Seriously though, along with the Massachusetts I thought I knew I was pretty bummed yesterday when I watched the previously unthinkable outcome of our special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s senate seat.  Yes, I know it’s not “Ted Kennedy’s seat, it’s the people’s seat.”  None the less, the people elected Ted Kennedy–the liberal lion of the senate–to sit in that seat for a long time.  I was never a huge Coakley fan (I voted for Capuano… though I wasn’t obsessed with him either), but I am a huge Obama fan and I was pretty sure that a republican win in Massachusetts would pretty much spell disaster for his agenda.  So, I proudly voted for Coakley–who’s campaign I never really got excited about–as a way of supporting Obama.  Plus, she could have been the first female senator from Massachusetts, which would have been exciting as well.  Obviously, things did not go down that way, but while I was initially devastated I am starting to see things differently.

After a night of taking a step back and thinking about what really happened I’ve come to two simple conclusions.  First, contrary to my initial reaction, it is unclear what this will do to the Health Care bill.  There seems to be a possibility that a “stripped down” “bipartisan” bill could still pass.  While such a bill would not represent “sweeping” health care reform, it would still count as a first step, which is more than the last bunch of presidents were able to accomplish.  Second, while many see this outcome as a political disaster for President Obama (my first reaction as well), I think it may actually present him with some big political opportunities.  As he has already acknowledged in his interview on ABC today (which I thought was a great first step), “The people of Massachusetts spoke… the same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office.”  Instead teaming up with the democrats who want to rush a health care vote before Brown is sworn in, Obama is doing what great leaders do: taking a step back, acknowledging what the people had to say, re-evaluating the situation and looking for a way to move forward.  This election result, which seems to be a referendum on health care, the democrats, and Obama, could represent an opportunity for a change in Obama’s agenda.  Now that the super majority is gone, Obama may have to really “reach across the isle” and become a more compromising president, which won’t help him with the left wing of the democratic party, but could help him with independents and maybe some republicans.  In other words, if the democrats had him on some sort of “leash,” that leash is no longer there because “the people have spoken,” and the democrats can no longer claim a public “mandate” to pass whatever they want.  Maybe, just maybe, they’ll be forced to be a little more creative in their bill writing and a little more bipartisan in their approach to the issues we face.  That’s not necessarily bad, right?  Of course, I’m being somewhat naive, but Obama already seems to be heading in that direction.

As always, David Brooks wrote a great analysis of the situation at NYTimes.com today.

They usually just make me laugh but this one got my blood boiling a little:

Lastly, here’s Media Matters with a great recap of Glenn Beck in 2009:

More posts coming.  I swear.

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First of all, when I went online to check my account balance on 7/24 there was no “-$135.00″ for Check 123, which means everything was just dandy.  But, apparently, when someone cashes a check of yours it may not be posted for several days AND when it eventually does post it can show up earlier on the timeline, at the time the person cashing the check brought it to the bank.  So when I checked my account on 7/27 there was a mysterious check, which, though it slipped into the timeline at 7/24, did not show up on my online banking account until 7/27.  This means that everything I spent on and after 7/24 is now slapped with a–gasp–$35.00 overdraft fee.  Yes, okay, this only happened because I stupidly forgot about a check that I had written out earlier that month, but, way to capitalize on my slip-up Bank of America.  Is that customer service?

Furthermore, if you look closely you’ll notice that the payment subtractions are neatly ordered from highest to lowest amount, as opposed to the natural timeline in which they occured.  This ensures that Bank of America can slap you with the maximum number of overdraft fees.  For instance, if you have $500 on your account, and these four charges: $490, $11, $5, and $4, they can give you three overdraft charges if they charge them in that order—never mind whether that was the order in which you actually used your card.  For example, say you bought something for $4, then $11, then $5, and then $490.  That should only give you one overdraft fee, because you didn’t go into the negative until your last purchase.  But if you made all those purchases in one day, “customer-friendly” Bank of America will neatly rearrange the payments to give you three overdraft fees.  At $35.00 per fee, that’s a $105.00 slap in the face.

So, that’s how they screwed me.  Yes, I screwed up first… but, still, is it fair?  Is it even legal?  It certainly isn’t good customer service.  In the end, they hit me with $245.00 in overdraft fees for one weekend.

And, oh yea, when I went to check my account on 7/25 the Bank of America website was experiencing technical difficulties and I couldn’t see my pending items.  The customer service lady later told me on the phone that I should have called and checked my balance over the phone because “you shouldn’t just expect the online banking system to work all the time.”

Lastly, check this out.

Really?  Next up, Hardball…

Laughing out loud.  I usually can’t stand Chris… but this was alright.  As a proud American citizen who was not born here, I really couldn’t care less if President Obama was born outside of the country.  Wherever he was born, he still lived with his Grandparents in Hawaii and went to school there, then to Columbia University and Harvard Law School, then worked as a community organizer in Chicago and eventually became a state Senator in Illinois, etc…  So either way, WHO CARES!?!?  But, we should point out that there seems to be NO EVIDENCE that Barack Obama was NOT born in Hawaii (unless some sort of HUGE conspiracy was underway…)  I typed in “Barack Obama birth certificate” on Google images and got this:

As you can see, that’s a whole bunch of hits leading to President Obama’s official birth certificate.  It looks like this:

Yes… I suppose it could be photoshopped, but it has been verified by a number of sources… including the state of Hawaii.  Yet the nonsense continues, here is CNN debunking the accusations.  Oh, apparently Lou Dobbs didn’t get the message, even though they debunked it on his show a few nights before!!!

