elections, conspiracies, media, oz, Dr. Who
(quotes from different people)
"...in a country that elected GWB to office, you have to actually ask? The government hasn't told us it's bad, yet, and so the sheep are content, for now."
GWB and "elected" don't necessarily belong in the same sentence ;)
Many believe that most of the elections here in the U.S. are rigged and, while it's a nice warm fuzzy feeling to still be allowed to vote, it doesn't really make much difference as to who wins. The person who is 'supposed' to win the "election" will win, regardless of voter input.
In a way, given the [lack of] intelligence of some of the population, that might not be such a bad thing ;)
It will only continue to get more interesting with the new hackable electronic-voting machines.
"When the Democrats win this year"
Well, hmm, maybe... I kind of doubt that will happen, but if it does, it wouldn't be the first time I've been wrong :)
"We don't hear a damn thing about countries in South America, or Africa, or Australia, or even the old countries of the former Soviet Union. You have to go to their web sites, or Reuters, for any news from those areas of the world. In short, we're in the equivalent of a news blackout from WWII"
Pretty much, yeah, the blackout thing. What was it I heard a while back that the press was forbidden to show coffins coming back from over there someplace (one of those countries we're fighting in, can't remember which one). Some strange combination of a muzzling of the press, combined with the press only being concerned about *ratings* and not pissing off their advertisers so that they prefer to air happy-happy stuff so that no one has to deal with reality or get bummed out about stuff.
But then, "Americans" and "reality" maybe don't mesh too well anymore either, at least not since the 1960s, given that so many people here prefer to lose themselves in getting/staying high for as long as they can so that they don't have to worry about stuff anymore. And foreigners wonder why there's so much *crime* in the U.S., it's because too many people end up *stealing* everything in sight to support their drug addictions - something *ought* to be done about it, seems that the most powerful nation on earth *ought* to be able to stop the rampant crackhouses and meth labs everywhere and heroin addicts roaming the streets, but either it's not a priority or the officials aren't trying hard enough. Whatever the reason, it's a sad state of affairs.
"try other outlets like the radio"
If you're close to the Canadian border, a determined listener might be able to pick up the CBC on the AM dial at night, or from further away via "skip" on cold clear winter nights, when the CBC rebroadcasts various foreign radio shows from Africa, Radio Sweden, Germany, the BBC, Czech republic, etc. Last I checked (it's been a year or so, now) they did that starting at like 1:00 a.m. or so, going for several hours, but if you're any distance aways you have to have a really topnotch radio like one of those expensive CCrane radios w/external antenna. The majority of U.S. citizens don't have access to that sort of thing, or don't even know about it in the first place, so it's not exactly a mainstream option (I discovered it by accident when I was in one of my several "no-TV" modes, looking for something other than late-night conspiracy-theory stuff or sports, on the radio dial).
As to NPR, I gave up on NPR a long time ago; it seems geared to wealthy people or something. It's hard for me to identify with a lot of the stuff they talk about on NPR, and some of their eastern-US accents are annoying at times, like that one lady (can't remember her name) whose voice constantly goes way uppppp in pitch, and then two words later her voice goes way doowwwwwwwnnnnn, high then low, high/low, repeat 500x in 3 minutes and it makes me want to throw the damn radio across the room. No it's not the radio, it's her. Damn annoying.
"I can see Oz becoming the 53rd (or whatever) US state, in my lifetime."
Wait, I thought it was *already* ... ;)
"BBC America"
I don't get that channel, but I watch a lot of Dr. Who and I have a mad secret crush on Tom Baker - he has/had cool hair and I like his voice, so does that count? ;)