I can’t begin to tell you how happy I will be once a final decision is made on the president’s health care plan — even if it is a decision I don’t particularly like, just so long as some semblance of rational and respectful discourse is restored.

I, like many other Americans, am sick of hearing both sides behaving like children.  One might think that those tasked with the heavy job of fixing the nation’s health care system would be able to do so without claiming that the other side wants to kill people, but we would be wrong, I’m looking at you U.S. Reps. Michelle Bachman, R-Minn, and Alan Grayson, D-Fla.

Unfortunately, though, it seems this problem may be a little more systemic than just disagreements over health care. The downward slope of American discourse has been going on for quite some time now, but it’s difficult to pinpoint where exactly it began.

It’s obviously not just those in Washington that been pulling this debate in the gutter, many in the media are just as responsible.  I’ve gone after the media in past articles for devolving this debate, but I think in the past I’ve been too narrow.

Yes, Fox News and Glenn Beck have affected this debate, but it is the whole of cable news that has fed into misinformation.  The networks, at some point, decided to stop reporting the news and start playing the ratings game.

Fox News wants you to be foaming at the mouth, MSNBC wants you yelling at the television and CNN wants you to tweet them and download their new iPhone application.  Unfortunately for the public, all of the methods these networks are using involve a bastardization of news and journalism.

To those who think I unfairly attacked Glenn Beck a couple weeks ago, let me make it perfectly clear that I think Glenn Beck is a symptom of the overall problem that exists in news today.

Another symptom of this problem is,  Keith Olbermann. Even though I generally agree with Olbermann’s opinions on issues, it must be said that he is not a news man.
Neither Olbermann, nor Beck, or the scores of others like them on TV, radio, or the internet, are responsible, thoughtful journalists, and don’t deserve to be on the same networks that purport themselves to be news focused.

News and opinion are meant to be separate. That’s very clear in newspapers, where opinions and editorials are published in the back of a paper under a large banner proclaiming them opinions.

They are not held up to the same standards as front page news, and the readers know that.  It’s very clear to those who read newspapers where news ends and opinion begins.  On television however, there is no distinction.  These networks operate under the banner of 24-hour-news.

Their viewers are constantly told by the networks that it’s all news all the time, or that they are “fair and balanced” or America’s number one place for news, but it can hardly be said that the shows Mr. Beck and Mr. Olbermann do are news.

When you lose the distinction between opinion and news it’s very clear  the entire operation cheapens.  All of the “news” on Fox and MSNBC has been tainted by opinion. Neither presents news as a statement of fact but rather as editorial masquerading as fact.

I don’t know that the same can be said for CNN because they come off more as needy than as biased, but CNN is probably another column entirely.

We can’t expect the people to be adequately informed when so much of their news is tainted by bias, and we definitely can’t expect politicians to act like adults when their ideologies are on display as fact 24 hours a day in millions of American homes.

It’s my hope that at some point we can separate news and opinion in all media, but until then, here’s to seeing this opinion piece published where it belongs, in the back of the paper.

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I feel that I’ve been spending quite a bit of time lately responding to and correcting falsehoods and misrepresentations about President Barack Obama and his agenda.  Today will, unfortunately, be no different.  From the tea party protesters at the National Mall, to cable news, and yes even on our own campus, a series of lies and misconceptions as well as outright vitriol has been spreading.

I have heard, personally, from people on campus who believe that President Obama is creating a “secret army”, whose purpose seems unclear to me. As I was told, though, I should open my eyes and realize that it’s happening, or that he already has a secret “SS” in Georgia to silence dissidents.  While I believe it takes a very special kind of crazy to actually believe some of this downright stupidity, I do think it’s important to address some of these matters, and let me be clear, I’ll be writing today on the assumption that we’re all intelligent enough to set some of these issues aside without addressing them. If you’d like me to tell you why the President isn’t a Nazi or anything like Adolf Hitler, I’d be happy to do so. So long as the conversation takes place in a padded room where you can’t hurt yourself.

The one issue that I have heard everywhere is that of presidentially- appointed czars.  It is also the one issue that I believe is worth my time and effort to address, because I can understand why some people might be led to believe some of the misconceptions of czars.  If all you hear is Glenn Beck’s notion of what czars are and what they do, then you may very well believe it.  The problem here is, as it is with many of Mr. Beck’s positions, these ideas are simply wrong.

As a bit of research for this article I decided to go straight to the source of a lot of this madness, Fox News.  More specifically, I made sure to catch a few episodes of the Glenn Beck show, although I must admit I haven’t been able to make it through an entire episode yet but I have made it past the halfway point a couple times and that should count for something.  There is a very clear distrust among some over the term “czar”, what it means, and what kind of accountability these czars have.  Unfortunately for those who are trying to make these arguments for political or media gain, these issues are ones that exist only in the minds of people like Mr. Beck.

President Obama is not the first to create czar positions or to rely on their advice.  The idea of executive branch czars is hardly a new one. The first czar positions were created in the 1940s during the Roosevelt administration and some of which were created at the behest of Congressional Republicans.  They were actually created, in part, to help ease the public’s mind about the pressing issues of the day.  The term czar was chosen to make the public feel as though there was a strong person at the helm, capable of steering America in the right direction.

It was under the Reagan administration that the Republican Senate created the position of a national “Drug czar”.  President George W. Bush appointed some 40 individuals to 36 different czar positions. As a point of comparison President Obama has 31 executive appointed czars.

