Good Morning.

I've spent most of the week blissfully unawares of the goings-on at the national level.


I mentioned it in passing here earlier in the week. A few days previously, the good Doctor Maddow rubbed my last nerve raw with yet another Trump Bukkake of a show. It's really too bad; for a lot of years TRMS was my go-to source for just about everything.

But that's not all - I went cold turkey for the week. I pick up a lot of other podcasts and things, and I decided none of them are worth the hassle right now. Sorry Stephanie, Jim (Hightower), ESPN Baseball, Daily Encouragement, my two music podcasts, Disney World, and BBC Witness. The only one I listened to was my old-time radio 'Superman' broadcast.

It's been strangely liberating. I got an audio book and a foreign language CD out of the library, and that's what I've been listening to of late.

But is it surrender? Here we are, a full year ahead of the Presidential Election. It's too soon to give up, but at this time I can say I know more than I care to about all the Republican candidates. But other than Hilary and Bernie, and the manufactured controversies around both campaigns...what else is going on out there? It's difficult to hear the birds when you're standing next to an active runway with F-15 Eagles launching on full afterburner every 30 seconds...but that's the way the parties are broken down right now.

Oh, I presume I'll come around. I have started listening to the BBC again, and Liv suggested some Al-Jazeera America, too. But it's ridiculous when things like ABC and CNN are just part of the noise machine. I hardly look at my local newspaper websites anymore too, but there's a specific reason for that. (Annual saturation coverage of the asinine "No Pants Subway Ride" anyone? This is news?? But I digress.)

As we all know, the Founding Fathers thought the press so important that it's in the first Amendment of the Constitution:



It's really a pity that very few of our media outlets take their national responsibility seriously anymore.