The Electric Chair

It’s been a while, and I need to take a few minutes of a break between work projects, so why not catch up with current events. But before that, just some fun stuff.

My youngest son turns 1 year old Feb. 1st, while the other children have recently turned 13 and 12. I love my family, and have been blessed with greats kids and a wonderful loving wife. Lately I feel like I have a pretty wonderful life. There are thing I’d love to change in my life (my financial situation, the location where we live), but with such a great family, I can overlook those things and enjoy my life.

Avery is so much fun. He’s become quite attached to me lately… probably because I’m the “fun” one. I pick him up when his mommy is busy and can’t attend to him instantly (ya i’m spoiling him). We play a lot, and he’s developing a fun and goofy personality. He’s also so very smart. He’s going to start walking any day now, as he’s already trying and his favorite thing to do is to have us hold his hands so he can walk over the entire house. He loves to climb stairs too (practically by himself) — much to the dismay of his mother. He’s definitely got some words now, even if they are hard to understand. The few baby signs (Sign language) we are consistent with he definitely understands, and I expect him to start repeating some of them any time. Watching all of these developments and how quickly they go by is very fun.

Ok, on to the news…

Health Care

Today is going to be an interesting day. The 60th seat of the Democratic Senate lock is likely to be broken today when Brown wins. That *should* change the game on Health Care, but I’m worried it won’t. Clearly the American people are *not* with our representatives on this brand of health care reform. The public wants reform, but they don’t want what is being shoved down our throats, and the arrogance of the Democrats in forcing it upon us is incredible. It’d be so easy for them to regain the public trust they’ve lost lately by being honest, and toning down this legislation into *real* reform instead of trying to control everything. Alas, I think these people are power drunk and don’t really even know what they are doing.

So if Brown wins, what happens? Well, I think the arrogance continues in one of three ways: 1) They refuse to seat him quickly, allowing their super-majority to stick until they pass it. 2) They use reconciliation to pass the bill with 51 votes. This would be the ultimate betrayal since that option is only for financial bills. So either they change the rules, break the rules, or change the bill in such a way that it becomes a finance bill. Either way, it’ll be a sad day for democracy. 3) The house decides to just accept the Senate Bill that was passed as is, which means they don’t need to do another vote and the previous Senate vote holds. Yet another sad day. Reference: Salon.com article

Looking Forward

Look, I recognize that the American people gave the Democrats the big majority (not the super majority mind you, that took a power hungry former Republican to make that happen), and those officials acting upon that vote is proper, except that now with a clear populace rejecting them, they continue down the wrong path. If I were a Republican election strategist, I’d be cheering for the Democrats to act so arrogantly, because it will be their demise. In fact, I think it already *is*. But in the end I want what is best for *everyone* in this country. I want the Democrats to realize their mistakes, and do the will of the people that elected them. I don’t want Republicans back in power because Democrats suck. I want them in power after they learn to be moral people and also do the will of the people who elect them. I’m looking forward to the 2010 elections, but at the same time I worry for the country. Yes, I’m quite sure Republican are going to cut the Democratic majority to almost even, maybe even better… but I have so much distrust in all politicians right now that I’m not giving the overall outcome much hope.

The Underwear Bomber

Someone asked me why I hadn’t blogged on this. I guess the whole thing is so ridiculous that I’m (almost) at a loss for words. Our government failed us. I don’t expect every attack to be prevented, but I do expect better of the money we give them. When a man gets on a plane with an explosive, and actually starts to set it off, that was a failure. When the man was on the Terror list, and gets on, that’s a failure. And for Napolitano to actually say the system worked, is arrogance in the highest. What worked was the diligence of the passengers on the flight. The only good thing that happened out of the whole thing was when Obama actually admitted that the buck stopped with him. Damn right it does, now fix it and stop trying to destroy our security with bad decisions like Gitmo and trying KSM with the same rights and courts as an American citizen. Do you know that’s going to cost $280 million or more. What a joke. He already said he’s guilty, he wants to be executed. Fine, make him a martyr, don’t read him Miranda rights and let him hurt *again* the victims families by giving him a “microphone”. What this government is doing is dangerous in both its action and inaction.

