Ramble on:

"Here's the latest on American Idol! Get this ready for page one!"

One of the things I have always tried to keep myself from doing with this blog is feeling guilty if I don't post something everyday . . . or every other day, if you will. Sometimes I'm just too busy, and sometimes I just don't have anything to say. So if there are gaps, that's the way it goes.

Lately, I have to say, it's been almost a case of sensory overload. I mean by the time I get a handle on one thing in the news, there's another scandal astheBushCo crowd melts down. It's a real horror show, and I am not sure I have much to add to the commotion, as blogs like Atrios or Crooks and Liars document the atrocities so much better than I possibly could.

But one thing I really am pissed about---one thing that really frosts my cake, as it were---is how utterly incompetent and gutless the main stream media has been throughout this debacle. It's not like there's a lack of things to write about, or even a real need to do a ton of investigating. You can practically stumble over a new potential story just by being conscious. But there seems to be an utter cluelessness within the media about how to actually report news that is very sad, and given the supposed role a free press should be playing in this "democracy", pretty tragic.

There are some stirrings from the gaggle of eunuchs in the White House press room lately, but where's the real follow up? Where's the sense that any of these dolts care as much about getting the truth of any story out as much as they care about how they personally look to their colleagues and the powers that be in this country who they should be questioning? Where's the sense of duty to the American public?

It's a farce.

Remembering the days of Watergate, when journalists actually seemed to stand for something other than the corporate masters and the power brokers they rubbed elbows with at inside the Beltway cocktail parties, I have to wonder if that was just some huge accident. Even Bob Woodward, half of the team who broke that story, kissed Bush's ass to get a best seller that was little more that a puff piece for Bush and his cronies.

Today, I get most of my news from the internet and TV comedy shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Bill Maher displays more guts than any dozen MSM press release copiers. The unasked questions that lie on the floor of the press rooms of this country are where the real news is, not in the insipid articles and tepid commentaries that pass for journalism nowadays. There are exceptions, like Seymour Hersh and Keith Olbermann, but they are about as rare as hairs on a frog's back.

So there's my rant for today. without good information, you can't have an informed electorate. and the pablum and horseshit that passes for news in most of the media today is not going to inform anyone. The cause of Anna Nicole Smith's son's death or why Wynonna's marriage fell apart don't mean shit to me. If I were prone to believing conspiracies, I might think it was a plot to keep us from seeing the real truth. but that couldn't be.

Could it?