About Credibility

Just in general and as an observation and opinion, not specifically aimed at any particular person, I find some interesting relationships between experience and opinion.

       As an example, I usually read several Facebook pages related to former military service,  in my case it was the submarine force for just about 1/3 of my life. It would appear that there is an inverse correlation between actual amount of service, and the belief that said service confers, simply by being there, expertise in areas that are actually unrelated. Foreign policy and politics in general are cases in point.  This also plays out when someone forwards a scurrilous , usually derogatory e-mail quoting some retired Officer. The inference is that his opinion matters or has validity just because he was an officer. Based on recent very senior officers whose careers have crashed and burned because of their human frailties, and in one very recent case, illicit activities while in uniform, that assertion needs to be questioned. This is especially true, it seems, in retired, or less than career,  pilots. Unless they were assigned a staff billet involving foreign policy, their career was about driving a plane, not a nation, yet there is no shortage of spam e-mails floating around citing the foreign policy and domestic opinions of former pilots, usually also  using their cutesy pooh  nicknames. One that comes to mind has the call sign of "Hands." This has an almost ominous sound to it, like "uncle feely hands."

       This is analogous to assuming a good businessman makes a good President, a canard being proven more fallacious every day.

       Similarly, there are people out there who were in the military for 4 of 6 years, and assume that it conferred genius upon them. It would be of interest to learn why they left, since they constantly refer to it as if it were the apogee of their adult life, yet they quit. Go figure.

        It also seems that the shorter the service, the more the term "Patriot" gets thrown about. With some, but too  few, exceptions, the most patriotic Americans would seem to be those redneck retrogrades who can't even pass the standards to enlist, but are uber-patriotic. While wrapping themselves in the flag which many of us served and respected, these bastard children of Momma June and the entire Duck Dynasty clan, hurl invective, and sometimes their vehicles,  at civilized persons who actually can, and do, read before declaring their opinions.

       I recently read a rather long and rambling  apologia which essentially proclaimed that everything done by the current POTUS is justified and justifiable. Reasons cited ranged from - "God chose him," to "He'll make America great again."   If these naive morons had been to the places in the world I've been the past several years, they'd know that the man has destroyed what was an almost universally high opinion of the US, based on the previous 8 years under Barack Obama. Whether they like it or not (they don't), The US needs to be a citizen of the world, not the class bully.  

Examples of this irrational cognitive shit storm include, but aren't limited to, several examples;

Far rightists went crazy when Loretta Lynch had a face to face in plain sight on an airport tarmac, but when Trump releases only a few of the lists of political guests at Mar A Lago, apparently preferring to do the nation's business far from the open.....oh well (shrug)

While we're on Mar A Lago. If Trump continues playing golf at the current rate, he will have played far more and at an astronomically greater cost than his predecessor. Far rightists screamed about Obama's golf, which course he was usually driven to in a car, but the millions on AF One flying to Fl for the weekend? No problem.

Some whined because the former President's mother in Law stayed at the White House. That required one extra secret service billet. Meanwhile Trump has 42  family members who "require" Secret Service coverage to the point that there is insufficient money budgeted to cover it even without the Mar A Lago trips. In total, Trump is using 1/3 more persons and far more money. From the right, who scream about government spending? Crickets.

You want to be a legit pundit? Read. Then read some more. Read real history and real news, not tainted by the far right or left. Note: That leaves everything claimed to have been written by (he didn't) Bill O'Reilly off the list. He taught history for one semester out of field (he has a BA in English) in high school. I taught history in field  for 20 years, some at a College level,  and I don't call myself a historian like O'Reilly does. Look at one of his books, if you were dumb enough to buy it, and check out the smaller name on the cover. That's the real author.

  Leave your religious beliefs out of political considerations. They make you stupidly fatuous, because they're not based on data or the real world. Tend to your soul as you will, but leave me alone.

Never watch Fox News

Bookmark "Politifact" on your computer. Although the parent company is conservative (Gannett) the child is media neutral, dealing in one commodity - fact.   

  Get off the "Liberal Media Bias" bullshit wagon. There is no vast conspiracy as Fox and others claim.

 There are only two things wrong with the conservative whiners' plaint that the NY Times is the harbinger of great liberal influence. First, there is the fact that the Times (print) circulation is read by two-tenths of one percent of our population. Statistically, 99.8% never read it!  Additionally the Times circulation is exceeded by twice by the Wall St. Journal (read "Rupert Murdoch"); and also by USA Today-- owned by media giant Gannett. No "liberal" advantage here.

Disbelieve most talk radio. Here the conservative complaint is not only without basis of fact -- they are treading on thin ice because talk radio is massively dominated by conservative hosts. Bill Press in his carefully documented work "Toxic Talk"  refers to a Center for American Progress survey (done a couple of years ago) indicating that:

Of 257 top news-talk stations, ninety-one percent of the programming was conservative. Each weekday 2570 hours of programming was conservative; 254 hours progressive

In the top ten radio markets, seventy-six percent of the programming is conservative.

 Gannett, demonstrably conservative/centrist  owns 82 U.S. daily newspapers, including USA TODAY, reaching 11.6 million readers every weekday, the nation's No. 1 newspaper in print circulation.  The Broadcasting Division’s 23 TV stations reach 21 million households, covering 18.2 percent of the U.S. population

Hearst: One of the world's largest  publishers of magazines; 20 U.S. titles, 300 international editions; 20 Business Information services; and 29 television plus two radio stations is also conservative/centrist.

Then there are other media giants like Time Warner, Viacom--  and the NBC network, now owned by the big daddy of them all; Comcast. Comcast is the largest media conglomerate in the world with over $60 Billion in annual revenue; and multi billions in profit. A liberal mouthpiece? Hardly. Of course, to some of those who will read this,  anyone not wrapped in a flag, carrying a Klan membership card and an AK-47 and screaming racist/sexist epithets while blinded by their own snot, is liberal. So sad.