There was an episode of Barney Miller on Election Day.  The detective were called to a house where a woman was locked in her bathroom.  Her husband had forced her into the john so she couldn’t vote.  The husband explained that his wife hated him that she was going to vote against his candidate just to cancel out his vote.  He wanted to make sure his vote counted.

Funny on TV.  But in real life, it’s ridiculous.  But that’s exactly what Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions is saying when he calls for federal spending cuts but not cuts that are directed at his state.  Here’s how the New York Times wrote about it:

Mr. Sessions said money taken from NASA would not be saved but would instead be directed to other Obama administration priorities that he did not support. He said his preference would be to set an overall spending limit and allow Congress to determine what programs should get the money. “Then we can debate it,” Mr. Sessions said.

Sound familiar?  It’s just another politician speaking out of both sides of his mouth.  Sessions and Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss talk to the national GOP while trying to placate the local GOP with mixed messages.

Granted, the Democrats are just as bad when it comes to fiscal responsibility.  But the GOP on this issue are bigger hypocrites.  They tout themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility. 

I know many of you who read this will complain about me being an apologist for the Democrats or you will label me liberal.  I’m neither.  I may lean to the left on social issues, but when it comes to fiscal issues I am a conservative.  Does that make me a libertarian?  Not really.

What it does make Jeff Sessions and Saxby Chambliss: double-talk politicians who have foresaken what was truly great about the GOP long before the Neo-cons and the extremists took over.

The worst part: it will begin a new surge of fundraising by special interest groups that will cause even more economic chaos that will hurt the majority of Americans.

Now is the time you need to be the most important journalist for yourself.  Let’s face it; the majority of the mainstream media will get their information from these distorting bribers.

My book is even more needed now.  TRUTH: The No BS Guide To Navigating A Media-Biased World is yours for free.  Just write to me at info@johndaly.tv and I will send you a free PDF copy.  Using my system of information gathering just 15 minutes a day will make you more informed than most journalists.

http://www.icobp.com/event-sign-up.cfm?Affiliate=jdaly

LAS VEGAS, NV (August 19, 2009) – Don’t dismiss the right-wing extremists views on death panels right away. They’re not entirely out of touch with American fears.

Granted, it’s difficult to take some of the right-wing extremists seriously. Most of these folks are disrupters while the politicians like Sarah Palin and Chuck Grassley are merely trying to demagogue themselves to a small following of fearful and misinformed folks.

In addition, their arguments lack logic.

For example, they say that a government run option will wipe out the private insurance industry. Then they’ll argue that government is so bad at running things. Well, if the government is so bad then why would they wipe out private insurance?

Another example of uneven thinking: Many of them rail against loss of benefits to the elderly while wanting to keep costs down. That’s not an either/or question. The math says we will need to do both: benefits will be cut and the cost to beneficiaries will go up.

Yes, you are going to get fewer services and pay more. That’s because the politicians from the 1970s until now kept making long-term promises to older Americans.

Let’s be clear here: death panels aren’t part of any health care reform.

However, without any kind of health care reform or cost-savings, there will be some form of death panels in the future. Eventually, our health care and health insurance system will have the slogan, “It’s Your Money or Your Life.”

The market will eventually dictate who lives and who dies. And you can bet the poor and middle class will be the first to go.

This isn’t going to happen tomorrow or next year. But it will be coming soon. It’s a matter of demographics.

We are an aging society. Granted, we’re not as bad as China, Japan, or Russia. But the bulk of our citizens are baby-boomers just beginning to retire. In the next 15 to 20 years, all those baby-boomers will be on Medicare and Social Security – government obligations that aren’t there.

So what do we do when we run out of money in the next decade? We, the government and the people, will turn to those less fortunate and more sick in society and say, “Sorry, we don’t have the money to treat your cancer.”

We will eventually have to make decisions on who will live or who will die – if we don’t do something now with health care costs.

Steven Pearlstein in the Washington Post says the left-wing extremists are just as bad as the right-wingers. They continue to hold onto the notion of a government-run option.

It is not the be-all and end-all of health-care reform. It is not the long-awaited safety net for the uninsured. And if, as many liberals hope, it turns out to be nothing more than Medicare for All, it won’t do anything to hold down long-term growth in health spending.

Read Pearlstein’s piece here. He talks about the logic of regional co-ops.  But, like me, he emphasizes the need to cut costs.  Well worth the read.

Also, check out FactCheck.org for reports on the reality of media reports on health care reform.

