The Cost of Bad Information

The media continues to represent the country's attitudes by thrusting immoderates into the limelight. On the Sunday news shows, the freaks like George Wills and Pat Buchanans are lined up beside Dr. Paul Krugman and Sen. Patrick Leahy, as if they had the weight and soundness of real intellects.

The results are dismally predictable. Craziness sounds like sanity, so the careless listener gives it credit. We get opinions that poll as if the entire constituency of the country were gaga. Today's AP poll results were released, and we who keep pounding out facts and trying to counterbalance the lies are discouraged.

What is the majority convinced of by bad information?

Torture is okay if it gives good results, even though (1) it's illegal and unconstitutional and (2) the results of torture are known to be unusable as actual intelligence.

Closing Gitmo is okay, but not if it's hard work.

Just over half of Americans say torture is at least sometimes justified to thwart terrorist attacks and are evenly divided over whether to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, according to a poll that underscores the challenges President Barack Obama faces in selling his terror-fighting policies.
(snip)
A novice commander in chief, Obama risks further defeat of his policies in Congress and disapproval of them abroad if he can't get the public on board. Thus, he's making a tough sell.

For now at least, the AP-GfK poll shows most Americans have faith in him, with 70 percent saying they are confident of Obama's ability to address terrorism. That's divided along party lines, with nearly all Democrats, two-thirds of independents and just over a third of Republicans expressing confidence.

Nearly eight years after terrorists struck on U.S. soil, more than a third of Americans say they worry about the chance that they or their relatives might fall victim to a terrorist attack — essentially unchanged from 35 percent five years ago.

While the total failures of the ideology that prevailed through disgusting tactics for eight years has had some effect of alienating the afflicted public, continuing media coverage of war criminals that erases their crimes works against their outright rejection.

Folks, we need to be clearer. Prosecution is going to have to follow crime, and the polls show it. While they knew they were being robbed, your average Joes/Janes are just not making the connection that the folks who were robbing them were the ones charged with enforcing the laws. We don't make the point until we actually do enforce them.

The media doesn't do its job until we give it no choice.

**************************************************************

The TX legislature adjourned without doing its basic job. A very good coverage of this is at jobsanger;

.....the Republicans spent a large part of the session trying to pass a voter suppression bill (which they called the Voter ID bill). The Republicans know the political winds are currently blowing against them. They have only two choices -- moderate their views and appeal to a broader range of voters or suppress as many votes as possible. These right-wing nuts chose voter suppression.

The voter suppression bill easily passed the Republican-dominated Senate, but was killed in the House (where there are 76 Repubs and 74 Dems). The only hope to revive the bill is to force the governor to call a "special session" of the legislature. That is why the Senate refused to pass the resolution to keep TxDOT alive for another two years. If they had passed it, there would be no reason for a special session to be called.

So don't be surprised when the governor calls for a special session to save TxDOT. And don't be surprised when a voter suppression bill is added to the special session agenda. That's what this whole mess is about.

We have a whole mess of recidivists in Austin keeping the government from protecting the citizens. It's gotten closer in numbers, the Democrats are close to balance now. We have to push harder.