KSLA reveals its ignorance

KSLA News 12 out of Shreveport revealed its ignorance on the health care debate this Friday by posting a poll question on its web site which did not represent the reality that is health care reform at this point in time in Washington DC.

Let me explain by showing you the poll.

Here is the poll question and the possible list of answer choices.
Should the president's health care overhaul plan be passed?
1. Yes, as it is
2. No
3. Yes, but it shouldn't be rushed
4. Not as it stands now

Alternatively, here is the screen shot I took.


The thing is, there is no presidential bill yet to overhaul health care. The House and Senate are each working on various aspects of health care reform with their own bills. There is no single plan on the table.

Will someone explain answer choices 1 and 4 to me then? Which bill are we leaving as is? Since no single bill currently exists, "Not as it stands now" is certainly not possible.

Did somebody forget how the legislative and executive branches of government work?

Have the folks at KSLA discovered time travel and jumped ahead into the future?

It seems quite a few people are uninformed. Talk about a sad day for journalism. Thing is, it slipped right by the person typing it on the teleprompter as well as the anchor who read it out loud.

KSLA sucks. KTAL sucks. KTBS sucks. We don't have one decent news station in this area. It's times like these when I'm glad I can at least listen to NPR during the day instead of these chuckleheads. It's bad enough we have a ton of misinformation out there. Now even our news outlets need fixing. Yes, KSLA has been notified by phone regarding this poll and its inaccuracies.

Golden Globe Nominations?

What the hell is this crap? Is anyone watching NBC?

They are announcing Golden Globe nominations live. Random actors are getting up at the microphone rattling off names of the nominations. Why? Good god this is boring! Perhaps they knew it would be boring, so to counteract the boredom, they hired big name stars to read the list. I'm guessing they got paid to do that. Eh?

What was the point of that? Did we really need Brooke Shields rattling off names shooting odd stares at the audience in between each one? In Public Speaking, that's what we call maintaining eye contact. It looked like she had something wrong with her eyes. Was that Elizabeth Banks? For some reason, I could imagine her sitting there practicing saying "Frost Nixon" over and over again. She made it sound like some kind of German sausage. "Froschtnixen."

The laughter from the crowd was irrelevant. The follow-up guy said it was because the movies mentioned were rather outrageous comedies. So what!

Was that really necessary? Did anyone get a rise out of that performance? I could care less about the Golden Globes, but there had to have been a better way to present the nominations. I'm obviously out of the loop on this one.

"The Doctors" Becoming Novelty Show

The Doctors is a new television show featuring a handful of physicians spending an hour answering questions. People send in email questions and audience members ask questions of their own. The docs on the show have pop quiz segments before commercial breaks. Initially, I thought the show had promise. It looked like their goal was to inform.

Sadly, the show seems to be covering more novelty topics. Did they really discuss whether or not penis size matters? Can you have sex during a woman's period? These are the new topics? I know what is going on. The execs want ratings. You don't get ratings talking about boring problems.

Obesity is a huge problem in our country. There have been some shows discussing this epidemic. It doesn't do anyone any good to get sidetracked from the important health issues facing our nation.

Doctors...

You want to help your colleagues out? Get some repetition in there. Cover obesity every single day. Repeat key phrases to motivate people towards eating healthy and exercising.

Do you want to make it interesting? Discuss current news topics. I can think of two stories Americans recently saw on the news. The first has to do with the possible HIV cure via a bone marrow transplant. The second has to do with a cancer medication being a possible cure for Type 1 Diabetes. Explain the neat science behind those stories. Feed our patients some knowledge.

Don't be a novelty show! I feel like at any given moment, the kid from the movie Jerry Maguire is going to come out and say "Did you know the human head weighs 8 pounds?"

Tom Sawyer Stuck, Thanks Chuck!

In last night's episode of Chuck, the game Missle Command was brought back to into the spotlight. In order to reach the Kill Screen and prevent WWIII, Chuck learns that the game follows along with the song Tom Sawyer by Rush. That song is now stuck in my head.

In some small way, I should offer my sincere thanks. After the 25th anniversary of Michael Jackson's Thriller, I couldn't stop listening to that song. Now I have transitioned into a Rush kick. I don't know if this is a good thing.

Teen shot while TPing a house

This story is why I'm not sold on the notion of using guns to protect your home and property.

I heard it on the local news and don't know all of the specifics. I'm not sure what town this occurred in either. Here's what I do know.

