"Senator Government" Has Gone Too Far

Television news is insane. Right now I'm watching CNN, Hillary Clinton is speaking, and in the lower left bumper it says: "Fact: John McCain says Barack Obama's policies are 'class warfare.'" Well goodie. What does that tell you? Does it tell you if John McCain is lying? What is the "fact" CNN thinks they're informing us of? That John McCain spoke? Well how helpful, huh?

Flipping between three stations (CNN, MSNBC, and FOX) not one station so far, and I've been watching now for about a half hour, has mentioned the many lies Barack Obama told - with Obama openly denying his career started in Bill Ayers's home being the biggest whopper. All three stations are discussing how the candidates looked, like the reporters have no responsibility to inform anyone of anything. I mean, on CNN I'm counting 17 "journalists" around a table, and not one of them is dissecting the truthfulness of the answers. So why are they there? Are they all just window dressing? CNN must have a lot of money to throw away, if they're just paying people to sit in front of computers onscreen for nothing more than us to look at them.

I understand the Kennedy/Nixon effect, where Kennedy beat Nixon because he looked healthier than Nixon, but this is 2008 - not the advent of television - so why are the news channels still limiting themselves to that crazy standard? "Who looked better?" How about who told the truth? Barack Obama did say he would take matching funds - he lied. Barack Obama did say he would do 10 town halls "anytime, anywhere" - he lied. Barack Obama denied he was going to fine small businesses over healthcare - he lied. He denied he started his career in Bill Ayers's home - he lied. Barack Obama made like the founders of the Annenberg Foundation served on a board with he and Bill Ayers - rather than just awarding a grant to "professor" Bill Ayers without knowing who he was - which was a lie. Barack Obama didn't deny funding ACORN through The Woods Foundation. Are you catching my drift?

Seriously, as I'm watching - and I almost hate to admit this - the most informed pundits on television news, so far as I've seen, are the pundits on FOX: Sean Hannity, Dick Morris, and Karl Rove. They seem to be the only talking heads who know the landscape of the Ayers issue, for instance; knowing it's not merely an issue of who Ayers killed in the '60s but what the terrorist got Barack Obama to do today: namely dispensing the Annenberg's $50 million in funds for Ayers, allowing the terrorist's radical ideas to be disseminated in schools with no educational benefits what-so-ever for the children of Chicago. That covers four issues negatively for Obama: character, judgment, intelligence, and effectiveness.

So what did I think of the debate itself? I think Obama was smoother, but in the end, it'll be good for McCain because he got the ready soundbites for video - "Joe The Plumber" is going for John McCain and we'll be seeing a lot more of him as "The Average Joe". Obama's clear lies will be exploited - especially Obama's Senate roll-out in Ayers's home, etc. Basically, I think the question of trust is still hanging over Obama, which opens up other opportunities for the McCain campaign in the next 19 days. And with Hannity, Morris, and Rove hammering home the truth, this race is wide open and Barack Obama's got problems.

So McCain did what he had to - and Obama's, still, got some 'splaining to do.