Honestly, this whole government shutdown looks like a puppet show to me. I listened to this Senator or whatever on NPR this afternoon talking about the budget and how the Democrats are willing to cut something like $33 billion from the Federal government. But, now the Republicans want to cut $40 billion. Dude, it’s only, like, $7 billion more, how tough can that be to cut?

So, this Democrat was all, like, “I don’t want to make these cuts but I also don’t want to shut down the Federal government!” She said, a minute later, “You don’t want us to shut down the ENTIRE Federal government.” She really emphasized the “ENTIRE” word. Wait, was a partial shut down possible? So, the only real reason to emphasize “entire” was to be rhetorical. In other words, it was to emphasize to the listener the severity of the proposed shutdown.

It’s a puppet show. I bet you the Democrats are just as happy to make those cuts but they don’t want to lose votes. So, they’ll kick and scream and then vote for them anyway. I bet they have as much trouble voting for those cuts, and more, as President Obama had extending the Bush tax cuts to the richest citizens, those making over $250K a year.

I remember when I used to take in the news as truth. It was so much easier. Just listen or read and go with it. But, now, I realize it’s propaganda. The corporations and the politicians feed the news to the media who report it the way they want to. All of the media have their biases. Fox is a media arm of the Republican party all the way. NPR has a clear liberal bias though, I think, they try to be fair, it’s just very difficult some times. Admittedly, as a progressive myself, I probably have a hard time seeing NPRs bias since it’s probably my own as well. CNN is almost as bad as the local news. It’s sensationalist and full of sound bites. It’s newstertainment, not really news.

Other proof of the puppet show? The Republicans criticizing Obama for taking too long to act in Libya and yet being indignant that he did it without consulting them. If he had gone in sooner they would be complaining that he did it without a UN mandate or without the international community or rashly or whatever. Obama will get criticized for whatever he does. It’s just a show.

If you watch the news and think of it as a Reality Program rather than information you can use to make good decisions and form opinions then it makes more sense. Try it sometime. I think this is why The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is so popular.