avian Flu - mighty nice of them eh?) Let's look at some facts - the average American (average is the key word) takes 2 prescription drugs either weekly or daily on a regular basis. Who need coke and heroine when you can get your fix at CVS Pharmacy? Now, what happens when people either get better or stop taking their drugs? What's new on the market what can the advertising and marketing people at Squibb or other mega drug companies do to keep up the sales? BANG! Avian Flu baby! Whip up some frenzy with the media, get some lobbyists into the UN and WHO and let's have a summit on the "IMPENDING PANDEMIC OF AVIAN FLU". So the nervous nelly's get more nervous, the media arm-chair wannabe newscasters ask all the same old insipid questions like:


- Do we have a vaccine?
- Who is working on this?
- When can we expect the pandemic to occur?
- Let's talk to our expert Dr. Stupid

Jane: Thank you Dr. Stupid for helping us understand this disease
Dr. Stupid: No problem Jane after all I AM a real doctor
Jane: Yes of course you are. So what is Avian Flu and how does it affect our viewers?
Dr. Stupid: We're all going to die Jane
Jane: But WHEN are we all going to die Dr. Stupid?
Dr. Stupid: Well, someday in the future by either the Avian Flu or something else
Jane: Thank you for that report Dr. Stupid
Dr. Stupid: My pleasure

Folks - don't buy into this hype. It's another bug. Yes there are many more of us to get it, yes it can spread quicker than ever before and yes it may be more deadly than the plague. But lets not forget we are living longer (chemically enhanced) lives, we have better germ and virus control, better medicines and HUGE corporate pharmaceutical companies who could make BILLIONS on getting a vaccine out just in the nick of time to avert a world wide death knell.

And critics say Capitalism doesn't work. Pa-shaw.


"Aww man, if I don't get my Ambien fix soon dude, I'm gonna flip out!"