I was a thumb stroke away from saying talk radio instead of TV, but I apparently chose unwisely. Choosing your source of understanding is a difficult method. I struggled for years and mostly failed to understand what I sought. Now it is like the information seeks me out. And I absorb it like I would absorb Saturday afternoon cartoons as a child. The only difference is that the information that floods into me now appeals to my obsessive need for breaking code. I have to assemble the final puzzle. Most pieces are white noise to the people around me. I find myself feeling privileged and burdened all at once. But it feels good. I hope that some day you can understand that feeling.
Wouldn't have helped. The closest I've come to talk radio was Mike and the Mad Dog in the 90's. If you think you've found your source of understanding at this point then you're still struggling. I'm pretty sure my source of understanding changes every couple of years at the outside and that's because the more knowledge I get the more I realize how little I actually know. This is just your confirmation bias at work. Every piece of information flying at you is neatly categorized according to what you believe it represents. You then fit it into the puzzle. However you neglect to take into account the fact that the puzzle itself is always changing and so many of the pieces you place are out of alignment. I have no puzzle at all. No framework in which to fit things neatly because nothing fits neatly. Almost everything is a matter of perspective and slant. A few things are immutable but very few. If I look at an issue at a given point in time I'm likely to perceive one reality about it, generally related directly to the vector I am approaching it from. A few months later after some further study and a slight reorientation on the vector I may well have a completely different take on it. This is because nothing fits neatly into a puzzle that is always realigning and reorienting itself. It's safest just not to have a puzzle in the first place. Take each piece as it comes and don't let it throw you too far off course. I will bet you that the pieces you perceive are white noise to everybody around you until you've explained the piece and it's significance. The person you're explaining the piece to may get keyed in at that point or they may just perceive white noise. What you're trying to explain could easily just be white noise that you have keyed in on because of circumstances particular to your point of view or even particular to your frame of reference. Welcome to Wolf Blitzer's world. I do feel it. Or not. Some days it feels me. Or not.
Then I guess it is the internet. I'll at least give you credit for for seeking out your own forum, even if it is a transparently partisan forum. Says the guy playing the bishop on a black and white chess board where the control player is jumping from one side to the other. Don't forget to move diagonally. Understanding how little you know is a virtue. Changing your outlook is as well. Once you realize that your understanding is something that has been manipulated and coerced and planted in your head, then you will have made progress. Of course the puzzle changes. And the table moves around and shuffles all of the pieces every minute. But your description of the information that I seek is so flawed that I just had a hearty guffaw. Guffaw. I have read your political opinions for a while. They are neatly designed by people that are not you. You simply fit them into your vocabulary and regurgitate them. You aren't solving a puzzle. You are coloring within the lines. I think your definition of "puzzle" is very rigid and not very correct. Something, such as a game, toy, or problem, that requires ingenuity and often persistence in solving or assembling. I don't see anything about neat or clean. A puzzle can be as simple as realizing the entire picture in a blurry frame of vision. You have a view of what you think you understand, influenced by the way it is presented to you. We both do. But you are relying on a reality show being conducted by a network that has been conducting that same show for half a century, being described in neat and succinct paragraphs, providing you with confirmations of aspects you agree with, and negligible details that you don't. Look out, Br4d, that description is scarily close to the idea of fitting pieces into a puzzle. Again with the "neat" thing. Not every puzzle is neat, and most are missing pieces. It's when you find that neat puzzle that you put together very easily that you need to wonder why. And if you are just taking random pieces of data and not trying to understand how they apply to anything else... then you are spinning your wheels. The course that you refer to is the big picture. And those pieces you refer to apply to that big picture. Which is not complete. Kind of like... a puzzle. It is white noise because people are conditioned not to perceive anything outside the accepted spectrum of information and cannot consider it relevant, and most likely don't even understand the significance. It is Guantanamo Bay. It is dozens of death row sites placed on the 33rd parallel, the same grid that hosts death sites in Afghanistan and the city of Baghdad. It is a nation founded by masons, with currency filled with masonic symbols, and a population of people who couldn't tell you what a mason was if they had a gun to their heads. People are being bred not to see any signs except what they are told to see. That is white nose. You are right. I don't have a propaganda ministry to confirm my suspicions.
RE: Currency devaluation. Per the BBC this morning, the Iranian Rial has lost 80% of its value in the last 12 months. Not sure where that fits in the puzzle, either, just putting it out there.
You can't sanction people with a veto on the UN Security Council and in whose market you make your profits.
Geezus. You know, someday your fellow New Hampshirites are going to smoke you out. City folk are s'pose to stay up in the mountains making artisan cheeses. Whatever those are.
I live in the city. My neighbor can hear my Blue Oyster cult coming off the pandora as we speak. That said, i don't know how this romantic notion of the granite state as some retrograde redoubt of squirrel eating gun nuts and tax cranks persists. The southern counties are chock full of all kinds of assholes who've moved here from Mass and NJ in the last 15 years. You'd be right at home.
Squirrel eating, LIQUOR SELLING, gun nuts and tax cranks. Don't leave out the most important part. We assholes thank you for that most of all. That, and providing a necessary buffer from the native commies and separatist frogs to the north. If that's what two grudge tolls buys us, it's worth every penny.
New Hampshire's good for razzing politicians also. You guys don't do nearly enough of that. You should have the Presidential candidates doing the laundry for you and taking out the trash and all that good stuff.
Meh, the primary is overrated. It's basically a huge advertising sop to the local broadcasters. You hear one game show host lying to you in a high school gymnasium or unitarian church basement, you've heard them all.
Dierking, I so hope I'm wrong but with the debt/print USD/more debt/ print more USD game the Feds are playing and with the international players seemingly more and more comfortable not playing with "house" (World Reserve Currency=USD) money anymore ..... *gulp* ... well, I just hope to hell I'm wrong. We lose that (increasingly shaky) reserve currency status and 2008 may end up looking like a walk in the park. others: sorry for the off-topic comment
As long as the government keeps paying it's bills the bottom won't fall out. If the government stops paying it's bills we're going to have a problem and it isn't going to be one of those problems where you figure out how to fix it and get the machine started again. It's going to be one of those problems that kills 50 million people world wide and then we're doing something completely different when all that has quieted down. To start with, anybody relying on medical services to keep them alive is probably going to die pretty quickly unless they have a lot of wealth and I don't mean money in the bank.
In case anyone missed it, PBS broadcasted two Frontline episodes over the past two weeks called the United States of Secrets covering the NSA scandal. They're really informative, eye-opening and entertaining. They should be available online