Much more to say, but gotta get back to work…

I spent the week around Thanksgiving without a regular News feed.  As I’ve gotten older the amount of news I watch and read has increased.  I should clarify that… News and Commentary.  As I’ve gotten older, my stress level has also increased, and as my wife will point out, my mood has generally worsened.

While I didn’t notice it, when we came back from Thanksgiving in Florida my wife pointed out that I seemed to be a better mood overall.  I didn’t think much of it until a few days later I realized I had turned off the news, and only briefly glanced at the news sites.

This got me thinking.  It’s easy for me to accept that my mood worsens when I’m worried about world event, politics, and the like.  But even that week without news did create a slight new stress for me: I don’t like being ignorant.  It also pointed out two things that make me distraught all over again.

1) It’s easy to be happy when you don’t know what’s going on, but not knowing what is going on is how tyranny makes headway.  I wasn’t worried about the things that worried me the week before because I wasn’t up to date and informed.  While I liked not worrying, it’s the worrying that is necessary to keep tyranny and evil at bay.  (Yes, Evil!).  I think that’s why people don’t care about how corrupt our government has become.  I think too many tune out… and who can blame them, who wants to be stressed?

2) Even in a “newsless” situation, I caught some news items, but they weren’t important.  One news story sticks out: The Tiger Woods story.  Of the news that was “forced” on me in my news blackout, that bit of pop culture crap abounded.  I find this ridiculous and sad. I *really* don’t care about Tiger except that it’s sad that somebody who so many people looked up to has let people down.  To me, that was a news story that shouldn’t have gone past a 24 hour news cycle.

For me, Pandora’s box has been opened, and even though I can take a few days off of “the real world”, ultimately I start feeling worse that I’m out of the loop.  Ignorance is bliss for me only for a few days.  I guess it’s lke a vacation, eventually you will likely *want* to come back.  Or maybe I’m just crazy.

One of the big stories lately, at least in my mind, is the Administration’s attack on Fox News.  This sort of attack isn’t new of course, as all of my friends on the left have long dismissed Fox News as anything but legitimate.  It’s no secret that I’m a Fox watcher and don’t totally agree with their assessment.

Their criticism usually centers around the idea that Fox is a “Right Wing” Network, and is completely biased to the right.  I think that oversimplifies things, and dismisses what Fox really is.  Anyone that denies that the programming on Fox leans to the right would be insane.  It is clear that Fox is the network to watch to find right commentary (I use right in the political sense, not the factual sense).  To say that Fox News isn’t a news network is not correct, however.  If you are one of those that disagrees with that statement, I simply ask you this: is MSNBC a news network?  Is it more of a News Network than FoxNews?

I asked myself that question this morning.  I attempted to look at the two networks with a blind eye (which is hard to do, but I think I did it).  I’ve concluded that the two are a result of each other, and are the Yin and the Yang of Cable News.  I attempted to analyze CNN too, but found that of all the networks, they were the most “News” Centric, and ultimately left them out of my comparison (which makes sense, and good for them — though once I took my “Neutral blinders” off, I still think CNN leans left). CNN does have commentary shows, and they do lean to the left, but compared to the other networks, this amount of programming is pretty minor.

So, being the geek that I am, I created a spreadsheet comparing the 24 hour programming cycle of MSNBC and FoxNews.  I put the programming into categories:

• (N) – News/Fluff – These are strict news shows, or semi-news/fluff shows.  Fox and Friends fits the News and Fluff while Special Report with Bret Baier is strict News.  (Need the MSNBC Equivelents?  Morning Meeting is News and Fluff and MSNBC News Live is strict News.
• (R) – This is a show that is hard right or leans Right.  In my list i separated that into (MR) too, as Morning Joe on MSNBC is definitely right leaning, but has more of a moderate tone sometimes.
• (L) – This is a show that is hard left or leans left.  I debated whether Chris Mathews was (L) or just (ML), and eventually gave him the (ML) rating.

