Ocassional Thoughts of an Independent Progressive Atheistic Humanist
Former Supreme Court Justice David Souter pointed out the problem with civic ignorance and the rise of someone like Donald Trump who claims he alone can fix what’s wrong in the country. Souter mentioned this issue in 2012.
Civic ignorance is a public not knowing how government works. This happens by public schools cutting civics classes and others not being interested in politics.
Dr. Richard Carrier, an atheist known on the chicken dinner circuit and professor of Ancient History, who helped get the social justice group Atheism+ started several years ago, now ironically finds himself on ‘the other side’ of the fence, as it were, by suing several people and blogs in the freethought community, including a woman who went public with a claim of sexual harassment, for $2 million.
A campaign advert, sent by the Ohio GOP, I got in the mail the other day attempts to paint Rob Portman’s challenger, Ted Strickland, as a flip-flopper on abortion. In the text of the ad it claims Planned Parenthood, which Strickland supports, is the subject of a public debate concerning ‘taxpayer funded’ abortions. The fact is that claim is a lie.
Here is an image of the mailer I got and below it is a blow-up of the part that is a lie:
I hate watching election news on TV or reading it in certain publications. It makes me angry. In a futile quest to make elections interesting, the drummed up fake balance reporting is in fact hurting our democracy.
From Media Matters:
One thing that grinds my gears every election season is the lack of effort from the members of the national journalist class. Basically most of them turn into stenographers – just repeating what political people tell them. Robin Roberts, a morning show host who thinks she is a journalist, knows what her job should be but misses the point of what it is suppose to do.
Summer repeats of TV shows are a nice time to come across things like an interview with Good Morning America host Robin Roberts on the Ellen DeGeneres show from back in February. She is asked about the 2016 Presidential election: