Fox Twitter says Obama Assassinated

      Fox News Twitter account was hacked and and claimed that Obama was assassinated.  Hacker's use Fox News to tweet something crazy.  It's ironic since Fox News says outrageous things all the time.  I wonder if Fox deleted comments of people responding....They often do that on their website when viewers of their shows post racist/inflammatory remarks.  Either way, the incident shows how easy it is to spread false information very easily .  Perhaps Fox should remember that when "reporting" the news.

Senate President in New Jersey wants to punch Chris Christie

       Senate President Stephen Sweeney, a Democrat from New Jersey, said that Chris Christie, the current Republican governor of New Jersey, was acting like a "bully" and a "punk" with his line-item veto of the budget.  He supported Christie's union attacks on pensions and health care and then claims Christie would not meet with him to discuss the budget.  Christie says that they met for 11 hours on the 27th of June and then again Tuesday after it was signed.
      Chris Christie has been known to play fast and loose with the facts, such as recently saying that the only state that spends more on medicaid than New Jersey is New York.  However, he is a very direct person and in the minds of uninformed voters confidence exudes rightness(see Bush 41).  The media has failed in many respects when covering him.  When he was first elected he was having a meeting with teachers and was asked by one what she was supposed to do when she had to pay for classroom supplies out of her own paycheck, which already wasn't very substantive as it is.  He told her she should get another job.  Another job?!  Instead of saying it's ridiculous that teachers have to go through what they do in some cases to get supplies, he tells her to leave the profession entirely.  So much for the kids right?  Even though I don't condone violence, comments like that make one empathize a little with Stephen Sweeney's comments.

David Brooks admits GOP is not being intellectually honest

      David Brooks, a conservative commentator for the New York Times, wrote an op-ed saying that the Republicans are bypassing a huge opportunity.  In his words, " It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred million dollars of revenue increases."  Brooks says if the Republican Party were actually about governing, it would seize on this opportunity.  Democrats are not asking for anything big, only to moderately raise taxes.  He finishes by saying that what has happened to the Republican Party is that "Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative."
     A conservative is admitting what liberals have been saying all along!  I respect David Brook's intellectual honesty on this.  The Republicans have refused to raise taxes at all.  John Boehner has said that is the line in the sand that the Republicans cannot cross.  A fellow conservative is now calling him out on it.  This shows how far the Tea Party has warped the political system.  All of these Tea Party Republicans that won in 2010 are unreasonable and are causing negotiations to be chaotic.

Reality Matters

     Mitt Romney, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts and current candidate for the GOP Presidential nomination, is pulling a Sarah Palin by sticking by something he said that fact checkers have shown to be false.  The claim he is making is that Obama has made the economy worse, which is obviously false since unemployment was much worse when Obama FIRST took office than it currently is.  This reminds of Sarah Palin sticking by her Death Panel lie even after it recieved Politifact's (an independent fact checking non-partisan organization) lie of the year award!
     Perhaps the media should do it's job and when a politician of either stripe says something that is demonstrably false, they need to be hammered and hammered until they admit they were wrong or misinterpreted.  A great example of this is the Republican talking point that the Stimulus didn't create any jobs.  In fact, the Congressional Budget Office(which is the non-partisan policy analysis which both sides trust) estimates the stimulus created between 1.4 and 3 million jobs.  One could argue the stimulus was not designed as well as it could have been, or the bang for the buck could've been achieved in a more efficient way, but to say it failed is a complete fabrication.

Motorcyclist killed white protesting helmets

           This is one of those stories that just makes you shake your head and wonder if people really do have any capacity to be rational.  Phillip Contos was protesting the fact that the law requires motorcyclists to wear helmets by riding around on his motorcycle...you guessed it, without a helmet!  He tried to brake, ended up losing control, and his head ending up shooting straight into the pavement.  He was eventually taken the hospital where he died.  While this is a very sad story, it illustrates the point that sometimes laws are actually needed and a little bit of sacrificed freedom can mean that a course of events is actually better in the long run.  Don't forget to wear seat belts while using a traditional vehicle or a helmet while riding a motorcycle!

Rational Voter?

         Bryan Caplan, a professor of economics at George Mason University, wrote a book called The Myth of the Rational Voter.  In it he basically says people misunderstand issues and do not understand how to correctly blame parties that are responsible, such as blaming the Federal level for substandard education when state and local governments control it, and budget problems being blamed on the Federal Reserve.  In an interview he said  "One of the main problems with democracy is that people who don't know what they're talking about still have opinions — very strong opinions. And they vote on them."
      This seems to be a problem inherent in democracy itself, with people being uninformed or misinformed(in the case of Fox News viewers).  What remedy is there for people like the Tea Party who live in a reality of their own creation reinforced by Faux News and other like-minded people?  There does not seem to be one in a Democracy.

Health Care Cuts in Debt-Ceiling Talks

       President Obama, in trying to negotiate a deal with Republicans, is offering up cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.  The cuts would not be to beneficiaries(people who use Medicare and Medicaid) but only the amount that was paid to the doctors.  The size of the cuts are supposedly linked to how much Republicans would be willing to raise taxes.
      It's really pathetic that our government(mostly Republicans but Democrats too) are willing to cut money provided to hospitals.  Our health care system is extremely inefficient compared to other industrialized countries. Why are people's lives priced at a fixed amount?  Why do we not have a universal system that everyone pays into, but allow opting out for people with very large incomes.  This system could negotiate with the hospitals and come up with a reasonable price that would then be covered by the universal system.  Health care would be a HUMAN RIGHT.  As the Declaration of Independence says, all men are entitled to LIFE, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.