Further, I noted that even the news shows could have a lean to them.  On Fox it’s fair to say that almost every news show has a bit of a right lean, at least in comparison to any other news network (It’s my belief that the other networks lean so far left that even fair reporting looks “right”, but that’s probably my idealogy, so for the sake of this “study” I’ve accepted that Fox has a bit of a right lean in their regular News).  I also accept that the MSNBC leans left in most of it’s news reporting. Whether or not those two lean each way equally is open for debate.

Both networks repeat their opinion shows multiple times. I did not clarify the number of shows in my study, but rather the hours of programming.

So here are my results, feel free to look through your programming guide and compare with me. In the 24 hours news cycle:

• Fox News has 16 hours of News Shows
• Fox News has 8 hours of Commentary Shows that are to the Right
• MSNBC has 8 hours of News Shows
• MSNBC has 3 hours of Commentary Shows that are to the Right
• MSNBC has 13 hours of Commentary Shows that are to the Left
• Fox has *one* business show (which leans right), while MSNBC has one Medical show (Which i’ve noted neutral)

Based on this I think the following conclusions are legitimate:

• Both Networks have a strict Political Lean
• Fox has more “News” programs
• MSNBC attempts to look more moderate and Balanced, and indeed does carry a commentary show that counters all of their others.  Fox lost their only “balanced” program when Colmes Left and Hannity and Colmes became just “Hannity”.

In case your curious and don’t want to do the analysis yourself, here are the shows and my classifications

FOX

• Fox and Friends (N/F) (3 hours)
• Americas NewsRoom (N) (2 hours)
• Happening Now (N) (2 hours)
• The Live Desk (N) (2 hours)
• Studio B With Shepard Smith (N) (1 hour)
• Your World with Neil Cavuto (BR) (1 hour)
• Glenn Beck (R) (2 hours)
• Special Report with Bret Baier (N) (2 hours)
• The Fox Report with Shepard Smith (N) (1 hour)
• The O’Reilly Factor (R) (3 hours)
• Hannity (R) (2 hours)
• On the Record with Greta Van Susteren (N/F) (2 hours)
• Red Eye (N/F) (1 hour)

MSNBC

• Morning Joe (MR) (3 hours)
• Morning Meeting (N) (2 hours)
• MSNBC News Live (N) (4 hours)
• Dr. Nancy (HN) (1 hour)
• Andrew Mitchell Reports (NL) (1 hour)
• Hardball with Chris Mathews (ML) (3 hours)
• The Ed Show (L) (2 hours)
• Countdown with Keith Olbermann (L) (4 hours)
• The Rachel Maddow Show (L)  (3 hours)
• First Look (N) (1/2 hour)
• Way Too Early with Willie Geist (N) (1/2 hour)

Conclusion

Now, if you’ve stuck with me this far… let’s quickly discuss what our administration is doing.  They are targeting a network because of it’s lean, and claiming they do not report news.  I think this is hypocritical and wrong.  MSNBC’s lean certainly looks like they have been in the tank for Obama.  I think Fox, despite the number of right wing commentators, has generally given a fair shake to the left in their news and interviews.  There is definitely an attempt to delegitimize each of the networks by their idealogical opponents.  I think that’s the wrong way to go.  The first amendment is a wonderful thing, and commentary is appropriate.  Perhaps the lean of the news show is problematic… but if you approach your intake of news and commentary with a skeptical and questioning mind, you can certainly make your own opinions.

We do not need a news Fairness Doctrine, we do not need to trash the news networks, and we do not need “Diversity” in the news and Radio… it’s already there!  The Free Market has already taken care of this.

The administrations efforts to dismiss Fox may backfire on them.  Their attempt to pat the other networks on the head has even CNN questioning the administration. My fear is that this backdoor attack on the first amendment is just the first step, however.  Obama just today dismissed FoxNews as “Talk Radio”.  If one did this, and the “Diversity Doctrine” (The new version of the Fairness Doctrine) makes any headway, that would allow the government to essentially shut down FoxNews.  Did you know that the government is attempting to fine Fox $30 million for “Wrong statements and indecencies”?  This is exactly the sort of thing Chavez has done to his critics… shutting them down.  No government should ever control the media. And of course it’s completely hypocritical, as I’ve shown that MSNBC leans way left.

