Has America lost its mind?

In the span of the last week we've had:

The taser kid, Andrew Meyer starts asking too many questions and annoyingly disrupts a political forum with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. Kerry claims later not to have seen a thing and that it happened in another room. Pretty spine-less senator, the video shows the truth. You were in the same room and saw and heard it all, where do you get off? You obviously were overwelmed by the situatition and asked people to calm down, but you shouldn't have let it happen. This man wanted to be our president and he couldn't even react to step in and stop 6 cops from tackling and tasering one man. On the other had, it's the most excitement ever at a Kerry forum.



Former CBS newsman Dan Rather is asking some tough questions and getting heat from all sides in his $70 million lawsuit against his former employer. And trust me, it's not about the money, think about it, you can't have a civil suit without damages. He describes the lawsuit and the fallout from his for Larry King.



The story hasn't moved beyond journalism circles, but it's a big one IMO. Rather is basically saying that corporate interests (i.e. media conglomeration and advertising) and political interests have hijacked broadcast journalism and systematically under reports or buries unfaltering news in relation to economic and personal bonds.

This is major, and the reason why I feel that TV news has lost its way and isn't as reliable as newspapers. Why isn't this a bigger deal? Reporters are being stopped from reporting, the basis of the free flow of information is under question.

This week the House decided to vote on an advertisement by MoveOn.org ran in the New York Times, effectively giving them tons more publicity than their $65,000 ad could ever have bought them. The ad questioned Gen. David Petraeus' testimony to congress about Iraq by, among other things, referring to the man as "Gen. Betray Us?"

The general responded and the House naturally put everything else on hold and decided



The resolution passed and everyone agreed that MoveOn.org had gone too far in attacking Petraeus. Everyone got in an uproar about the first amendment and free speech and what not.

But two things come to mind for me. One, why are we wasting our government resources on such stupid things and two, look at the wording of the resolution. They're not saying that MoveOn should not have done it, it says that they don't condone attacking our military members or Petraeus' character in critical verbal or written attacks.

Hello all you guys in an uproar, did you really expect any member to not vote for this? Look at the fall out, the few democrats that voted against it, the republicans are already spinning it to say they are un-American. (Maybe we should just get another HUAC to get rid of these traitors... oh wait we already did, it's called the Patriot Act... just check back in 50 years, that's how history will define this time.) This isn't about free speech or Iraq, it's about political name-calling across the hall.

And here's something that I just have no words to describe:



... what? ...

In other news that's hardly getting any play, Hillary Clinton's giving health care another stab.



This is major and has the potential to change all of our lives in a profound way.. yet where are we talking about it? I'm not even going to pretend I've researched it myself, because when I search Google, I can't find a single unbiased sourced of information.

There's still more, a top democratic fund raiser, Norman Hsu
was arrested on a train, naked... but not for being naked. He was arrested on charges steaming from New York and accused of swideling people out of $60 million, much of it he donated to Democratic candidates.

Personally I think this is another major story and we should use it to start really taking a hard look at champaign financing reform, and I mean seriously this time. Not the usual make it a champaign topic every four years and then conduct business as usual for another four years after January 1st.

I think we should take Canada's example and cap each candidates funding at half a million. It'll level the playing field for one, but more beneficial to America, it severely limits the power of lobbyist and corporate interests in government.

Whoever has the money has the power, let's give some of that power back to the people.

Has America lost its mind? What is going on and why aren't we talking more about this stuff? Then again maybe I'm being an elitist, thinking these topics are important and trying to make them so.

But perhaps these issues aren't very important, I mean if we talked about this stuff who would report on Britney Speers, which route OJ took to the airport after bail, who is Anna Nichols' baby's dada, Kid Nation is premiering on CBS, the NFL's Patriots may be cheaters, Angelia and Brad are adopting, Kanye and 50 are (fake) beefin' (to sell records), NBC's Heroes is coming back, DMX pulled a McNabb, or any of the other much more important and pressing matters.

Right?