A few teens were toilet papering some guy's house. It was very early in the morning. The home-owner thought they were trying to break into his garage. Well he grabbed a shotgun and fired away. He hit a 14 year old in the chest, abdomen, and lower extremity. At this point, there is no information about what charges are going to be pressed.

I understand the need to protect yourself and your home. The problem is, people with guns are arguably a little on the trigger happy side. Gun enthusiasts always boast that they are responsible with their firearms. It's not the firearm that worries me. It's the brain of the guy or gal holding the firearm that seems to be the problem. Fear dictates your perception. Plain and simple. It sounds as though this home-owner wanted to shoot first and ask questions later.

I've been TP'd before. Kids scatter when you turn on the lights. I never got the impression anyone was breaking into the house. We let the dog loose. We might grab a kid by the collar and call his parents. What we didn't do was fire away into the night at anyone.

If gun enthusiasts weren't so damn trigger happy, I wouldn't be so supportive of gun laws. If I'm not sure and I'm holding a gun, I err on the side of caution. Of course, I'm not trigger happy.

Foundation For Better Life Commercial

There is a commercial by the Foundation For Better Life on TV where children who are mentally disabled are participating in a race. It resembles the Special Olympics style competition. One of the boys runs ahead of the others, but falls down flat on his face. The crowd just sits there and gawks at what just happened. The camera zooms onto a man and woman, a couple that I would assume is the boy's parents.

Now call me crazy, but if I were the parent of a kid that just ate the pavement, my ass would run down to see if he was okay. Heck, if I were on the sidelines as a spectator or coach, I'd be running to help. Instead, we get to wait and watch the children running in the race come up to the boy, help him up, and finish the race together holding hands.

CNN's DNC Coverage SUCKS

They set the stage for what they want to hear while at the same time choosing not to show speakers who actually say those things. They paint a picture so that the viewer holds the same expectations and then if they don't see what they want, they can criticize everything while the viewer lulled into these expectations watches in agreement. If you want to see commentary and not the DNC, watch CNN's coverage. If you want to see people stuck on the idea that Hillary was not picked as Obama's VP, watch CNN. If you want to watch people to tell you to go to a web site to watch DNC speeches, watch CNN. If you want to know that the Pepsi Center is where the Denver Nuggets play, watch CNN. If you want to watch Republicans spout talking points, watch CNN.

MSNBC is not much better. FOX News? Ha! Did they even show any of it?

If you want to watch the DNC without interruption, watch it on C-SPAN.

If you want to watch the DNC with analysis, watch it on PBS. They show each speaker in their entirety and even tape certain speakers (Deval Patrick) to show you if they should deviate and interview someone else (Michelle Obama). If you want to see the fireworks, watch PBS. Some of the best speakers so far were tonight and PBS showed them. PBS had commentary AFTER each one and did not interrupt them in the middle. I'm sure CNN gets far more financial funding than PBS can even dream of, yet PBS is the one able to deliver the goods.

Steny Hoyer gave a magnificent and in your face performance. Did you miss that one? I was able to enjoy Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano take some good jabs at the Senator from Arizona. There is one Arizona tradition she'd like to see continue. Past representatives from Arizona who have campaigned for office failed. I got to see Kathleen Sebelius from Kansas make another joke aimed at McCain. Dorothy from Kansas once said there's no place like home, but McCain says there's no place like home, home, home, home, home, home, or home. Yep. Seven homes. I was able to listen to Governor Mark Warner give an outstanding keynote. Judy Woodruff from PBS even landed an interview with Michelle Obama tonight. Brian Schweitzer from Montana really gave an awesome performance too. Did you happen to catch Lilly Ledbetter from Alabama? The Governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, gave one heck of a direct attack. You missed stories from real Americans and anecdotes about real American struggle and sacrifice. You missed plenty of jabs at Bush and just as many McCain tie-ins to Bush.

If you were watching CNN, you missed the good stuff. Things were said that needed to be out in the open. CNN didn't show it and probably turned around at the end to criticize the lack of such gusto. Pathetic. Who says the media is liberally biased? They have their heads up their asses.

Did you happen to notice Exxon/Mobil was the CNN sponsor?

I think they are killing off a lot of viewers this time. Things have been going downhill for a while now, but they are driving a nail through the coffin. I don't think they care which is troubling.

McCain's New Obama Commercial

This damn commercial displays classic Republican behavior in this country. It's why I hate rednecks and it's why we ended up with Bush for eight years. I am definitely not going to hold back and I'm going to throw some hard punches on this one. I know how Republicans are going to play this out online, so there's no need to tippy toe around it.