We need debate, we do not need to stifle it.  Do not dismiss something simply because your politics say you must, and don’t let our government do it either.

No, this isn’t political… sorry to disappoint   This is just some rambling because I’m bored.

I work from home.  When we moved from California to Georgia, one of the requirements I set for the house we’d get was that I needed a home office.  We bought a nice house that had a room perfect for my office.  When we moved in, I didn’t have any office furniture so I stuck all my stuff on some folding tables, threw my boxes in the corner and immediately started a bad habit of having the messiest room in the house.  It was horrible.

Eventually my wife convinced me to buy some nice office furniture.  So I picked up a really nice desk and a set of matching bookshelves.  Wonderfully masculine looking wooden furniture.  So I cleaned up, setup up the furniture and enjoyed the new digs.  But quickly the room returned to it’s cluttered state, but with nice furniture.

Then I took a trip to California.  Upon returning my office was clean!  My wife had cleaned it, organized it and decorated it! She painted the office red, which had been my request, and found some nice draperies.  I loved it!  I had the best room in the house… which I then proceeded to turn back into the messiest.

Then a friend of ours from Vegas came out to visit.  We needed a place for her to sleep, so I cleaned up the office.  Then she left, and the return of the messy room arrived.

Do you notice a pattern yet?

Just yesterday a friend of mine came over to pick up some flyers I had created for him.  I knew we’d talk for a few minutes so I scrambled to clean up my office.  It’s truly embarrassing letting people see something like that.

So today I continued the cleanup.  There’s a little left to do, but the office looks good again and once I pack up a few things more, it’ll look great!

I put all this down to virtual paper as a record for myself, and to note that I love it when things are clean around me.  It makes me feel better.  I want to be in that office now, where recently I had wanted to avoid it, and dreading work.  It truly goes to show that your environment can affect your mood.

So I resolve to keep it clean.  I work better, am happier, and am proud to have people view my “man-cave” when it’s clean.  I’m sure it makes my wife happier too.

Last night I had a dream that I was sneaking around my own house trying to smoke a cigarette.  In the dream I was smoking with the window open when someone walked in, startled me, and I dropped the cigarette.  I made my way outside to pick up the cigarette that was getting wet, as it was raining outside.  I took a puff and then had the realization that I was becoming an addicted smoker.

For the record, I don’t smoke.  I despise cigarettes.  They’ve got both of my parents addicted, despite their many attempts to quit.  I know what it is doing to them, and it scares the hell out of me.  I worry about myself as I play poker a lot in smoke filled bars, where I might as well be smoking (but without the risk of becoming addicted, at least that’s my theory and I’ll stick to it).

I do believe we often dream about the things that are on our mind… so the best I can figure is that this was about my fear of addictions.  I used to pride myself on not having any.  So many of my friends were/are addicted to caffeine drinks.  But as I get older I realize that addictions aren’t limited to drugs.  Bad habits that you can’t seem to quit are just as bad if not the same as addictions.  Of these, I have many. Here are a few:

1) McDonalds.  My McDonalds addiction started when I was in high school and my Girlfriend worked there.  I’d go and visit her while she was working, and pick up an “All American Cheeseburger Meal”.  It was the perfect size for me.  One burger, small fry and small drink.  I’d be full, and it tasted so darned good.  I still love that food, but now a satisfying meal is 2 cheeseburgers, medium fry, large coke, and maybe another burger or McChicken sandwich.  Further, these wonderful meals often cause my stomach distress shortly after consuming them.  Despite me knowing how horrible all this is, I have a hard time denying my hunger for the Golden Arches when I need a quick food fix, or if I’m traveling, or if I just need some good old fashioned comfort food. And on top of it all… it’s not cost effective.  Fast food is *not* cheap, so I’m wasting money that is desperately needed at my house for other things.

