Doug Berger – Page 110

July 24, 2009April 18, 2020

Police union president says he is disgraced President Obama is commander and chief

The fall out over the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates continued after President Obama made a comment about the incident at his Wednesday press conference. President Obama said that Cambridge Police acted stupidly in making the arrest. The president of the Cambridge Police Patrol Officer’s Association, Stephen Killion, said the comments were disgraceful and he was disgraced that Obama was commander and chief. Killion and others are blowing the President’s comments out of proportion.

Basically what happens is that police sometimes arrest people for disorderly conduct because they either are a threat to themselves or others – like if they are intoxicated and not driving a car – or if a cop gets pissed off.

They use that particular arrest to end the situation instead of just walking away or trying to defuse the issue.

From all reports Gates was pissed off and got into an argument with the police over his treatment. They thought he was breaking into his own home.

I’m sure Gates shouldn’t have got into the argument but the police should have defused the situation and left the scene as soon as possible. I’m sure the police officer felt defensive because Gates was complaining about how he was doing his job. Obviously there was a war of words or else they would have charged him with assault.

In my customer service training, I was taught not to get into an argument. Let the person vent and then end the contact as quickly as possible.

The whole incident reminded me of a video I saw sometime ago of a trooper writing a speeding ticket and the driver was insanely angry calling him all kinds of names and threatening to have him fired etc…. Here is the video:

World’s Wildest Speeding Ticket

Stephen Killion on the other hand has no excuse. He said something stupid. Its fine if you don’t agree with what Obama said but don’t say you are disgraced that Obama is commander and chief.

It gives away his political bias and isn’t even relevant to the incident or Obama’s comments.

July 21, 2009April 18, 2020

And this is progress?

Back in September, we were hit with the remnants of Hurricane Ike mixing with a strong cold front. 75 mile per hour winds basically knocked out power to most people in the city and county. I was without power for 3 days and many others were out for up to a week after the storm. The electric company brought in hundreds of crews. I mention this because it seems 30 years ago the electric company was faster in restoring service after a bad storm.

My Grandmother gave me a book she had about the Blizzard of 1978 that pummeled our area that year. It was self published and contained personal stories from people who went through the storm then.

What was interesting was that the power went out at the beginning of the blizzard, and like for us, most of the stories noted that some power was restored the next day or two later. The two day outage also applied to people out in “the sticks” of the county. Crews would go down county roads with a snow plow to gain access to the power lines and repair them.

July 20, 2009April 18, 2020

Don’t believe the Republican view on health care reform

Republicans are all a gasp about President Obama and the Democrats plan to reform health care in this country. They claim that the Democrats want to take over the industry and get between the person and their Doctor. Once again the truth is totally different than the Republican talking points.

Anyone of us “regular people” who don’t have our own tax payer supported health plan – like the members of Congress – know that there is someone who stands between us and the Doctor now. We call them the insurance company. It was set rules on what is or isn’t covered and specific rules to follow or you won’t have something covered.

Insurance companies don’t want you to use your plan and make it as hard as possible to do so. They make a profit off your premiums but not if they have to pay out money – so they nickle and dime you. The most recent health care product is called the “Consumer Directed Health Plan”. Basically the there are little rules on coverage but you are forced to pay a $1500 to $4000 deductible upfront before the plan pays anything. If you are a healthy person then you get a nice suprise should you ever need to use your CDH plan.

Then there are plans where they have something called “managed care” where they won’t pay for something unless you have tried something else that is less expensive.

Basically most private insurance companies are not your friends and never will be. They like their profit too much. They will be working with their friends in the Republican party to make Obama’s health care reform seem as scary as possible.

The fact is our health care system is broken and needs to be fixed so that more people are covered and a majority of Americans feel the same way.

85% of Americans support “fundamental changes” to or a “complete rebuild” of the health care system. 64% believe the government should guarantee insurance for all Americans and 72% think the government should offer a public option styled after Medicare to compete with private insurers.

July 19, 2009April 18, 2020

What we really should be looking at since the death of Walter Cronkite

Uncle Walter passed away on Friday and so this weekend the press corp have been celebrating the anchorman who set the standard of what the press is suppose to be. It is ironic that as they celebrate the icon of TV news, current TV news is nothing like what Cronkite stood for or broadcast back in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

The current members of the press commented on objective and tough Cronkite was in his reporting. He told us all what we needed to hear and sometimes what we didn’t want to hear. That doesn’t happen today.

Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com says it better:

Despite that, media stars will spend ample time flamboyantly commemorating Cronkite’s death as though he reflects well on what they do (though probably not nearly as much time as they spent dwelling on the death of Tim Russert, whose sycophantic servitude to Beltway power and “accommodating head waiter”-like, mindless stenography did indeed represent quite accurately what today’s media stars actually do). In fact, within Cronkite’s most important moments one finds the essence of journalism that today’s modern media stars not only fail to exhibit, but explicitly disclaim as their responsibility.
Celebrating Cronkite while ignoring what he did

Too bad it is all true.

July 19, 2009April 18, 2020

It seems one Columbus TV station takes the day off on weekends

I guess I am too caught up in the 24 hour news cycle where I expect either breaking news or at least new stories to show up on my local TV station websites on the day the news breaks. It seems that the WBNS 10TV website takes the weekend off unless the news is significant.

On Saturday some ticket holders for an event at the Palace Theater showed up hours after the event had happened. The time had been changed but some people didn’t hear about it. The story was on 10TV’s 11 PM newscast but still wasn’t posted on their website at that time. The story was on the website for Channel 4 the NBC station.

The only story posted on the website from Saturday was a robbery suspect who was shot in South Columbus in the morning and they had the scores from the Indians and Reds games that afternoon.

10TV sister company, The Columbus Dispatch had 3 more Saturday story links on its front page.

The problem is that on Saturday and Sunday, there are times when the evening newscasts aren’t seen due to sports or other programing. Basically I wouldn’t know any local updates until 11 PM or later if network programing runs over.