You can look at the commercial in one of two ways or both of the following ways in context of each other.

The first is straight out of the Karl Rove playbook. Remember when Cheney said that if Kerry would be elected we would be attacked again? Evoke a sense of fear or uneasiness/doubt in the public and then apologize for it once the damage has been done. Make Obama out to be a 15 minutes of fame sensation and downplay his importance. See if somehow the McCain campaign doesn't come out and say something to put out the flames. I guarantee it'll resemble someone putting out a fire with their own urine. For some reason, I have images of McCain straining to get out even a dribble of urine with an old man's enlarged prostate.

The second way to look at the commercial is to realize it's just another way to mobilize their base. Every redneck asshole Republican on every political forum to the right of center is going to be full of idiots making jokes amongst each other to make their hurt feelings go away. It's a commercial that makes their base feel good about themselves. Play a little dirty and make yourself feel better even if it was uncalled for. The types of Republicans I just mentioned will be on forums using nicknames like Barack Obama Spears. They'll call Obama supporters Britney or Paris in a condescending tone to offset actually responding to a question asked by an Obama supporter on a message board. Shaved head jokes and paparazzi outburst gags will run rampant. I wouldn't be surprised of some Republican dolt used a green filter over Obama footage to make it look like a Paris Hilton sex tape. The possibilities are endless and redneck Republicans will just think they're being humorous. Kind of like laughing at fart jokes, you know? They feed off of these sorts of nicknames. Just look at how they talked about Kerry, Hillary, and Bill. You had Lurch, Hellary, and Slick Willie among others. The redneck Republican crowd eats this crap up like they do grits.

On top of all this, you'll have an outcry by Liberals saying exactly the same thing the Obama campaign came out with. It's politics as usual and they are right on the mark. It's dirty politics. The Republican party is willing to say or do anything as long as they can be assholes about it. I'll say it again. Redneck Republicans can relate to that sort of mentality and at the same time take pleasure in it. The RNC will go as far as using the likenesses of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton without permission. I hope some sort of legal response is taken on behalf of both of them. Let's completely disregard the legal way to set up commercial footage and run with it, right? Should be an open and shut lawsuit and quite possibly defamation.

(As I'm typing this, that damn commercial about Family Dinners with Bush is on again. Who believes that shit? The man became an alcoholic.)

If you're a Conservative and not a redneck, I'm not sure how all of this looks to you. I suspect you're taking a Bill O'Reilly or Rush Fatass Pain Killer Limbaugh stance on this. If not, I'm sure those two will be telling you what to think about it in the near future. If you are in fact an undecided white voter, do not condone campaign moves like this. Are you taking a ride on the Low Road Express? We're Americans and we are better than that. Are you that eager to be a snake in the grass? I don't think you would want to set that kind of an example for your kids.

I'll leave you with these celebrity comparisons for John McCain.

Wilford Brimley, an angry old cuss pissed off about his "diabetis"

From the movie "The Rock"
FBI Agent played by Philip Baker Hall
He is my age now, for Christ's sake. I have to get up three times a night to take a piss!

Grumpy Old Men (Walter Matthau & Jack Lemmon)

Frank Costanza (Jerry Stiller)
Maybe McCain will make Festivus a government holiday

Talk about qualified to lead...David Letterman, keep telling those TV dinner jokes.

Bush Family Dinner Commercial

A commercial has been on the air over the last few years and only seems to play late at night. It starts with an image of President GW Bush on a stage surrounded by listeners. One audience member, a young woman, asks a question about if the Bush family ate together around the dinner table, hinting at values surrounding families who spend time together. Bush jokingly says something along the lines of only eating at the dinner table so as long as his mom wasn't the one cooking.

Then Barbara Bush comes on the screen, obviously not laughing. She talks about how families who eat around the dinner table together have children who are less likely to smoke, use drugs, or drink alcohol.

What? Are you kidding? Who are you talking about again?

A lot of good those dinner table values did for those two screw ups. They picked the wrong family to serve as an example. GW was an alcoholic and rumored to have used cocaine. Jeb is also no saint.

Too Funny..Gay Marriage Conspiracy

I'm up watching Late Night with Craig Ferguson. He said something that I thought deserved to be posted here. Too Funny!

Gay marriage is really a right wing conspiracy to stop gay sex.
Think it through...
You got it? You know. Because once you get married, you stop having sex.
Haha

Good one Craig.