2) Computer time.  I sit at a computer all day long for work.  After work I play stupid computer games (Solitaire, Bejeweled etc), or surf random sites looking for amusing videos, or play on Facebook.  Hell, now I’ve convinced myself to start blogging.  Way to go Jesse, you’ve found another way to feed the Computer-monkey on your back.  Now since I do get paid to be a geek, it’s not all bad… but so much time at a computer has taken it’s physical tole.  It’s far easier to play a game, type a blog post, finish some work, or watch a funny video then it is for me to go outside and do some yard work, clean my office or pretty much any physical activity apart from exercising my typing fingers. The absolute worst part is when I sit in bed, as I do now, typing on the laptop in a position that makes my neck sore and my hands/wrists irritated.

3) Poker.  I’m partly in denial about this one, but if I must be honest, and Indeed I must, Poker is indeed an addiction of mine that has some negative consequences.  But since I’m in denial, i’ll start with the good.  I enjoy poker, it makes me feel good.  I enjoy that I’m pretty good at it.  It has exercised my mind, and it’s human nature to want to compete.  Further, at the end of a day of working from home, I need some social time outside of the family (who I love very much). But it does take a lot of my time, and unfortunately the only time for poker is evenings.  This is quality time I could spend with the family.  Further, because most of the poker games (though free) are in bars, I end up smelling like smoke when I come home.  Further still, I can’t seem to play poker without a beer or two… it just feels wrong to me.  And because I do so, I’m spending money that could also be better spent.  Since it’s “Free” Poker, it’s not very often I earn anything, so it’s not like being good at it is making me money.  Though when I took my talents to Vegas a few months back, I turned my initial buy-in  (of about $100) to one daily tournament into a pretty decent profit after three more tournaments and two cash game sessions that more than paid for the entire trip, and a little food decadence.  But seeing how any social gambling in Georgia is entirely illegal (despite some of my poker friends insisting it is not, Georgia Law — Section 16-12-20 states that a person commits a the offense of gambling when they play for money in a game of dice, cards, or balls) It’s a misdemeanor.  That hasn’t stopped me from playing a micro-stakes friendly game, but I’m not likely to make any serious money at it.  The most I can win at most “free games” is a small amount of bar cash, which pays for a night or two of drinks.

4) Beer.  Yes, as I already mentioned, I have a weakness for beer… especially while playing poker.  I’m not “addicted” to it in the alcoholic sort of way, but i’m likely to be drinking a beer a few times a week… which hasn’t helped the pocketbook, the expanding stomach, and probably my liver.

A few of my friends have habits that are good for them… dancing used to be one of mine, but sadly that has tapered off a lot… I should feed that addiction again.

How many things do you consume or do often that are bad for you, cause you problems, or otherwise make your life miserable?

Everyone is doing a blog these days, so why not me?  Actually, it’s not that I expect anyone to really read this stuff, but I have had a need to express my frustrations, my excitement, my news… you know, my thoughts. Why not  blog?  Facebook is ok, but I needed a more structured target for such musing, so here it is: The Electric chair (reborn).

Reborn?  Yes.  Back before the Web was anything but a geeks playground (back in the days where gopher ruled “browsing”, and IRC ruled “chat”), I had a web page I called “The Electric Chair”.  As most personal websites were back then, it was plain, and pretty much just about me.  It featured a picture of me, sitting in a chair playing guitar, taken with a webcam.  It was the perfect cheezy MySpace/Facebook picture before there was facebook.  I was an innovator in dorkiness.  It also had a picture of my cat, Fizzy (RIP).  Depending on where you clicked on the picture, Fizzy would Purr, or meow.  Very interactive.

So here it is again… The Electric Chair reborn as a blog so that I might express my pretentiousness like so many others do.

For those of you who might actually read this… be prepared.  I’ll be talking about all of my interests.  These will include, but not be limited to: Conservative/Libertarian Politics, Technology, My Family, Poker, Music and All things Swing/Lindy Hop.  On a good day, I might tie a few of the topics together!

But mostly, it’ll be pretentious.