The new direction of MSNBC

Most MSNBC hosts have been turning into pandering fools. Tucker Carlson with his pandering to anyone who thinks phobic control of anybody no "like us" is a good idea. Mathews and his booking loudmouths with no intellectual capacity just for the value of sensationalism. Even my favorite MSNBC host, Keith Olbermann, panders to the loony left with his attacks on O'Reilly and his calls for Bush to resign.

When Olbermann recently attacked O'Reilly for pointing out that Dateline is really bad journalism I pretty much gave up on the whole cable channel. Trying to rationalize Dateline's "To Catch a Predator" is pretty much as low as you can get. Olbermann lost a lot of my respect when he did that.

MSNBC needs some new programming management.

Depression and rational thought

I was watching the O'Reilly show with BillO commenting on the prosecutor who killed himself inside his house as police and Dateline surrounded his house after a failed sting attempt.

I say it was a failed sting attempt because the guy did not show up to meet what he thought was an underage girl. Dateline had hired Perverted Justice to entice the guy to meet a 13 year old, he agreed to meet her, but turned around and went home.

Police were watching and when they saw the enticement didn't work they took Dateline along to raid his home and arrest him anyway.

They didn't get a chance, the guy killed himself.

The guy's family is sueing. Good for them, I think.

BillO doesn't seem to agree.

It's a sure thing that a guy who commits suicide is not thinking rationally. Maybe BillO is right and the guy was guilty and the suicide was because of his shame from the guilt. Or maybe that guy thought he was part of an X-files episode and he was following the script, thinking the gun was simply a stage prop. But, whatever the guy was thinking, it was not a rational thought. That part is certain.

The idea that depression is about mood and feelings rather than a disorder of thought is what tends to lead idiots like BillO to try to analyze suicide as if the person who killed himself was being rational. That's just not the way depression and suicide works.

If you actually watch those Dateline shows and think that Dateline (or the Police) are actually giving you an honest protrayal of any of it, keep this in mind.

As for the rest of the cases, he said neither police nor NBC could guarantee the chat logs were authentic and complete.

Dateline should go back to blowing up pickup trucks.

Actually, Laura, Kennedy was Right in the Eighties

I was just watching Laura Ingrams being interviewed by Bill O'Reilly about Ted Kennedy's proposal to block Bush's attempts to escalate the Iraqi war.

As evidence that Kennedy is wrong she offered the observation that in the eighties Kennedy claimed that the general believe about the risk we faced from the Soviets was overblown.

Well, Laura, he was right about that. Subsequent events showed that at the time the assessment the CIA was making about the strength of the Soviet economy was just wrong, much as their claimed assessments about the risks we faced from Iraq has been proven wrong.