I am an unabashed politics junkie- I don't really go out of my way to discuss politics, but over the past 10 years or so I've turned into somebody that follows every excruciating bit of minutiae of our great experiment.  But, I'm no sycophant.  I tend to agree with Democrats more overall, but the Democratic party is not my party.

I remember that night in 2004 after an election I cynically participated in, voting for a candidate I had talked myself into but didn't really believe in.  Four years after an election I participated in but was still learning what it meant to be the news hound I have become, and four years after an election that took place in what seems like a different world and in many respects did.  That night in November 2004 I felt sick.  Rove's lasting Republican majority was a reality, and another slim majority passed another mandate for an administration I disagreed with on every major policy point.  I couldn't sleep.

Tick, tock.

The political pendulum swings in this country, and will continue to do so.  However, this is not a pendulum that swings in two dimensions.  I can see vividly in my mind the Foucault's pendulum at the Indiana state museum that stuck in my mind more than anything else on the many trips I took there on a child.  It swings in three dimensions to demonstrate the Earth's rotation- and this time it may not be swinging right at my individual peg, but it is swinging my way.

Barack Obama, a man I had never heard of until the keynote speech of the DNC four years ago, has been elected president of the United States, and it is still sinking in.  I remember watching him that night and thinking 'that guy has a bright future' and wondering how he would prove disappointing over the years until maybe he ran for president in 2012 or 2016.

When he announced his candidacy this time, I supported him skeptically, but with a sliver of optimism.  I never truly believed he'd have a shot.  But something about his message and campaign hooked me still.  I've never been happier to have been wrong.

This election has been a perfect storm, but one that has resulted in a clear message being sent- not a drawn out dogfight marred by recounts and allegations of fraud and caging.  It is a mandate, and one I believe President Obama will not overreach and squander, but use wisely.

There's a reason I believe in the man, and it's not his campaign policy platform.  It's because he's always been pragmatic and realistic in almost every chance I've had to see past the campaign to the man.  Even when he's taken stances I disagree with even strongly, I can see his reasoning and respect it.

He will anger some of his base with some decisions he makes.  He will not treat White House appointments solely as rewards to dole out to the true believers.  He will make many decisions I like, and if he strays from that I will criticize him.  But, I do not fear for understanding during an Obama administration.

I take no joy in being correct about my gloomy temperament in forecasting the future four years ago.  I think George W Bush has mishandled quite a few things in his second term, but some things were forces of nature.  He has achieved some positive things as well, especially since '06, even if some steps were taken much later than necessary.

But, the president is like the quarterback- they get all the credit, and they get all the blame.  The economy was headed for the reckoning at some point as a result of the American lifestyle and our collective economical irrational exuberance from the poorest citizen up the wealthiest.  It might have been slowed or accelerated but it was coming eventually.  The water has withdrawn, and we now face a tsunami of unknown size approaching that will test the mettle of this nation. I have faith in our collective ability to fight on and endure, and return stronger even.  The president does not fight on, the nation fights on led by the president.

The deep wound caused by our nation's original sin got its largest bandage yet tonight, but it the wound itself will linger on for at least another generation.  There is a rift politically between a lot of people tonight, but a bridge can be built even as our ideological differences remain.  One man can not do it himself, but he can do his best to point us in the right direction.

Above all other things we now have our great chorus of voices led by one that remembers that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.  We will stand up and fight the very real dangers of this world head on.  We will assess frankly the depth of the great challenges we face on energy, the economy, and the environment.  We may stumble, and we may be wounded, but at last we have someone to remind us that we are a great nation of great people, and that we are not afraid.

I have always had faith in this country and its ideals.  That faith has been tested in the past, and going forward it will almost certainly be tested again- maybe even very soon.  The pendulum will eventually swing in another direction.  But, just like in one of Einstein's dreams about time- this moment has a decent chance to last longer than others.

While I breathe, I hope.

This post was borderline cheating when I originally put it up since it was mostly just something I wrote for a class, but it still seems pretty relevant today, even though there aren't a lot of people braying about bias in the media these days. By far the most interesting dialog going on about the media right now is happening right now in the final season of David Simon and HBO's The Wire. The show's depiction of the newsroom and the conversation going on in the journalistic community about its portrayal is pretty fascinating. I want to watch the rest of the episodes so badly, but I do not want the show to end.

Other funny notes from this post include me mentioning my homepage as fark.com, a site I don't believe I've visited in a couple years, and poking fun at dateline well before the "To Catch a Predator" thing became wildly popular.

I have included the stupid 'mood' and 'song' fields because I have to give myself some credit for starting my internet tradition of saying I felt dirty every time the internet asked me what mood I was in over 4 years ago. That and the song I was listening to is really awesome, and Y O U is a great band that's giving their cd flashlights away on pleaserock.com.

