Newsweek’s Jacob Weisberg published an article on October 17 entitled The O’Garbage Factor: Fox News isn’t just bad. It’s un-American. In the article, he notes how ridiculously biased Fox News has been historically and how recently they’ve somehow managed to become even more so.

Fox News has quit covering news in any journalistic sense of the word. Instead, they’ve begun to actually encourage anti-administration tactics such as the September 12 March on Washingon (where a Fox News anchor was taped inciting the crowd during a report), the “tea parties” and the ruckus found in the town halls held during this summer’s recess.

View the page on foxnews.com promoting the tea parties and tell me with a straight face that there isn’t an obscene amount of biased support for the parties. The graphic looks like a music festival poster, but instead of my favorite bands it lists my favorite right-wing news anchors.

Here’s an interesting page comparing 2 million dots with 70,000 dots, the number of people Fox and other conservative sources reported attended the September 12th march and the number of attendees that were likely really there.

Honest, civil debate is perhaps the most American value I can imagine. Think about this concept alongside the MacGuffie memo, which advocates ways to disrupt the town hall discussions of healthcare held during this summer’s congressional recess. Here’s an excerpt (by Think Progress) of one of the points.

– Try To “Rattle Him,” Not Have An Intelligent Debate: “The goal is to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda. If he says something outrageous, stand up and shout out and sit right back down. Look for these opportunities before he even takes questions.”

Isn’t preventing the opposing view from being expressed a form of censorship? Fox News wasn’t responsible for the memo, as far as I know. They were responsible for the way they covered the events.

A Media Matters for America review found that, during the week of August 24, Fox News aired 22 clips of town hall meeting attendees expressing an opinion or asking a question that opposed progressive health care reform efforts but aired zero clips of town hall attendees expressing an opinion or asking a question supporting reform. -mediamatters.org

That’s not fair or balanced. Calling it such is disingenuous.

The problem with the Newsweek article is that some have perceived it as an attack on free speech or a suggestion of censorship. The article, in fact, mentions nothing about censorship nor advocates any action by Fox News whatsoever, so I’m going to dismiss the censorship argument as a straw man.

The question about freedom of speech, however, is fundamental to the article’s interpretation. Freedom of speech is about presenting a position and advocating its merits without fearing persecution. This article does exactly that. It criticizes Fox News for its absurdly distorted “coverage” and suggests that respectable journalists simply ignore the network. Nowhere does it say that Fox News somehow doesn’t have the right to present its content. Nowhere does it say that viewers don’t have the right – or freedom – to watch Fox News.

It does say that “[t]he Australian-British-continental model of politicized media that Murdoch has applied at Fox is un-American” and I can’t help but agree. While it’s rare to find unbiased media coverage, and rarer yet to find it on cable news, the injury to our collective intelligence is that Fox News attempts to present political commentary as news, directly claiming with its “fair and balanced” slogan that it somehow presents more than just the conservative side.

Fox News has every right to present the content that they do, and nobody is saying otherwise. Every American should defend the right that Fox News has to present politically slanted content, even if that content is un-American.

Today marks the turning of a new chapter in American history and American politics. It is a chapter that will find Americans proud again. We will remember what it is like to be respected in the world. We will remember what it is like to feel safe and secure once more. We will understand that we no longer have to be afraid of our ideals – that they can indeed be realized and enabled by a benevolent government. While it is too presumptive to say that we and the world will know peace, it is quite realistic to say that we now have a fighting chance.

Barack Obama’s 2400-word inauguration speech was stunningly poetic, the writers having an intimate understanding of the English language not possessed by Bush’s writers nor, unfortunately, ever even dreamt of by Bush himself. Obama successfully blended hope with non-fiction, something in which his predecessor wasn’t the least proficiant. By referencing none of the cliche phrases and happenings that have become commonplace in presidential speeches over the last four-fifths of a decade such as September 11, nor the expected reference to Martin Luther King, nor even an uttering of his own catch-phrase during the campaign of yes we can, Obama showed that he is a mature leader who doesn’t have to riff from the same tired script in order to send chills down the spines of his audiences.

Satellite image by GeoEye

What an audience he had today. Men, women and children of all races and ages braved the literally freezing cold to see history being made. They were there to hear President Obama claim proudly that we “are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and nonbelievers.” They were there to hear him proclaim that we “will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise healthcare’s quality and lower its cost.” And they were there to hear him make what was perhaps the most staggering departure from the path of the last eight years, that “we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.”

Obama has a large boat to turn around. The economy is still tanking. The powder keg that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with Israeli army killings in Gaza leaving at least 410 children and 98 women dead out of the overall death-toll of 1300, should be – nay, must be – the first foreign-affairs focus. Education, social security and healthcare have been neglected for too long, and must soon be patched if not rebuilt. Attacks on medical science such as vaccinations, new sciences such as stem cells as well as old sciences and histories such as evolution continue to chip away at whatever moral standings we have left abroad and must be dealt with soon, a promise Obama made in is speech regarding restoring science to its rightful place.

