"As conspiraces go, this one seems pretty lame."

Then why validate it by commenting on it?????

Now we're getting less hostile and more interesting <grin>.

I would agree 100% that the conservative viewpoint is heavily missing on the other channels. That's why I have no issue with Fox being there. It serves an market that was not being served at all. Good business.

My friends think I'm crazy, on both sides, for continuing to listen to both sides. It just works for me. I don't get surprised when someone says one side said something ridiculous. I heard it first-hand.

I do wonder about the psychology of it. Rachel Maddox is as swarmy (perfect word) in my view as O'Reilly is. Where I get confused is with Olbermann. Most of the time I see him he's speaking eloquently, with little--if any, emotion and sticking the verifiable facts. I don't see the clown bit in him MOST of the time but when it's there it's there heavily (like the voices for Rush and Bill).

I'll have to look out for Levin more. Don't know much about him.

On Moore, I too dislike, heavily, when he makes himself the story. There was no need in Sicko to bother with the entire Cuban piece except to make it insulting. In my vocation I work with people all over the globe and I do find the overwhelming majority of foreigners think our health care system is an unmitigated disaster and like theirs. That includes Canada, Germany, England, France, Australia, South Africa, Austria, Brazil and many others. I worked for a Canadian company and no one (on any network) ever mentions what British Columbia calls EXP. Every province up there has this employer-paid supplemental care (under different names). If you have a job, you don't sit in lines or have long waits for treatments. If you're homeless you'll wait a bit. Sounds okay to me.

Don't get me wrong on military service. I'm an Army vet but I was a 32Fox (signal corp) working on decoding equipment nowhere near even a hang-nail incident.

Glenn Beck concerns me. I used to like the guy and then he went off the deep end (long before the crying bit). Frankly, and you won't like this, but I think my favorite "news" source is The Daily Show. I know it's a farce but it often says what I feel. Stewart excels at exposing the hypocrisy and I think all the politicians need more of that.

Thanks for looking up Saganism. When I mention it people say, "WHAT?@!?!"... thinking I said Satanism. You got it mostly right. Not sure if that view makes me agnostic or Christian. I believe there was some force behind it all but I can't say what it was and do feel we're being self-centered to believe it puts us in the main roles. I covered it on my blog here:

http://blog.pcserenity.com/2008/07/no-i-said-saganist.html

I too want to say thanks. It's this sort of discourse we need to get this country back to. It's slipping away from us in rhetoric and distrust on both sides. We USED to be able to talk politics. Now it's a crap shoot.

Agrajag,

Okay, I believe you are a left-leaning Indy. I do not only watch one channel, but if you watch all the other channels except Fox you get basically the same slant minus the conservative views on the various shows. Of course there  is Lou Dobbs on CNN and Joe Scarb... on MSNBC.

I have listened to Olbermann, Schultz, Maddow, Randy Rhodes, and Matthews but they are not to my tastes, so I don't listen much anymore. I know their views; they like Obama and hate Bush and Palin. One can only take so much of the smarmy Rachel and Keith.   I like the conservatives on MSNBC alright; Scarborough, Buchannon and Carlson, although he is now on Fox.  I doubt he is a double dipper, so I think he left MSNBC.

RE: Levin His book was on the NY Times best seller list for 12 weeks, so you would think he would get a nod. He is a Constitutional attorney who served in the Reagan administration turned Conservative talk show host.  He gets angry and goes on rants, but he does know his constitution.

Where is Michael Moore and his espousing he virtures of Cuban style national healthcare? I can't say I have much use for Mr. Moore. Sometimes I like O'Reilly like when he ripped Barney Frank for his abuses.  To his credit, he did conduct the toughest interview of Obama during the campaign, but in my opinion he gave Obama too much credit as being a moderate - cough..cough!

You are right about the military and having a choice of what to listen to.  That is part of what they fight for.  Schultz should have been allowed on.   I am an ex-AF (club med of the military) member.

I voted for McCain.  I would have certainly prefered Romney as well.

Say what you will against Hannity, but he was right about Obama and the way he would try to govern.  They (talk show hosts) are entertainers, but as I said before sometimes they are the only outlets to get news that is detrimental to Dems. Beck seems a bit nuts, but he does look behind the curtains and look under the hood where many "real" journalists refuse to look for fear of finding something that might put Obama in a bad light. Either that or they are just lazy.  

So you are a follower of Carl Sagin or the beliefs of Carl Sagin who believed the laws of the universe created all that we know as life.  He believed that it was  almost impossible to not consider that a higher power had something to do with the universe as we know it. He found it inconceivable that it could have come to be by chance with such incredible balance and complexity.  He believed in a God force, but not Gods as described in the books of religion. I think I got that somewhat right. And yes, I Googled the term because this is the first time I have heard of it.

I am a Christian, but I respect your choice of belief because this is America, and like you I don't know what I don't know.

Take care Agrajag,

Thanks for your intelligent and focused posts.

MJ