Trusted Sources?

Let’s see now, should we start with the variety of news sources we actually view on a daily and weekly basis?  Remember the CNN Mantra has been:  “Your Trusted name in news!”.  Not exactly our choice when you start looking at Chris Cuomo and Wolf Blitzer as starting points.  Mass propaganda artists maybe….but Reporting the News?  How about Investigative Reporting?  How about Pundit Reporting?  How about rounding up the usual suspects and having them dodge, weave and misrepresent everything that comes before them?  OK, We need not belabor the point with MSNBC or Fox News.  Rachel, Ari and Hardball Chris Mathews,  Sean Hannity and Laura Ingram will make you actually sick to your stomach……with their wrechting excuse for bringing in the news.   Leave the sound on for the Commercials and you are ready for the Boobyhatch!

So, in desperation , you lock in the Local news……Car Chases, Fires, Floods, Earthquakes and Domestic Shootings along with various sweet news about helping a disfigured child from Chile or the Philippines! Yuk!  Only the weather people are good:  Dallas Rains and our favorite Evelyn Taft.  The rest you can keep.  Then there are the Sports Reporters…..Boring!  Fred Roggin is barely tolerable and that is only because he brings in Petros Popadapoulos.  Jim Hill is so OVER!  Whatever happened to Roy Firestone?  Anyway, you turn on ESPN and you really want to throw up!  Good Grief, how many screaming loud mouths can one person tolerate between terrible, terrible advertisements.  We don’t have any good Sports Reporters anymore….they all think they are doing George Foreman or Shaq Commercials. It is getting so bad, we may only be watching NFL Redzone and call it.  NO MORE dumb stories about Tiger Woods …please! 

So, we blithely turn to our local Newspapers…..where we can actually find out something.  We are able to luckily still get printed copies of the LA Times and OC Register….even though they want to drive us off home delivery with huge prices hikes!  Brutal.  We can take our time and not have to our magic figures to make articles longer or smaller or whatever….on our House Pad Electronic Devices and Phones.  We don’t get beach closures all the time, or a variety of local events and local catastrophe….but you can find it fairly quickly.  Sports reporting, much better than watching Home Run hit re-runs on every channel.  And you don’t have to listen to the loudmouth Sportscasters. You even can find out if someone important in Sports passed away!  

OK, you get into your motor vehicle, turn on the News…immediately turn off the news, turn on Sirius XM, Pandora or something else and just listen to the great old tunes.  Just try and get away for a moment from the constant propaganda whitewash of the news…just for a minute.  Come home to get your e-mails on your old Desktop……ooops….that is so over now too!  Online Banking?  Not these folks!  Pay all your bills Online?  Not yet?  Then your pals send you a variety of information about a multitude of things….you can’t really believe how much trash is out there to begin with…..much less responding to your small cadre of pals and family members.  How many e-mails do you need to delete per day…..500 or more?  It can happen…… and we do it every day!  So, finally we subscribed to 35 different magazines and publications, trying to find something called the truth!  We get lots of Gun and Auto Magazines.  We get Aircraft, Computer and Science Magazines, we get everything!  Does it help any?  Some, but things are changing so fast in our society it becomes harder and harder keep up!  What do we know about the latest STEM CELL developments?  How about 5G and the effects it will have on our environment?  Break-throughs in Health Care?  Global Warming (Population Explosion), GMO side effects? So much to know….so little time!  

So, where did you say was the “Most Trusted Name in News”?  Websites?  Yes, Wikipedia sometimes!  A variety of excellent resources from where?  A nice Russian Troll guy in Bratislavia?  Whew, the unsolicited e-mails….with offers of Nigerian Oil money have finally dried up for the time being….but we are pretty sure…”They’ll be baaaaccccckkkkk”.  Cheap Viagra?  Eastern Block Girls looking for a real good time?  Million dollar loans to help you launch your next business?  Cheapo online Marijuana? Survey’s for every single bogus event you ever attended or bought anything from or went to or heard about? Lots of news about your politicians again being “spoofed” from some unknown digital device or location?  In between you are getting hundreds of phone calls from unknown sources from people you have never heard of?  How about all those threats from the IRS and Bill Collectors and a Kidnapped relative?  So, who can you trust? 

In desperation, you turn on C-SPAN hoping to find some actual information.  You get book dealers, you get paid consultants, you get ignorant callers, you get hosts that cut off people that actually have an idea.  They offer up Special Interest Pundits being paid by the highest bidder.  You try C-SPAN 1., 2. 3.  You then see our elected representatives propping up there campaign donors with softball questions about Big Oil, Big Agra, Big Pharma, the Military Industrial Complex.  You evn see irate, nasty folks upset about 1929!  No one seems to want to deal with any problems that might actually be fixed quickly.  We are sitting on $22 Trillion dollars down in Debt, paying huge interest and they(our Congress and Administration) crank the Debt up in the next four years by another $4 Trillion Dollars….conservatively! 

Finally, in desperation again:  Someone tells you about Netflix.  You watch Narcos, Pablo Escobar and El Chapo, Person of Interest and Portlandia….along with the Dylan epic “Rolling Thunder”.  You are shocked…you hadn’t realized that there was actually a place you might find something real.  At least for the time!  But we remain skeptical and on the alert at all times from virtually any source!  We also have to watch PBS, Democracy Now, Amandpour and Co. and Rick Steves, every morning….it seems to help a little bit!

So, in the words of Bob Dylan back in 1965:  “Put on my record player….it was Rocka-Dave-Johnny singin “Tell your Ma…Tell your Pa..Our Love is goin Grow….oooh-waah-oooh-waah!”

Trusted Sources?…..it might pay to be a little bit skeptical…for awhile….until this “Trump Phase” blows over!   If it ever does …that is?