Journalist, journalist, wherefore art thou?

Obama clears way for oil drilling off US coasts

I don't necessarily have a problem with President Obama approving more drilling. What gets me is that if this had been George Bush, he would have been crucified by the media. Then again, sometimes it takes a "Nixon to China" move to get things done. I haven't looked closely at it (so I might very easily be wrong), but Obama seems to be taking a reasonable stand on energy: Let's try to get the long-term right, but understand the realities of the present as well. We need to get off of foreign oil for security purposes. We need to get off of oil for environmental purposes.

... but back to the journalism complaint...

Journalism seems to be a dead art form now. It's like the Jerry Springer Show and the National Enquirer have merged to form our national media. The ability to report in-depth and honestly has lost its importance. I'm a capitalist, so I understand that they're feeding the wolves what they want. However, what happened to non-partisan journalism? It's ironic to me that BBC News seems to be one of the most reliable, unbiased news source, yet they are a government-sponsored organization. Where's our wonderful, investigative, private, free press?

This may be a stretch to connect poor journalism with this article and Obama's energy policy, but it's the obvious bias that set off the rant.

Opposing Obama doesn't make you a racist

One thing that has been irritating me recently is the tactic of declaring that opposition to the President is because of racism. This is done through either outright accusations or implied statement. How is this any different/better than when the Republicans questioned people's patriotism (or worse) when people opposed Bush? I think that the "righties" would be acting this way to Hillary, Edwards, or any other Democratic president had they won. Bill Clinton was opposed vehemently by the (far) right. There was so much anti-Clinton rhetoric on talk radio that there was a common belief that conservative talk radio would cease to exist after Bush won because they wouldn't have anything to talk about.    

Ditching cable (part 5)

I haven't done anything new on the existing issues, but thought I'd write about the costs to this point:

Hauppauge HVR-1250	$50
NVidia GeForce 9400 GT	$50
Windows 7 Home Premium	$0 (thanks to a friend)
1GB RAM	$40
PlayOn	$30
Digital antenna	$30
Power Phone Shipping	$15
Second digital antenna	$70
Digital->Analog converter box	$40

I did purchase a 32" LCD digital TV for $350, but could have easily just gotten a converter box for $40. So, there's $310 of unnecessary expense there. Additionally, I can get my second antenna for about half of the $70 I paid somewhere else. I need to do a return/purchase of that.

I need to take back my $70 antenna and $40 analog converter box, get two antennae and a different converter box. My basement TV has no tuner in it, but is digital ready. The box I got is actually an analog converter. I also need to get a Roku box for down there.