Browsing all posts in "TV".
Faux News – Ted Baxter – Olbermann Has It Right
Media Matters covers a particularly obscene abuse of the airwaves by Bill O’Reilly – Laura Ingraham also contributed with plenty of misrepresentation of fact. She believes reporters in Iraq are all reporting from their hotel balconies. I guess she hasn’t heard about the deaths, injuries, and kidnappings of many of these folks. Continue reading →
Classic Keith Olbermann
If you haven’t discovered MSNBC’S Keith Olbermann, you don’t know what you’re missing. Today’s worst person in the world (a regular feature) were two government employees (Federal Agents) who lied about their identity when scouting an area the President would be visiting. They claimed to be Fox journalists – Keith spells Fox News “Faux News” (god I love that). Later they came back to tell the man they were actually federal agents. Keith remarked, we shouldn’t be alarmed. Faux journalists pretend to be journalists every day.
Low Fat No Good? Don’t Miss All the Caveats in that Story
The main stream media is predictably telling the sensational side of the story, with people like Dan Abrams “celebrating” by eating a candy bar on air. Go ahead, Dan, eat all you want – will they still you want you as an anchor when you are a big fatty?
Anyway, it seems many are not even considering the many SIGNIFICANT caveats in the story:
1. It is not clear if changing the diet earlier in life would produce a different outcome. The gold standard for these types of studies is typically 20 years – not 8 years.
2. The study clearly does not say load up on saturated fats found in cheese and meat – there is more than one type of fat, and that distinction is important in this type of study.
3. “Although the study found no significant benefits from a low-fat diet, it also found no harm from the accompanying increased consumption of carbohydrates — grains, starches and sugars.” LA Times. The study showed that Atkins proponents who claim carbs increase a risk of diabetes are wrong.
4. The biggest caveat – most of the women didn’t really follow a low fat diet. Huh? Doesn’t that undermine any suggestion that the study accurately depicted the results of a low fat diet? Many were eat 35% of their calories from fat! The average was 24% by the time they “got it under control” – that is not a low fat diet. By the 6th year they were back up to 29% of their diet from fat. How can this possibly be considered a study on the value of low fat diets? Isn’t the basic supposition destroyed? Wouldn’t a study on low fat diets actually need to involve people ON low fat diets?
5.The women didn’t disciminate between good and bad fats (saturated fats), they didn’t exercise, and didn’t focus on overall lifestyle issues (blood pressure etc).
6. Here’s a great response from the study folks: Prentice cautioned that the subjects were all “very healthy women who were already following most of the [government's] dietary guidelines,” so their ability to cut risk by lowering fat may have been low. “Unhealthy women may gain more benefit.” OK. So they were eating okay anyway – they hadn’t set themselves up already for diabetes, heart disease, stroke…later they say the average weight was 170 pounds though – were these a select group of Amazon women?
7. The results indicate the women did not keep accurate food intake records. Hmm. Maybe they were eating 50% of their calories of fat, we aren’t sure. We do know that what they claimed they ate should have resulted in weight loss but they didn’t lose weight generally – so they probably left a few tidbits off those food diaries (hey, it’s embarrassing to say you had an extra large sundae with whip cream while you had agreed to follow a low fat diet).
8. A similar study on women with breast cancer where they reduced fat SIGNIFICANTLY did show a substantial reduction in reoccurrence. I think if you thought – if I eat too much fat my breast cancer might come back – it would definitely result in better compliance than a simple request to eat low fat for 8 years for a study.
My issue is with the media misrepresenting the value of this study. As someone who has battled weight for most of my life, I’m sick and tired of everyone capitalizing on this issue with little regard for the validity of the science. But then again, we are living in an era that chooses to ignore science when it doesn’t fit with the corporate/political agenda.
What’s refreshing in weight loss is when someone says: hey, it’s hard, it’s a real physical challenge, but you can do it if you create a valid plan and change your attitudes and behaviors. Otherwise, it’s just the “diet of the week” – or the month, or the year, or the decade…welcome to the rollercoaster ride that is obesity.
Suggested Things Bill O’Reilly Should Fight Other than His Fictional “War on Christmas”
Now he thinks Catholics are against Christmas. Uh, duh, the Catholics were the first to celebrate Christmas and many of us raised Catholic remember how our strict-Catholic moms insisted no Santa Claus, no secular representations at Christmas – it was about the birth of Jesus. Gifts were more symbolic – the other kids (non-Catholic or not strict Catholics) always got a lot more bootie for Dec 25. Asking for a list of gifts was considered in bad taste.
