Wednesday, October 21, 2015

More Baloney In The News - Media Propaganda

Fox - Gutfeld: Why America has trust issues with the media. The speakers opinion, from Conservative Fox, is convinced that the reason the media is no longer trusted is because it is liberal. He goes as far as to claim that Fox is not part of the media. The establishment cannot seem to understand why people jointed the Tea Party or Occupy movement a few years back and now cannot seem to understand the support for Sanders or Trump and the media is even more confused over why they are not trusted. The reason is quite simple, because everything they say is a sales job rather than an attempt to just present the facts in any in depth way. The hypocrisy of the media is only highlighted by the following video that literally auto played after the one above.

Fox - Anarchy in America. In this "report" Bill O'Reilly talks about how certain cities (he chooses San Francisco) are considering themselves "sanctuary cities" and not going after illegal aliens. I sort of agree with him on that, cities, counties and states need to keep the laws. Whether it be federal safety laws or any other laws. The problem is that O'Reilly said that the legislators who voted to remain a sanctuary city should all be jailed even if the law would not allow them to be prosecuted. Is this the same Fox News and O'Reilly that thought the clerk should not have to issue marriage licenses because it violated her religious beliefs and also supported that idiot farmer in Arizona who thought he had an innate right to graze on federal lands and not pay a fee? Well, yes it is. Fox is a bunch of hypocrites and it was funny to see this right after the video on the lack of trust in the media.

New Scientist - Carbon nanotubes found in children’s lungs for the first time. This is a really important finding. Carbon nanotubes are created in labs and may have many important uses down the road. We don't know if they are cancerous and it is believed they could be or at least increase the chance of cancer. It should also be noted that they have never been found in the air before; but, now are being found in the lungs of children in Paris and may also be in the lungs of adults in Paris. The big scary question is where are they coming from and how are they being released. If they are intentionally being released then we have an even bigger issue; but, we should at least be trying to find out how they are getting in the air. For my regular readers you may recall that not long ago the French also accidently sold some genetically modified sheep, illegally, that were put into the food supply "by accident". France might want to consider keeping a better eye on it's labs.

Fox - Business Insider - Donald Trump has experienced a major shift in one of the most significant predictors of electoral success. The short of the story is that 60% of Republicans have said that they could vote for Trump with 43% saying they think he will win the nomination. No matter how much support he has, the Republican party establishment does not want him because he is not already sold out to their traditional economic interests.

Yahoo - Reuters - Marijuana Use and Disorders Have Doubled Since 2001. The title and the way the article is written are both mislead. The article claims that Marijuana use has doubled according to surveys. Well, that would make sense as it is now legal in about half the states for medical uses. After having taken car of, helped and known people who have had cancer and gone through chemotherapy and radiation therapy, anyone who deny them marijuana to me is scum. It really upset me that my father could take morphine and was dying but it was still illegal for him to smoke weed even if it helped him to eat. He would not have taken it and did not want the morphine either; but, it really brought it home for me. This post is about marijuana though, it is about the media slant. The very first sentence of the article is a lie, it states that "abuse" of marijuana has doubled since 2001 because us of marijuana has doubled. Think about that. Do you honestly believe that people who are using medical marijuana are all "abusing" it? If you read the whole article you will find that 10% of the population is believed to have used marijuana in the last few years and of the roughly 320 million Americans that means that roughly 32 million have used marijuana in the last few years. I should point out that about 25% of the population had at least one day where they had at least 5 heavy drinks according to the CDC, or 2/12 times the number of people who even smoked marijuana once during that same period. Now, according to this article, the number of people that actually had a clinical problem with marijuana was roughly 3% of the 32 million who used it or a little more than 300,000. I am pretty sure the number of alcoholics is much higher than that. I should point out that it is believed that about 14 million people have problems with alcohol (Alcoholics Information - Statistics About Alcoholism). The statistic means that 2 1/2 times many people as have smoked marijuana in the past few years have serious problems with alcohol and the number of people wish serious problems with alcohol is about 50 times higher than the number of people who misuse marijuana. I should also state that later in the article it says that 3 out of 10 users were diagnosed with a marijuana disorder; but, aside from the fact that is 30% and not their earlier quoted 1.5% to 3% of users. The reason for the confusion is because they are playing games with numbers and they never define what this marijuana "disorder" is.

Now the source article came from JAMA which is publication of the Psychiatrists in America. You know, the people I wrote about recently who push psychotropic drugs like Ritalin and Prozac and Valium and, well, the list goes on and on. I hate to say this; but, I don't articles about medicine very much anymore. In fact, I lost most of my faith in the articles when I discovered that the number one study quoted that claimed second hand smoke was worse than first hand smoke was not based on second hand smoke; but, was instead based on the effect of smoking on babies when they were still in the womb. If someone wants me to trust what they say about a study, they have to provide me with the name of the study and where I can read it myself. I don't expect my readers to trust that I am accurately reporting on news articles, I provide a link to the article itself.

UPDATE:

I had just posted the above and I returned to read news articles when I came across this.

Fox - Bill Murray reportedly dating former child star Jenny Lewis.

Personally, I had never heard of Jenny Lewis and there is a good reason, she was not a "child star", at best she had been a child actor. She has actually been better known for music since 1998. I should also point out that she is 38 years old. What do you think sounds more shocking that Bill Murray is dating a 38 year old musician or a "former child star"? The truth is the article cannot even state that Murray is dating her, it is a "rumor".

Paul Ryan Full of Nonsense

The speaker of the House of Representatives quit, his name was Boehner. Now people in the media pronounce it Bayner; but, lets be truthful nowhere in English does oe make the ayyyy sound. The rules of English tell us that when a vowel is followed by another vowel, the first vowel is pronounced in its whole sound. Boner. We are not a nation of 12 year old boys in school and shouldn't change the rules of English to accommodate foolishness.

Be that as it may. Nobody in the Republican house wants the job as speaker as that would require them actually trying to work with Democrats to get laws passed, you know, doing their job. The one person who appears to be able to get sufficient support is Paul Ryan, you know, the guy who wants to be President. After a lot of pressure he has said he will accept the job; but, only if every Republican in congress supports him. What???

Yahoo - AP - Ryan to seek speakership if House GOP unifies behind him.

Why is it so hard to find a Republican that wants to lead his party in the House of Representatives? I have never seen or read of this in history. What is it this year, I mean, Vice President Joe Biden is being begged to run for President by his party and he doesn't want to. Actually, Joe Biden lost his son and is looking to retire so I can appreciate his position. Ryan actually wants to be President. Can you imagine his campaign, "I will only accept being President if all the Republicans and Democrats support me". He has all the backbone and courage of a jellyfish. Ryan is claiming that he wants to not spend less time with his family or travel for fundraisers, he didn't have a problem with either of those things when running for President. The truth is that the Republican party is no longer a party of consensus and nobody can get it's support. Currently, it is a party of corporate whores and extremists, not the conservative, pro-American party of the past and even the Republican voters know it.