Makin' love on the radio

I've just finished what appears to be a successful all nighter writing a sociology term paper on bias in the media. I achieved new heights of procrastination on this one- I did no research at all until the night before it was due, and didn't start writing until around 1. But, due to my silly perfectionist complex that decides to rear its head every once in a while, I couldn't bear to halfass it. One thing that was fun about this paper is I got to write a 2 page section on what theory I thought best addressed the problem, so I've decided to post it here for your viewing pleasure. -disclaimer- I'm a bit delirious at this point and it was the last thing I wrote so it may not be completely coherent. Enjoy:

However unrelated they may seem on the surface, the many different topics that were discussed in my research, whether it was the liberal media junta, the menace of mega-media corporations, or Rush pontificating into his microphone over the issue of the day, all are part of an ever-increasing problem in media presentation.

Perhaps it’s not media bias that is the problem per se, but the bias that seems to be as much a by-product of showmanship in news reporting as hard-line political views. News today, regardless of medium, doesn’t seem to be about the five Ws anymore, but about answering the question at hand in the most entertaining fashion possible. It almost seems like a new, twisted form of yellow journalism.

Evidence of this emergence of entertainment as king of news can be seen as the 24 hour cable news networks become overpopulated with pundit fueled debate shows that seem to be less about debate and more about yelling opposing viewpoints that are far from those of the real mainstream citizen. It may not represent all the viewpoints very well, but it sure is fun to watch. Even headline news, the network that just gives you the main news details, inundates its viewers with a screen full of information, much of which is entertainment related.

Hardly any of us are innocent of contributing to this trend. As a confessed internet junkie, my internet homepage is www.fark.com, the very definition of entertaining tidbits mixed in with the news. My mother, despite vehemently disagreeing with his political views, listens to Rush Limbaugh whenever she can because she thinks it’s funny. She’s one of the 40 million reasons he has a 250 million dollar contract.

Even investigative reporting has let some of these aspects slip through. The Datelines, 60 minutes, and Primetime Lives of the world keep us inundated with new, upsetting, and titillating hour-long segments to shock and horrify middle-aged women every day of the week it seems. What fun is the latest investigative report without the deadpan wit of John Stossel?

This is not to say that bias in the traditional sense does not exist or is not a problem. Bias is most likely present in virtually every story whether the author is aware of it or not. It’s very possible that just in what small details are revealed or remain unrevealed, or even the wording of a sentence, can be interpreted as bias by someone with a personal connection to the issue at hand. I’ve witnessed firsthand the "hostile media effect" examined in the UPS teamster strike study. I’ve almost certainly fell victim to it as well.

What is worrisome is the increasing inability of reporters, columnists, and editors to write on any subject without stepping on the toes of the people who give them a paycheck. Even if a member of the media has an outright liberal bias as some claim, it is most likely not in their best interests to show it. More likely it is in their best interest to reverse that bias. Unfortunately, these economic influences put even the most impartial writers in a position where they cannot upset the stockholders else they end up out on the street dancing for nickels.

I think that bias in the sense that most people are worried about is not going to develop into a huge issue. Despite what insidious motives the conspiracy theorists may ascribe to the media, for right now most of the established media is concerned with maintaining their integrity. I think the bigger problem lies in the replacement of that integrity with the profit-driven bottom line and what we may lose in the end. But, even I can say I would tune in to watch CNN’s Crossfire: the Cage Match.

Current Mood: dirty

Current Music: You - Radio

What issues are important to me in the 2008 presidential election and who do I support? Currently I support and have donated money to Barack Obama's campaign- and a group from the political discussion forum I frequent recently hitting our fundraising goal of $10,000. Now, only $50 of that was my contribution, but it's still fun to be a part of that. Obama is not perfect however- he's doing a good job of talking the talk, but walking the walk is going to be a long, hard road.

As a side note, I personally believe that if you want things to change that directly affect you, getting educated about local politics is the best way to do so, because while the president and congress get all the attention, the politics that really affect the average American go on right in your figurative backyard.

Without further ado, the issues that matter to me in the upcoming election would be mostly the opposite of the Bush administration's views- not just to be contrarian, they really do just fall on the other side of my views almost every single time, except for the philosophy of giving out tax breaks. They just happen to be distributing them in a way I don't like.

It is important to me first of all to right the ship on our foreign policy, which has been a disaster, and end the politics of fear. Terrorism is a part of our world, and will continue to be that way for a long time- we cannot reduce our vigilance, but no 'war on terror' is going to address the root causes. I want a presidential administration that will do everything to keep us safe, but also set an example of not pandering to fear of terrorism to score political points. A president and administration that leads the country with confidence, not arrogance. One who can work within the boundaries of the law and civil rights, and restore Habeas Corpus.

