I Can't Take It Anymore…...

My husband has banned me from the the family room. The cat has jumped off the couch in fear for her life. If I didn't want to waste a good glass of Pinot Grigio…and lose the only flatscreen TV we all have for a while (gotta get the roof redone first), I came to vent at the computer. You can pretty well guess that I will not be invited to watch the State of the Union address….or the what-is-it-now, 500 Republican responses, rebuttals, points of view, denigrations, and get-my-face-in-front-of-the-cameras to follow (although their speeches have been written for weeks…).

I have had my fill of the likes of Paul Ryan, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell,  and Steve Stockman (and where the hell WAS he for 2 weeks?). I do not watch CNN, FOX, ABC, or NBC, for "dinner time" news reports. Besides, I follow everything on the internet, and throw in BBC and AJE along with several great blogs. (And of course Stewart and Colbert.)

As I watched Scott Pelley on CBS..…yes, I hoped that somewhere a moderate news journalist existed, even though I gave up on 60 Minutes. Then he interviewed (which is polite for acquiescing to his political point of view) Paul Ryan, asking his opinion of Pres. Obama's speech…before Ryan's even heard it. Such BS I cannot comprehend. And Pelley sat right there NOT even asking for clarification or calling out the mistruths. ("You Lie")

"The president seems as if he wants to go around the Constitution" with his threat of Executive Orders says Ryan…….just the same as Boehner and Mcconnell continue to spout. NEVER BEFORE has a president (read BLACK) done this!!

The listing of numbers of executive orders issued during the terms of modern presidents included in one of the examples above also bears no resemblance to reality. This chart compares the claimed number of orders issued by each president on the list with the actual number issued, as documented by The American Presidency Project: 

Name	Number claimed:	Actual number:
Theodore Roosevelt	3	1,081
Franklin Roosevelt	11	3,522
Harry Truman	5	907
Dwight Eisenhower	2	484
John Kennedy	4	214
Lyndon Johnson	4	325
Richard Nixon	1	346
Gerald Ford	3	169
Jimmy Carter	3	320
Ronald Reagan	5	381
George H.W. Bush	3	166
Bill Clinton	15	364
George W. Bush	62	291
Barack Obama	923	168

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/executiveorders.asp

Democrats need to shout it from the roof tops, make sure everybody on the internet knows it, call out journalists when they continue to allow the Right to spread their garbage on the airwaves, make their voices heard, donate, make sure people vote, and stand up for everybody, not just keep their thoughts and beliefs to themselves. Enough of this "well, we are the reasonable, fact based, understanding party. People will eventually see we have their best interests at heart." NO, they will not……not when they are bombarded constantly with BS, Right Wing money, false equivalency, and GOD (well, I made that last one up…).

OK….I'm done now.

OK, I Give….

 What is going on at CBS these days? 

Several people.....including those on Political Carnival, Politico, Washington Post and Sulia....have written about the narrative presented by 60 Minutes regarding the "horrible experiences" had by people comparing costs in Obamacare after being"cancelled" by their current insurance carriers. Further investigation by FOX reporters (imagine!!!) proved these stories untrue. Not one response from CBS.

Last week an episode was aired regarding a security guard's first-hand experiences during the attack in BENGHAZI which left four people dead, and the Republicans calling for Hillary Clinton's head on a platter. What was left out of the interview was the fact that this person had a book coming out, and it seems like a few of the details didn't quite jibe. This, once again, was called out by several other journalists and bloggers (http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2013/11/03/fox-news-diligent-cbs-60-minutes/ ..but we don't count.

Also : "The four-page indicent report, obtained by The Daily Beast, has not been previously published. A State Department official confirmed it matches the version sent to the U.S. government by Davies’s then-employer Blue Mountain Group, the private security company based in Britain, on Sept. 14, 2012, and subsequently provided to Congressional committees investigating the Benghazi attacks."

This evening at the end of 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley made the comment (with a screen shot of the Benghazi story in the background) that "we have received several letters about this story we presented last week." Thinking perhaps I was going to hear "we goofed" imagine how dumbfounded I was when he proceeded to quote three notes that said " I'm glad the story is getting out there. It's about time this network told the truth" and something about finding out who's to blame. Not one word that there were questions raised as to the veracity of the man's accounting. ( i.e. "He learned of Stevens’s death, Davies wrote, when a Libyan colleague who had been at the hospital came to the villa to show him a cellphone picture….")

Am I missing something here? Nothing has been said to date about the slipshod reporting on Obamacare or a follow up on the folks they interviewed. Now, there seems to be a subtle doubling down on presenting stories of questionable veracity. Journalistic integrity seems to have fallen by the way side.....for a reason? Let me guess…...