And if you’re going to watch cable news, watch it only for immediacy and emotion. Don’t rely on the information there to make your decision on health care or any issue for that matter.

LAS VEGAS, NV (July 13, 2009) – There’s more entertainment going on in D.C. and Wasilla than there is here in Sin City.

When I say entertainment I mean Entertainment Bias by the media. The media – both print and broadcast – turn stories into entertainment pieces. They forget the journalism and give us the fluff. I yearn for the good old days in news when writing or producing “feature stories” meant you couldn’t cut it as a journalist.

Now the New York Times and Meet the Press have gone “featury soft.” Yes, I made up a word.

It all revolves around Sarah Palin. Enough already.

Before I cover the media bias in the story, let me offer this about the VP candidate and current Alaskan Governor. I think she was a joke of a candidate. Clearly, she had no clue about national affairs. Choosing her as a candidate was the dumbest thing John McCain did and it hurt him.

For the first time in all my years of following or covering politics, with a lot of disdain for politicians, the Palin choice allowed me to say for the first time, there was a candidate on a major party ticket that was not as qualified as I was. And I am not qualified at all.

As of now, Sarah Palin should be a TV host on her own cable show. She’s attractive and well-known – for her personality and quirkiness. That would work perfectly for the majority of cable networks. If she really wants to be president, then she should remove herself from public life – or stay on as governor — and learn what it takes to govern and be a leader.

Sarah Palin deserves much of the credit for her demise. She was unprepared to be a national candidate. The media had every right to tear her apart. She was not running for a beauty contest; she was going to be one heart beat – a weak one at that – from the most powerful office in the world. I’ll say the same thing to Palin and her supporters that I said to John Kerry and his whiners after 2004: Politics is a full contact sport; you don’t like it, then get out.

However, I think the media has carried it too far now.

The New York Times lead story online this morning is “Palin’s Route to Resignation: Missteps and Ignored Advice“. They had four reporters on the story.

And then David Gregory on yesterday’s Meet the Press asked John McCain more questions about Palin than the revelations of a secret CIA program by the Bush Administration and the economy.  At times, David Gregory has turned one of the great news interview shows into Today or Entertainment Tonight.

She’s a soon-to-be ex-Governor. She has nothing to offer the national dialogue – except silly misstatements. The news well has gone dry. But the entertainment well continues to gush.

The media uses Entertainment Bias to keep us hooked. Tom Fenton, in his book Bad News, writes about how CBS spiked stories of the impending danger of Osama bin Laden back in the 1990s to concentrate more on the Bill Clinton’s Lewinsky Affair. We’re doing the same thing today.

Why does the media care so much about Sarah Palin?

First, she’s an easy story. She’s great to look at, but she will always say something entertaining if not outright stupid.

Second, the media only wants a good story and ratings. There is enough evidence for the right-wing whackos to say it’s the liberal bias in the media. Although I can see their point, I disagree. All the media wants is a juicy, titillating story. They truly don’t care which party either: remember Gary Hart and Bill Clinton.

Third, we – the public – allow this. The media is only following our lead. Granted, the media is like a crack dealer. They keep getting us addicted to the crap they’re selling us. Trust me, one of the biggest anachronisms in newsrooms is WAPTA which means what are people talking about. It’s not What Do People Really Need to Know.

So, please, everyone, media and news consumers, stop with the Palin stories. She is not a news story.

Why does this matter?

This entertainment bias is part of the spiraling culture we’re witnessing. Look at what it has done to other politicians who have been seduced by fame and power.

I see it in my own state here as our once august Senator John Ensign is now thrown on the tabloid heap of politicians who couldn’t handle fame. I’ve talked to enough folks close to the Ensign scandal who say the Senator became too full of himself. He was actually sniffing at the presidency.

Here’s what we do to politicians. We make them become celebrities. They learn how to make pithy sound bites for TV news shows. They learn how to manipulate reporters to get on major newscasts. They become rock stars at their own fundraising events having to entertain (that word again) donors who will put them in office.

Where in that last paragraph was there anything about public service or governing?

And we wonder how the economy could have gotten this way? The answer is simple. We’ve had entertainers, not leaders, governing us.  Seriously, the guys from Entourage act more mature than our elected officials.

And our news media has turned into paparazzi.  I am certain that Courtney Cox’s drama Dirt was cancelled because it didn’t give us anything different than what we’ve been seeing from the mainstream media