I really worry about Bill – as Keith Olbermann has pointed out, there is a delusional quality to his rant.
I think the best way to help Bill is to give him some other causes to fight for – causes that are, well, important. These “important” causes might help keep the delusion fairies from dancing in his head. Here we go:
The 14 million children who go to bed hungry in America
Pollution so bad in some cities people can’t go outside
Families without health insurance who go bankrupt trying to save their children from cancer, diabetes, heart disease…and so on
Violence against women – in American and throughout the world (rape, assault, being murdered by husbands or boyfriends)
Dropping literacy rates in America
That’s enough for now – that should keep him plenty busy.
Lou Dobbs Gets It
UPDATE 7/1/09: By now you probably know that Lou has lost his mind. Oh well. Keith seems to be following him. Hope Rachel Maddow keeps her sanity. She’s my last hope.
Update 7/29/2009 – No question. Lou Dobbs has gone over a cliff, lost his marbles, gotten two shakes of a lamb’s tail away from being picked up by the men in white coats. Holy moly. It’s so sad to see a man who once was provocatively brilliant in his challenges to government corruption become a batshit-crazy conspiracy theorist and bitter old crank.
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The post below was written four years ago. Before Lou Dobbs lost his mind.
More greatness from Lou Dobbs, champion of the American people. That might sound grandiose – but really, if you watch his CNN show you will see this is a man who truly cares about the issues that impact working Americans struggling to keep their jobs, pay their bills, and get some semblance of financial security.
Commenting on the waiving of prevailing wages (Gulf states), labor brokers who bring in illegal workers and exploit them (for example, you are lucky you got this job so we aren’t going to protect you from toxins because you should be happy you can feed your family for 1 day)
“[This is about]… employers who are just riotously without conscience or concern for the national interests exploiting these people they’re hiring.”
Lou gets it. With a degree in Economics from Harvard, this is a man with substance behind his arguments. His brand of paleoconservatism makes for compelling and rivetting discussions. He is not a bobble-head who spouts thoughtless ideological memes.
He cares about the impact of the neoconservative, patronage-style politics that have eroded the quality of life in this country for the middle class. He is a true patriot. He puts Americans first. He does not believe in bending over for corporate power at the expense of families. He is disgusted by politicians utterly oblivious to the struggles of the middle class.
Shocking. Really. So Shocking. Really Shocking.
Not.
I particularly like it when these kinds of reports show up on FOX. Must make Murdy sooooo stinkin’ mad.
Weeds
If you haven’t caught this ShoTime series definitely try it out. Tonight’s episode had a great monologue on Iraq – the Army reserve catches up with the slacker brother-in-law who signed up in a drunken attempt to impress a girl. He says (hope to get the actual verbatim text here – but forgot to record it!) basically, “I’m not getting blown up by some 12-year-old suicide bomber who used to love Friends and Metallica until some missile destroyed his house.” This is after a great exchange between him and the pot-smoking accountant who believes Iran hid the terrorists, (when told it’s IRAQ he responds, “They both have sand), and they had weapons of mass destruction (When disabused of this notion, he responds, “Whatever.”).
Great show tonight!
The Situation with Tucker Carlson
Some great stuff in an exhanged between Rachel Maddow and Tucker Carlson tonight in a discussion about Cheney’s comments today about our past responses to terrorism.
Tucker: (Osama bin Laden is thinking)…we attack the U.S., they don’t do anything about it.They’re weak.
Rachel: Even on Cheney’s own logic here, then how is he justifying what we are doing now. We were attacked on 9/11 and so then we went and attacked an unrelated Muslim country that had nothing to do with this. That’s like saying some guy didn’t get mugged a second time because he started beating his wife. It has nothing to do with what happened to us on 9/11.
Tucker: Well that’s a cruel thing for you to say, because as you know I completely agree with you.
And so on…
Weather Wars
First, I have to admit – I love Lou Dobbs. He is by far the most articulate of the Opcasters (news with a clear opinion/editorial bent). His segments on Exporting America give voice to one of the most profound and disturbing problems in our country today. He is smart, fair, and even if you don’t agree with his final analysis on one topic or another, he never lapses into blowhardiness. Continue reading →