Mythbusters 747 vs Taxi Cab

I only watch Mythbusters when I have time, so I haven't seen every single episode. They showed Episode 1 of their supersized special tonight. One of the stories confirmed in this episode brought back memories of trying something similar.

The Myth (Confirmed)
Jet wash can toss a vehicle through the air when behind the plane

It reminded me of my experiences in the Caribbean driving a death trap of a car called a Hyundai Atos behind jets as they prepared to take off from the airport. We'd drive behind giant KLM's and Air France jets as well as the smaller American Airlines jets. Sand would blow everywhere and the car would rock. Obviously, we never went airborne. Tourists actually have fun getting sandblasted at the beach located at the end of the runway when they're hanging out at a bar called Sunset Beach Bar. Granted you're not as close as the taxi was in this Mythbusters episode.

If you ever go to St. Maarten, I highly recommend trying this out.

By the way, I still can't get over watching them blow up that cement mixer. Wow. They blew that thing all to hell. That was fun to watch over and over again.

"Fibromyalgia is real" commercial

Yeah. I know it's real. Who told you it isn't? What the hell is the point of your commercial? The medical community accepts fibromyalgia as a diagnosis. Anyone who tells you it isn't real obviously doesn't have a degree in medicine. Here's the kicker though. Fibromyalgia is a diagnosis of exclusion. That means we've exhausted all other investigations looking for another diagnosis, including any kind of somatization disorder. It really could be all in your head. Yes. That is an actual diagnosis too. Yeah it's unfortunate that you're in so much pain. There is no easy set of guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of fibromyalgia.

If you want to diagnose yourself, skip the trip to the doctor and deal with it on your own. If you want to know what's going on with you, docs are probably going to be able to figure it out. Sure there are some piss poor physicians out there who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. Most of the time, however, they are on the level. Don't fight them tooth and nail when they tell you a professional opinion. Fibromyalgia is not an easy diagnosis to make.

What is wrong with this country???

Yes I have met patients with this diagnosis. I've listened to them and even know a few things that have worked to help relieve some of their pain.

A Useful Link
Diagnosing and Treating Fibromyalgia in a Patient With Rheumatoid Arthritis.

• NutriSystem Commercial

By now you have probably seen the NutriSystem commercial with Dan Marino and Larry the Cable Guy. Let's look at the marketing plan here. Who is the audience? No brainer. Fat redneck men who may or may not have the typical invincible male ego appear to be their target audience. The one with bowling balls even features a twangy country tune in the background.

Go after 'em with the same marketing angle for smoking too while you're at it.

If I hear Git R Done one more time, I might have to raid Ted Nugent's military grade arsenal and take out a few of these people. I sure hope this phrase is a fad that will fade away like "Where's The Beef?"

• Jane Fonda Slip Up

Who cares if Jane Fonda said cunt on tv? I'm all for getting rid of censorship on television. Let people say these words and forget about playing the tippy toe game. I can't stand watching a movie that's been sissified by the censors. The things they say make absolutely no sense and we can always tell that the words we hear don't match the lips. It's bad enough that censors block these words out. It's even worse that this kind of stuff is considered newsworthy. Take away the shock value naughty words have by breaking television language wide open. Then maybe parents will be a little more involved with teaching their children what's right and wrong instead of hiding it from them. I sure as hell don't want to live in Disneyworld, USA. Do you?

• Re: Bill Maher 2-1-2008

I really wanted Bill to mention Ann Coulter's bs that came out of her ass of a mouth today about campaigning for Hillary Clinton if McCain gets the Republican nomination. If I were Hillary, I would have come on national TV and declined the gesture and would have flat out said no way in hell would I accept her endorsement. Coulter claims that Clinton is more conservative than McCain.

Bill didn't, so I was disappointed.

There was one joke, however, that I heard him tell that I expected to have a completely different punch line. He was sitting down with that jerk off, Frank Luntz, and they discussed his Playboy article reflecting on a survey of liberals vs conservatives regarding sex. I've already heard something like these results before on his show, but apparently liberals have more interesting sex lives and conservatives have happier sex lives. So here came Maher's joke.

But Democrats are thinking about the person they're fucking. When Republicans have sex, they're not thinking about the person they're with. They're thinking about Democrats.

I expected a different joke because I've heard Bill talk about the almost homosexual infatuation Republican men have with Ronald Reagan. I expected him to say Republicans think about Reagan during sex instead of their spouse.

