Death By 1000 Papercuts

You may ask yourself, 'self, what drives an occasionally sane man crazy?'

Historic levels of government spending?.....check
A flaccid defense posture.....check
(heh, I said 'flaccid')... I digress
The healthcare debacle?.....check
Terrorists being tried as criminals?.....see last response
Hypocrisy?.....uber-check
The perversion of science in the 'global warming' debate?.....check
The president's job performance thus far?.....check, check, check

I suppose the above is not terribly surprising - one would hope these would drive most modestly sane people bonkers.

Then there are the paper cuts. The little things in life that, like mental microtrauma, pulls at the remaining fraying thread of one's sanity (or at least mine). Such as:
Whoopie Goldberg?.....grow some eyebrows you psychotic leftist beyotich!
Squirrels?.....on occasion, ADD and everything...makes it hard to concentrate
Smurfs?.....absosmurfinlutely. Tiny blue bastards!
Commercials hyping something 'they don't want you to know' or 'its not your
fault you're a fattie' or 'I'm going to let you in on a secret'.... or maybe
that those line of commercials are successful enough means that people are
just that freaking ignorant? Not sure... but again I digress...stupid ADD...
NPR?....No, not the arts / travel / leisure stuff ~ which is by and large,
excellent. No, it's the news 'coverage'.

and away we go...
Once upon a time, I donated to my local NPR station (essentially for the reasons stated above) - but I got to the point where I just couldn't take it anymore. I was under the mistaken impression that NPR was supposed to be 'neutral' in its reporting, not 'neutered' in intelligence. I wrote a very nice letter in my own dulcet tones style to the operating manager at KERA, explaining that having Daniel Schorr as their senior news analyst was akin to giving the same title to Sean Hannity (in the ideological sense at any rate) - and given the ridiculous slant on news analysis, I could no longer support the station anymore than I already unwillingly was due to tax contributions. Oddly, no one responded to my letter....

One past gem that nearly caused me to crash my car (true story) was a piece (of fecal matter) ranking colleges on 'service' to the community at large. The jackass news whore then proceeded to state, in his incredulity, that since ROTC was largely a 'right wing organization' that he disagreed in its inclusion in the ranking system... my head still spins when I think of that one...

Though clearly not bright enough to avoid aggravation, I again turned on KERA this morning, where the following 2 stories greeted me.

The first was a 'poor Chris Dodd' story, detailing how he is being drummed out of office due to an unsubstantiated ethics charge. There was absolutely no mention of his protection of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that was, in part, integral to the housing / banking crisis (oh yeah, and he received over $130 million in campaign contributions over the years from those same organizations, not that there was a quid-pro-quo going on there or anything... None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Only a melancholy sigh over the political death of a fine public servant... Excrement! Excrement I say!

The next beauty comes to us from a intel reporter and concerned mother who described her 'Norman Rockwell' Christmas being interrupted by the crotch-bomber. At this point, she was spot on - discussing fears she had as a mother given the hostile world climate. Then she relayed a story about her children and how, instead of playing 'cops and robbers' they would play 'good soldier and terrorist'. 'Good' soldier? GOOD soldier?? As opposed to what? The fraction that are not? The ones who 'terrorize innocent women and children in the dead of night' (John Kerry), or American soldiers to 'Nazis, the Soviet KGB, and Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge' (Dick Durbin). Perhaps as a former soldier, I'm just a wee bit sensitive here, but I hope not. That this correspondent finds it necessary to differentiate between good and bad soldiers as they pertain to the United States military is an insult...and she is completely oblivious. Admittedly, in my disgust, I quickly changed the station to some alternative rock to help scrub my brain of what I had just heard..but it won't go away. Mostly because our tax dollars fund this sort of insidious 'progressive' bullshit that works its way into the American psyche. Its like being charged to dig our own graves and my tiny peanut brain just can't handle it.
Not today.
I haven't had my meds yet...

Just another paper cut I suppose.
Just another paper cut...