Another often used argument against czars is that they have enormous amounts of power that they may wield completely unchecked and unaccountable to anyone.  On its face, this is absurd.  These czars are appointed by the President and are, therefore, accountable to the White House; they are not authorized to make a move without the consent and backing of the administration. Let me make it very clear, Czars report to and serve at the pleasure of the President.

To those of you who are also fed up with the lies and hate-mongering being propagated in America today, I as always invite you to come out to a College Democrats’ meeting.  We meet every Monday in room 211 of the Student Center.

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Increasing access to health care in this country would seem like a pretty noble goal, but one look at the cable news networks would lead you to believe otherwise. The health care reform debate has devolved into an utter circus. While there will always be disagreements over how to tackle the big issues facing our country, any civil discussion of these differences has been drowned out by a small number of raucous individuals.Why is it that an issue as important and as wide-spanning as health care can’t be discussed without blatant lies and ad-hominum attacks? Let me take a moment to set the record straight.

First, President Barack Obama’s health care reforms will not result in the creation of “death panels” that determine who lives and who dies. The question of “death panels” arises from a program in a current House iteration of the bill that will allow senior citizens to have access to consultations regarding a living will. Let us first remember that the government has been recommending that all Americans have a living will for decades, through both Democratic and Republican control of the branches of government. That’s it, living wills. It’s difficult to follow the logic from living wills to death panels, but it’s also difficult to call that logic.
Next is the notion that health care reform will result in a government takeover of the health care industry in America. It has become a pretty common talking point among those opposed to health care reform to compare these reforms to the health care systems of Great Britain or Canada.

However, even a cursory review of the proposals on the table will show that there is no provision for government run health care. Instead, health care reform would result in a “public option” to obtain health insurance. This is not a measure to kill the health insurance industry, but rather increase choice and competition in the marketplace. At the moment, the largest health insurance company in Kentucky accounts for 51 percent of the market, while the top two together account for 61 percent. A public option for health care will result in a greater number of insured Americans, as well as lower health insurance costs for everyone over the long term.

Finally, I want to address the myth that the health care system in America is not broken and therefore does not require reform. Many opponents of health care reform like to tout how the American health care system is “the greatest in the world.” Well, according to the World Health Organization the United States’ health care system is ranked as 37th in the world, putting the U.S. between Costa Rica and Slovenia. You have to wonder then, where do health reform opponents get the gall to say that nothing should be done?

Surely they haven’t seen that family premiums in Kentucky have risen by 61 percent since 2000 and 24 percent of Kentuckians spend more than 10 percent of their income on health care costs. In Kentucky, 10 percent of people have diabetes, 30 percent have high blood pressure, 27 percent of seniors don’t receive a flu vaccine and 21 percent of children in Kentucky are obese. If these numbers represent the greatest health care system in the world, then perhaps we should just stop trying. It would be a sad state of affairs if this was the best America could do, but you and I know differently.

The United States has nearly all of the means and resources to create a health care system that is first in the world and that covers all Americans. The only resource we’re lacking is the political will. If you would like to join in the fight to ensure that the American health care system is the best in the world, I encourage you to come to a College Democrats meeting. We meet each Monday (Labor day excluded) in room 211 of the Student Center.

Flyer/handbill that the University of Kentucky College Democrats will be posting and passing out during K-Week and prior to the first meeting on Aug. 31st.

RIP Michael Jackson

On its own, Finals Week is enough stress to deal with for an otherwise lazy 20 year old, but put on top of this the following…

By the end of the week I have to(or at least have started): Call Senatorial candidate Jack Conway’s secretary to set up a speaking engagement for next semester, Find a job, Find two new roommates to move in by July 1st, change the names on the UK College Democrats bank account, fill out an SS-4 IRS form to get an EIN for UK KFTC (so that we can actually have a bank account), get my new UK Dems officers together for a meeting, get a plumber to fix our shower (it’s currently not draining, making it literally unusable), mow the lawn by Wed.(lest my landlord send me a crazy bill), and not bomb any finals.

Ha, we’ll see how this goes.

I wanted to make this post so that I could throw out a few of my preliminary goals for the UKDems next year, including: Send members to Virginia to assist with the Governor’s race there, work with the UK SAB (Student Activities Board) to bring RFK Jr. to campus, as well as get as many members to July’s College Democrats of America Convention in D.C.

If you, or anyone you know, can assist in achieving these goals, feel free to contact me.

Also, follow the UK College Democrats on Twitter at: twitter.com/UKCollegeDems

Check out this Wired story for some of the ridiculous audtion videos

So now, after deleting some 700 posts, the two blogs have been seperated again.  During the process of deleting these posts it is convievable that some of this blog’s original posts were caught in the cross-fire.  I hope that isn’t the case, but if you notice anything missing or broken links that is probably the cause.

To further update my last post “State of the Blog“, I’m still not sure of the direction of Justin Lamb Presents: A Blog!  However, in the time that I have spent not making posts here, I have increased my presence at Justin Lamb Presents: Random! as well as on Twitter, so I hope you’ll continue to check those out.

I don’t know when I’ll get back to making regular postings here, in an effort to improve my grades this semester I’ve made the decision to cut back on some of my other activities; One of which is Justin Lamb Presents: A Blog!

This doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten about the site or that I won’t be coming back to it, but it does mean that the regularity with which I had been making posts will be tossed out the window for the time being.

In the mean time, I will still be making posts at Justin Lamb Presents: Random!, which I hope you’ll check out.

-Justin