• CBS Blood Clot BS Story

I was just up watching CBS news around 4am and they were saying doctors aren't giving clot prophylaxis as often as they should. To put things in perspective, studies at individual hospitals, including a major hospital in Indianapolis, have found heparin prophylaxis for blood clots was not warranted for every patient and have adjusted their ER practices accordingly. Many hospitals automatically start patients on heparin for clot prophylaxis and a PPI for GI prophylaxis. Go in and look at a medication list in a chart. Everybody is on a heparin injection and pantoprazole.

Then they interviewed a woman who when in the hospital for knee surgery said she was not informed that she was at risk for a blood clot. Immobility after surgery means stasis after surgery. Surgeons know this. I guarantee that the forms she signed giving consent for the procedure listed blood clots as a risk somewhere. She just wasn't paying attention to the crap she was signing. Saying that nobody pays attention when they sign papers is a pretty piss poor excuse. I say bullshit to her. Hospitals these days are very anal about informed consent.

• Eli Stone On Shaky Ground

The first episode of the show Eli Stone featured a story about a woman taking a vaccine company to court over a mercury/autism claim. There isn't a proven assocation between the preservatives and autism, but the episode portrayed it as such ending in the company cutting a deal with the mother. At the end of the episode, they put up a black screen with white text with a disclaimer that the story was fictional, that the association has not been proven, and information is available at the CDC web site. What? You can have a completely fictional yet controversial and incorrect story line and get away with airing it as long as you cover your ass with a silly disclaimer? I guess you can only expect underhanded goings-on from people who try to revive George Michael. This show stinks of hidden messages. Faith?

Let's talk about the mercury/thimerosal autism association crazies. Look, scientists have studied it and can't find a statistically significant connection. Science showed that the Earth wasn't flat. The world accepted it. The people jumping all over vaccines causing autism are just as hell bent with their cause as the people who don't believe in evolution. The science says otherwise. I could go through all of the data, but the one thing you need to consider is that the preservative was taken out and no impact was seen in autism cases. Oh, that's right. There's a huge cover up behind the science. If you don't get the answer you want, bitch, moan, and groan about it being a conspiracy until somebody kisses your ass. Americans have become the poster children for conspiracy theories. There are people that say there is a connection and I say those people probably can't sit down with you and have an in depth discussion on live attenuated vaccines, inactivated vaccines, toxoid vaccines, or component vaccines, let alone discuss the immunology involved. I challenge any one of you skeptics to do just that, and yes, I want it in essay format, not internet rant format. I want to know you are able to organize the information and understand it. Doctors can. Shouldn't I expect you to if I want to take you seriously?

How about you use those noggins and start thinking of other causes? You know, all the crap we eat, all the pollution in air and water, and let's not leave out genetics. We're surrounded by things that can harm us. Think about how people, including yourself, dispose of batteries, televisions, and computer parts. If you were as passionate about finding a cause as I think you'd want to be, you would be turning over every rock in search of a reason and trying to remedy the easy stuff first. If you can't find something in one place, you probably need to go looking somewhere else. As a medical professional, that's what I will be telling my patients in a much calmer and more charming tone. Who taught you how to look for things? What in the hell happens to these people when they lose their keys? Let's be a little systematic in our search. There's being reasonably skeptical about corporations and then there's having your head completely up your arse. The idea that we all believe our own truths is the real problem. We all get it in our heads that we believe something and we are uncompromising in nature, so these people will never get it into their heads that any other answer is even remotely possible. The quest to be right no matter what is sickening.

Stop hunting zebras when similar four legged creatures in your area don't have stripes.

Don't have a background in statistics or health care? Don't know what a p value is? People in this country don't seem to have enough education to process information anymore. The medical community is going to be the only group that will be able to find out what's going on with autism. When you allow people like McCain to say there is strong evidence supporting a link with vaccines and autism, you're effectually tearing down the one institution that is willing to find the cause.

• Knight Rider

Okay, I know I've been sounding awfully political. I'll switch gears and head for the pop culture stuff.

Doesn't anyone have a problem with Kitt being a Mustang? Is this Ford propaganda? Will this show just die like the previous attempts to bring the duo back? Bring back the Pontiac Firebird T/A we know and love! You did the same thing with Knight Rider in the 90's. Ford? Yeesh. Did GM decide not to help?

It is true that if I would ever by a Mustang, it would be nothing less than a Cobra. However, fans of the show are probably already exchanging words.