Come on Dobbs!  Even O’Reilly wouldn’t believe this crap… back in 2008!!

Here is how Robert Gibbs reacted in the press briefing:

Sigh.  Can we get back to important things?  Maybe… I don’t know… healthcare?

And here’s Bill visiting the Daily Show:

Here is Stephen Colbert visiting his idol in the “no spin zone”:

These are not interviews, but also must-see.  The infamous Bill O’Reilly rant followed by Colbert’s version.

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Some of my friends have not watched these so I’ve compiled them here for all to see.  Enjoy!

First, here’s the one where he tells us about his “gut feeling” that Mexico is going to collapse.  Oh, yea, and then he cries:

Here’s another great weeping session:

If that’s not enough, here’s the one where his guest passes out:

And here is his fellow Fox News anchor Sheppard Smith makes fun of him!

And, finally, Glenn Beck breaking a mercury bulb on Earth day:

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The New York Times published a piece yesterday about CNN’s recent woes as it has fallen behind MSNBC and Fox News in the cable news rankings.  The piece suggests that CNN’s less-biased middle-of-the-road approach seems to be losing out to MSNBC and Fox’s model of opinion-infused content.  The question seems to be, would CNN be more succesful if it sold the remaining pieces of its soul and joined the orgy of partisan programming that now fills the primetime slots at MSNBC and Fox?

As always, I don’t think I know, but I do have a few thoughts on the situation–and am curious to hear what you think.

First of all, I would point out that being less opinionated, or more objective than MSNBC and Fox News does not say much about the type of news coverage CNN is providing.  CNN may be the lesser of three evils, but it is still in the business of infotainment.  This brings me to my main point, which is that CNN is trying to have it both ways–they have positioned themselves as the only unbiased cable news network but are still trying to create entertainment and opinion-infused content.

I do believe there is a market out there for real objective news coverage—but I don’t think that market tunes into CNN during prime time, because as I said before, CNN is simply the lesser of three evils.

I would argue that CNN has to make a fundamental choice about what kind of a network it is going to be.  If they want to take on MSNBC and Fox News and beat them at the infotainment game, they should unleash everyone and stop their lackluster attempts at real journalism.  If, on the other hand, they want to be a different type of network, one that actually provides objective news coverage, then they need to ditch Lou Dobbs, tell Anderson Cooper to stop the awkward flirting sessions with his co-host, and get John King to stop playing video games while covering presidential elections.

In other words, using less opinion than MSNBC and Fox News obviously isn’t working, but, perhaps an honest attempt at opinionless news could.

Your thoughts?

PS:  Another question for you: Is Glenn Beck a well trained actor playing a really big joke on everyone?

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This bloggingheads.tv clip focuses on a question I find fascinating. The question is “Did liberal opposition help or harm the Iraq war effort?” I think this is a critical question that the media has yet to address–and probably never will.  I think you can’t deny that the Liberal push to get out of Iraq (2006 elections–remember?) did in fact put a lot of pressure on the Pentagon, Iraqi forces, and Iraq’s government, and signaled to them that US forces may in fact be leaving Iraq in the near future.  Did this have a positive impact on our mission in Iraq?  The anti-war movement was of course matched with the Bush administration’s refusal to pull out any troops, which, when taking into account the relative success of the “surge” (which, of course, may be temporary–but for now has stabilized Iraq) was not necessarily a bad thing.  Could it be that the combination of extreme political pressure to get out, with an administration that refused to do so was exactly what was needed?  I wonder how we will look back on this chapter of the Iraq War.

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So my question to you is:  Why is this on TV?  I mean, Rush Limbaugh is an idiot but watching this blabber is pretty unbearable.  Unless, of course, you interpret it as comedy.

Second, I’ll share with you this TPM “day in 100 seconds” clip.  A lot happened today but sometimes it seems like you can grasp what the media had to say in only 100 seconds…

Lastly, I’ll leave you with this picture I snapped when I was in New York over winter break.  I thought it was somewhat ironic…  here is Coca-Cola promoting alternative energy with a giant electronic billboard.  I mean, I understand that it runs on wind-power (which, actually I think is very cool), but couldn’t they have promoted alternative energy in a less wasteful way? Why not throw up a giant Coca-Cola logo made out of real plants!  That would be something.  I know, I know, I’m sort of hating on the wrong folks–at least they are making an effort.  But I think we need to be skeptical of this sort of thing.  I’ve said before that there is going to be a huge need for oversight in regards to “green” products and advertising.  Who is holding companies accountable for labeling their products environmentally friendly?  Who checked to make sure that Coca-Cola ad is actually run by wind-power?  There are some people in charge of these things… but I’m guessing we could use a whole lot more–now that “green” is really catching on.

P.S:  Check out the awesome back-and-forth comments going on in response to my “Simple Math” post.  And, I’ll be giving out another T-shirt soon!  Start commenting, you could win!

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