a little background

i wanted to start off by giving any readers who happen upon this site with some background on why i am doing this and what i hope people will learn from what i have to say.

put simply, i believe the mainstream media system is completely broken and has been for some time. during the depths of depression that beset me after 9/11, i spent hours combing the web attempting to find answers that i knew weren't being supplied by the main stream media. i came across a handful of blogs, such as mediawhoresonline.com, bartcop.com, talkingpointsmemo.com, and others that showed me that there were alternative outlets for people who did not trust the mainstream narrative on 9/11 and the "war on terrorism".

this was an eye opener the likes of which i have never encountered. i spent months reading these sites, became a contributor to them, and encouraged members of my family and circle of friends to start turning off their TVs and reading blogs for news. i felt like an outcast, but i knew i was doing the right thing. i'm sure i'm not the only person on the web who had this reaction in the aftermath of 9/11, but i sure felt isolated -- from my friends and co-workers who cheered the invasion of afghanistan and later iraq, and from my friends and co-workers who felt that george w. bush was the best person to have as our president.

i found that blogs allowed me to have access to infinitely diverse viewpoints, and to see issues from different perspectives. i got caught up in conversations with people where i would cite facts i had found on the internet to counter-balance their rightward spin and they would dismiss me. "if i got it off the internet, it must be made up", they would say. but the exact opposite was true most of the time! the "facts" being spewed out on CNN and on the front pages of newspapers were only facts in the most limited sense of the word. they were "facts" that were spun and altered to paint an alternate reality that worked to contain the outrage of american citizens and direct it in ways that were harmful to our republic.

i remember saying back in 2003 that george bush would be the first president in american history to lose two wars during his term. the people i said this to were appalled. but years later, my prediction is coming close to true. we are going backwards in afghanistan and in iraq. we are losing the so-called war on terrorism. and people still don't seem to understand this.

why? because they get their news from places other than blogs and other than the internet.

if you haven't yet been convinced of just how bad our media has become in terms of pushing agendas that are unfriendly to democracy and destructive for our country, then i hope this blog will show you the light. if you are getting even one ounce of your news coverage from a main-stream source, you are, in my mind, a staunch conservative whether you realize it or not. it's just that bad.

please read my blog as it grows and expands, and please feel free to lend your comments and insights.