Of course, there's Iraq. We're in kind of a lose/lose situation here and it's the guys on the ground and their families that are suffering right now. We need to start formulating a plan to get most American troops the hell out of there, but have forces nearby to assist in what the US Military is actually good at- striking quickly and with overwhelming force, rather than counterinsurgency. We cannot allow Iraq to become a new home base for terrorists (oh by the way the way Afghanistan is going we're going to have to make that a priority there too). We need to have a plan in place for the huge refugee crisis that will result, but things are not going to magically get better. However, even if President Bush woke up tomorrow and had a change of heart and signed the order to withdraw, it's still a long battle to be fought just to get all the troops out, not to mention the millions of tons of equipment that we can't leave behind for insurgents and extremists to get their hands on. No matter what course of action we take as a country, it's a long, long road ahead.

Health care is another huge issue. Normally I'm for fiscal conservatism in the government, but the health care system in this country is approaching a crisis. Costs are skyrocketing every year with no end in sight, and no manner of band aid is going to stop it. We need a comprehensive solution involving a single payer system of health care to provide base (and especially preventative) care along with private insurers providing supplemental coverage. The costs reduced by a single payer basic system of healthcare would be enormous, so long as they can keep the bureaucracy in check, which is always one of the great challenges of large government programs. However, the longer we wait the bigger and more expensive this problem is going to become.

On immigration I'm relatively ambivalent. Any large group of immigrants legal or not has faced a period of xenophobia and a backlash, and this wave will be no different- within a couple of generations they'll assimilate and blend in and it'll never be an issue again (until a new group of immigrants starts to flood in from somewhere else), that's the great thing about America. Some effort does need to be made to at least come to a stopgap solution, however. These people add a lot of value to the economy and it would be hurt tremendously if the flow of migrant workers was suddenly halted. They are here illegally yes, but there needs to be some method maybe not of amnesty, but of at least opening a path to citizenship for people who just want to come here and work minimum wage and send that money back home, just like many other groups who came here before that a large amount of people in America are descended from. We do need to secure the border, but we need immigrant workers too more than most people realize.

On energy policy, we need to form both a pragmatic and hopeful solution. Oil is the biggest concern, as it is the cheapest way we have to easily have portable energy, and there isn't a real replacement for that. We're going to need to devote a lot of resources in this country and around the world to solving that problem, but given how infrastructure in America is built on the foundation of cheap oil, we're the ones who need to take the lead, and fast. People also need to get over their fear of nuclear energy- it is by far the best option we have in the near term until solar, wind, and other new sources of power can be made effective, and we just don't have the technology yet. Nuclear is here now, produces ridiculous amounts of energy, and modern nuclear power ironically releases less radiation into the environment than coal. Waste disposal is still a problem, but a much smaller one than not moving back towards modern nuclear energy soon. The Japanese and the French are absolutely killing us on this front- and if hypothetically some new battery technology is invented that allows for electric cars on the level of internal combustion ones today, where are we going to get the additional energy from? We have enough coal here in the US to last us a long, long time, but increasing usage is a bad idea, and not just because of pollution and climate change, which is an important issue to get on top of, but I'm not even going to bother getting into here.

My pie in the sky issue is ending the war on drugs, one of the most wasteful programs in government. We waste so much money as a country investigating, prosecuting, and incarcerating minor non-violent drug offenders in this country it's offensive. I'm not much for drugs myself, because I know (and have seen) the destructive power they can have over people. But, no matter what you do, people are going to find a way to self medicate. You might as well de-criminalize it, regulate it heavily, and tax the hell out of it. Use a chunk of that tax revenue to fund programs to help people suffering from addiction. Prosecute violent offenders that are drug related just like you would other violent offenders that had nothing to do with drugs. Save billions of dollars, and cut out a huge reason for a black market and drug trade and all the violence that results from it to exist. Also, watch the Wire for a good dramatic representation of reasons that specifically is a good idea. That, and it's the best show on tv by far.

There are many other issues I care about, but those are the big ones. In summary, no candidate is perfect, but the one most palatable to me is Barack and Roll Obama. Whoever is nominated, I hope it's someone who will right the ship on foreign policy, roll back the authoritarianism, find a decent solution for health care, and generally be someone I can stand behind (Hillary does not fit into this category, even though I don't find her too offensive policy wise, and I just plain don't like John Edwards, he seems like too much of a pandering ass and not very genuine, but I would hold my nose and vote for him as well unless a Republican candidate surfaced more in line with my views, but right now this seems very unlikely). The rest would be a nice bonus, like reducing size of government and knocking off the nanny state crap. I plan on being wildly disappointed, but hey- I'm a political cynic.