Career-Altering Decisions

At my office, when someone dares to speak up about a bad decision made by management, it's described as "a career-altering decision". The term has become a reliably entertaining catchphrase. On a related note, I'm grateful and pleasantly surprised that they still employ me, since I'm not much more shy about expressing my positions in real life than I am when writing on this blog.

I fear that an Orlando reporter just made a career-altering decision. You can watch the hilarious video and read lots of great comments about it here.

I made the first link straight to a blog, because it's the source cited by the second link. The second link is there because I suspect that the video link in the original blog will be taken down shortly, because it's hosted by the TV station whose reporter dared commit heresy.

To summarize, a TV reporter asked Joe Biden some tough but fair questions. If similar questions were asked of a Republican candidate, no one would bat an eye, but you're simply not allowed to ask Democrats anything that strays from their talking points if you want to be (or remain) a professional journalist in America.

So far in this campaign, I'm aware of exactly two people having publicly asked the Democratic ticket candidates any tough questions: Barbara West and Joe the Plumber.


Sidebar on Joe The Plumber: it's simultaneously hilarious, depressing, and disgusting (which is incidentally my reaction to most of what I see in the world) to see the mainstream media's reaction to Joe's tough questions. The guy, an average - sorry - Joe, gets a few seconds of face time with a presidential contender, and dares to be blunt. The media, instead of discussing the actual question and its answer, attack him.

He doesn't really have the money to buy the company where he works. The company doesn't make as much as he said. He's not a licenced plumber. Heck, his name's even not really Joe.

Everybody who cares about those issues, listen closely. Maybe get up as close to your monitor screen as you can. Don't be afraid of leaving noseprints on the glass. They'll wipe right out.

None of that matters.

Whether he was actually describing his own personal situation, presenting a completely hypothetical scenario, or anywhere in between, makes no difference whatsoever. What matters is the content of the question, and more importantly the content of Obama's answer.

Can you imagine the mainstream media's reaction if someone asked McCain a tough question and the only response from the Republican machine was to dig into the questioner's background? "Never mind that! Answer the question!", in an endless loop.

Listening to the candidates speak late last week it occurred to me that you could have made a great drinking game out of taking a shot each time either of them invoked good old Joe.

Biblical sidebar-within-a-sidebar: Biblical scholars generally feel that the parables of Jesus often didn't refer to actual, literal individuals and events. Instead, they were deliberately designed to make philosophical points. It didn't matter whether the events had actually happened. His audience - then and now - understood that. Nobody yelled, "Hey, what was the address of that house built on sand? Why, I bet it never even existed, did it? You're a fraud, and nothing you say is worth responding to or thinking about!"

Yet the media cares deeply about Joe the Plumber's personal history. This may help explain the average mainstream journalist's disdain for Jesus.

/End Loop: Biblical Sidebar
//End Loop: Sidebar


Joe Biden's reply to a couple of hardball questions was fantastic. I loved seeing the frozen smile melt away as his composure began to crack. I especially enjoyed his parting shot, where he insinuated that anyone who wanted those sorts of questions answered has to be some right-wing extremist. Right, Joe. Anybody who recognizes socialism when it's staring them in the face is a fanatic. Certainly No True Scotsman would dream of asking such things. (I know it's actually more of an ad hominem response, but the Scotsman line rang funnier to my ears.)

Barbara West should probably start polishing her resume. Even though she's being backed by her station's news director, and may very well not have written (or possibly even wanted to ask) the questions, a sacrifice will need to be offered and she's the most visible candidate. The station is already under a Democratic embargo, at least until the Democrats get their panties unbunched. That could be a while.

If she's still on the air next time I visit Florida, I'll try to make a point of watching her station. Since it'll be later than tomorrow morning before I arrive, she'll probably be long gone. Hopefully everybody in that channel's broadcast range will take the opportunity to watch them now, before the inevitable neutering. Hearing leftist talking points challenged on the air would seem shocking at first, since we're all so unaccustomed to it, but it would be nice to have a chance to get used to it.


Enough rambling. Here's another picture from our our recent church-sponsored afternoon of trap shooting. This is a spent shell casing in the grass. It's the last of my pictures (that I'll be posting) from that afternoon.