We must be asked to sacrifice. We must raise taxes, and we must do it quickly and smartly. We must be asked to sacrifice. We need to increase the gasoline tax so that the currently plummeting price of oil doesn’t decrease the race for more renewable and less pollution-causing alternatives to internal petroleum or ethanol combustion. We must be asked to sacrifice. We must not eliminate the capital gains tax, as those who would hurt so much as to go hungry from it are exempted anyway. We must be asked to sacrifice.

Humans are never content without struggle. With all of the looming problems facing us and our country, there doesn’t seem like a shortage of struggle any time soon. With our new administration, however, I think it’s safe to say that we’re no longer facing a losing battle.

Capital is closed

I had a great week. Last Sunday, I left for Baltimore, Maryland, with my friend Robert Mayo to teach another of the Auction Technology Specialist courses offered by the National Auctioneers Association.

Monday night we went to the the Pier in Annapolis and ate oysters at a place called McGarvey’s Saloon. While the area of town appeared quite affluent, with brick buildings and very nice aesthetics, the meal was delicious though surprisingly affordable.

Tuesday we went with Sarah Sonke with Auction First as she took us on a guided tour of our nation’s capital. She used to live there for a time, and was quite good at taking us between the various sights and monuments.

We first stopped in front of the capital building, where I took the picture on the right.

Robert’s son is named Lincoln, so high on our list of priorities was the Lincoln Monument. We passed the mall and the various museums on our way from the capital to the Washington Monument. As we arrived at the Lincoln Monument, we realized it wasn’t going to be very easy to get there easily on foot, so we went past it and turned around by the Watergate and Kennedy Center. Coming back from another angle, we stopped just north of the Vietnam Memorial where we exited the vehicle. We walked through the Vietnam Memorial on our way to the Lincoln Monument, where we got several pictures and Robert purchased some memorabilia from the store conveniently located in the corner of the monument itself.

Once we got back into the vehicle, we continued our tour, driving as close as we could to the White House. We ended up by the Air Force Memorial, the Pentagon, the Jefferson Monument and the Ford Theater.

Before we left town, we ate at Ristorante Luigino where I had the petto e cosciotto d’anatra, or leg and thigh of duck. We were sitting among a bunch of suits who were loudly discussing the proposed automotive industry bridge loan [read: bailout].

The class was well received, as was the last one. We had a great time, and the restaurant connected to the hotel had fantastic crab cakes, which I ate at nearly every meal. The market catfish was also quite good.

Sale on political merchandise

We came back Thursday, getting to the airport about four hours before our flight’s departure, leaving us plenty of time to mill about. We stopped to eat one more crab cake at one of the airport restaurants before we left, and I also found a neat shop that had some political merchandise. They told me I wasn’t allowed to take this picture when I asked, but the coolness of the sale on McCain merchandise was too cool to pass up. I walked behind one of the shelving units and literally shot this picture from the hip.

As for the pictures, I’ve included some below. My camera sucks, and Robert’s was set accidentally to a low quality setting, so none of the pictures are really good as pictures go, but I thought I’d share nonetheless.

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While it’s good to finally win a few, there were some disappointing losses last night. California’s Proposition 8 will most likely pass, along with other similar measures that passed in Florida and Arizona, that will negate and prevent the state-sanctioned monogamy of many Americans. Al Franken will probably still lose in Minnesota after his recount. Ted Stevens looks like he’s going to win in Alaska. We didn’t quite gain enough seats to get to the supermajority in the Senate.

Having said all of this, there were several very notable victories last night. I’ve been becoming less and less proud to be an American over the course of the last eight years, but over the course of 24 hours I’m realizing that I can start to believe in this country again.

Don't forget to vote!

Politics is my Olympics. It’s like a Super Bowl in which we can all participate. I don’t follow sports very well, but I look forward to the circus that happens in this country once every couple years. This year’s final act has been a roller coaster ride.

Today is a special day. It’s a day when those of us who follow politics finally get to read the last page of the chapter we’ve been reading nearly exclusively for more than the last two years. Today, each state selects from among a subset of a large number of candidates for President of the United States in this election year of 2008.

How does this information relate to auctions or technology? The next president will have the ability, if not a perceived mandate, to make what could be drastic changes from our economy to foreign relations to the environment to national defense to our military involvement around the world. All of these issues are important, but they’re outside the scope of this blog. Our presence on the world stage is tightly integrated with the technology industry. That industry is directly tied to science.

How many times has public perception changed during the course of the last few thousand years? How many empires have risen? How many forms of government have been devised? How many fluctuations have we seen in mores? How many republics have failed?

All of the answers to the above questions are influenced, at least in part, to the sum of the knowledge of the human race. As time moves forward, we know more about the world. This accumulated knowledge, with a few exceptions, certainly molds new political ideas. Knowledge pulled us, perhaps kicking and screaming, out of the dark ages when, as the general public became more well-informed, they threw off the fetters of abstract, dogmatic teachings in favor of an empirical reality that better matched what they observed. When the church said one thing, and people observed another, the domain of the church – the unexplained – grew smaller. As we learn more, our knowledge becomes the basis of new beliefs as these new beliefs replace the outdated, older beliefs. Note the difference between knowledge and beliefs.

