Dr. Carson & Writing my Representative

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Wednesday February 20, 2013 · 9:03 PM PST

2013/02/20 · 21:03

Not a well formed diary tonight, but feel the need to write something again.

First, I stumbled across an item on the Baltimore Sun's site. The article reviews Dr. Carson's appearance on Fox News, arising from his remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast. I had not heard anything about the event, nor the remarks, so I was surprised at the results from Googling Dr. Carson.

Second, I finally calmed down enough to send an email to my Representative; my ire has grown through the week as we all get used to the idea of the upcoming furloughs. We're not sure how the DoD will administer them, but they will be more irritating because they're so unnecessary. I did ask him to think on three points regarding his role in the problem. But, in the wisdom of the stairs, I failed to ask him if he was interested in governing or just destroying.

We Laugh at Our Peril: Fox News as an Information Operation

DumbGrunt

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Friday December 11, 2009 · 4:42 PM PST

2009/12/11 · 16:42

I work with some very smart, experienced people and yet I'm amazed at how differently they perceive the world. We are involved in analyzing military operations, so I'm used to having a disjointed feeling when comparing how activities in our two current wars are reported versus what the after action reports contain.

Of course, our forces are heavily involved in a counter insurgency effort (COIN) and there has been much discussion about the strategy that should be followed. GEN McCrystal was interviewed by NPR earlier this week and he said two things that hit me like a ton of bricks. To paraphrase the general, in COIN the insurgency tries to do two things: (1) make the people lose trust in the government and (2) separate the people from the government.

Now condider how Fox News, and other conservative media outlets, report on current conditions. Perhaps more chillingly, consider the effect on how the world is presented; two examples, (1) almost two thirds of Fox News viewers believe that WMD were found in Iraq (2) a majority of self-identified Republicans believe several of the more bizarre stories about the President (e.g., the 2008 election was stolen by ACORN, the President is not a natural born American).

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