While science can be wrong, it is self-correcting. Any time science is found to be incorrect, the hypothesis is modified and retested. Once a hypothesis has been tested and found by many different, unrelated scientists to hold true under all conditions, it becomes a theory.

Some politicians don’t understand what a theory is. A theory is the closest science can come to fact. A theory is really a collection of facts that describe a phenomenon. Many politicians preface the term evolution with theory of in an effort to discredit it. They don’t understand that they’re validating it in they eyes of anyone who understands the scientific method. It’s like talking about the theory of gravity or the theory of relativity as if they haven’t been found to hold true in our tests.

There are a host of concepts that modern day con artists are trying to propagate on us as a culture. Alternative medicines like homeopathy, reflexology, acupuncture and chiropracty are fine if their placebo effect cures your headache, but can be the most immediate and dangerous of the pseudosciences to us if we try to use them to cure real diseases. Creationists, and their cousins the intelligent design crowd, fall into the same lack-of-any-credible-scientific-evidence-whatsoever group as those who propagate The Secret, the concept that wishing really hard for something happy to happen can actually make it occur. The fun party tricks of the likes of Sylvia Brown and John Edward can actually become harmful to those who believe in them and, in my opinion, demand legislation to protect the gullible, first amendment be damned.

It’s important that we recognize and pay attention to the stances held by our politicians. From Kansan Sam Brownback’s fear of stem cells and evolution to Alaskan Governor Sara Palin’s doubt that global warming is man-made to Senator Barack Obama’s remark that the science is inconclusive regarding the alleged link between autism and vaccinations – all of which are destructive to the public well being – those who make up our government are many who have questionable if not deplorable stances on scientific issues.

We must hold our politicians to the highest standard, a standard above belief and pseudoscience, above mores and norms, above religion and superstition. We must hold our politicians to acknowledge and respect the domain of science and that of the peer-reviewed scientific community.

The most brilliant political mind who never ran for office was a guy named Aaron Sorkin. He said, “Decisions are made by those who show up.” Show up tomorrow. When you vote tomorrow, make sure that you think about science as you pull the lever.

First, this is what will happen if you don’t vote for Barak Obama and instead either don’t vote or vote for John McBush and Bible Spice.

Second, this clip shows some mainstream media finally acknowledging some of their own ignorance in their wrongly-alleged vaccination-autism link. I love how that little pansy Lauer gets his misinformed ass kicked by a doctor.

Maddy and I are playing at Tubby’s in Aggieville tonight at 6 p.m. Come out and get some food and have a good time with us (read: keep us company).

If you can’t make it, here’s a nugget for you:

http://www.palinaspresident.us

I’m sitting in the Phoggy Dog in Lawrence listening to my friend Blaine Younger play. I’m beginning to realize that Blaine and I have very different approaches to playing.

Blaine has fun. You can see it in his performance and the kind of songs he plays. The crowd responds well.

I have fun by not showing it. I have an agenda. Bleu Edmondson told me once in Hays that the secret was to force eight originals “down their throats”, give them a cover, and then play 10 more originals. Bleu may not be the biggest alt-country artist, but I’ll put his latest release “Lost Boy” up against any offering from the movement and give you a spread.

The covers I choose have always been songs I respect for pith or because they’re cryptic in a way I admire. My rule of thumb has been if the crowd responds positively that means I have a mandate to depart farther from mainstream into the obscurity I enjoy. After all, if they wanted to hear Kenny Chesney they could have stayed home, played CDs and continued watching NASCAR while flipping through Anti-science Weekly.

Maybe I’ll change. Maybe I won’t. While I like my musical-masochism, I enjoy Blaine’s approach and may begin experimenting with something like that again. We’ll see. Until then, go listen to some Lucero and Old 97s. And vote for Obama and Biden for a mature America.

image origin unknown

Palin’s performance in the debates last night was unremarkable. That’s unfortunate, because I was hoping to write this post with more of a see, I told you so attitude, which is always more fun than trying to argue a point. Everyone expected Palin to get crushed, and she simply didn’t.

Palin did make one point, though. Something to the effect of “golly gee willikers, it’s plain as day how I’m sooooo a Washington outsider”. It was daisy-chain-the-colloquialisms night for her, after all.

The point is that we don’t want an Washington outsider. We don’t want a governer who can hunt. We’ve had one for the last eight years. We want someone who has been involved in the governing of something other than a cold, satellite state. 

We don’t want folksy. We don’t want cute. We want a bulldog who can show the world that after eight years of screwing up and screwing around and screwing over everyone else in the world that we’ve grown up and are now ready to maturely and intelligently negotiate with our fellow countries on this planet. 

Sara Palin is not who we want.