The O'Reilly Factor: I ask, I answer, America listens.

I was flipping through the channels tonight and stopped on Fox News. Now, I should have known what I was getting myself into, even if it were only for a few minutes. I caught just a bit of it, but I'm sure you can find it online. September 4th, I think.

It's awfully long, for sure, and I hadn't realized that it was an older video, since it was blaring on last night on "The O'Reilly Factor". I should have known better than to expect Bill O'Reilly to be working on a Sunday. If you watched it, great, and if not, I'll try to fill you in. At one point, Bill O'Reilly leads Barack Obama with a list of facts that are actually false accusations on Barack's policies, and gives him no time to correct. To Fox News viewers, this would result in "OH YEAH, YOU GET THAT NIGGAR BILL O'REILLY, YOU TELL HIM HE DUN WRONG." If anybody with a brain happened to be watching, we'd probably turn it off. Like I did.

This is exactly why the clip was an "O'Reilly Exclusive", because no real news station would mask this as real journalism. When I was editing my high school journalism class, I was accused of doing this exact same thing. We refer to it as Yellow journalism, and I had already taught all of my cub reporters what that meant and how to avoid it. So when Mrs. Jackson came in to yell at my class for being one-sided, it was my fault. I was the one who wrote the article, even though Eric's name was on it. See, the article was written my be in a rush to be timely, and I interviewed myself. Though Eric was on the phone with me, I told him what to ask me and he would ask it, so it wasn't a lie. He conducted the interview with me, I just led it. It might not be the most credible way to write an article, but Eric won an award from Michigan State University. I think they'd know a teensy bit more about journalistic integrity than my administration.

Either way, I wrote a retraction and had one of the other students write a follow-up article with the "other side" of the story. Which would have been addressed in the first place if I wasn't shooed out of the office and refused the story. They told me all I needed to hear to write the article anyway, the only thing missing was their defense. Which they didn't want to give me, it seemed.

This is much different, however. It's not like Obama rejected his own chances to defend himself, he was never given any. And the ones he took, he made for himself by shutting up the talking head across from him. It might not be a secret that I'm an Obama supporter, because I don't believe in keeping that from anyone. But you can bet that if anyone was treated like that, I wouldn't be too happy about it.

For example: A few days after Sarah Palin was announced as McCain's running mate, Barack Obama took a few questions. Allegedly, Sarah Palin had been complaining about slanderous statements made against her. He made the comment that his wife has been dealing with those things for months, but "...she's only been at it, what, four days? And she's already whining?" Although a valid point made by Obama, especially considering Palin was responsible for some of the attacks against his own wife, there were much more appropriate ways to respond to the comments. Sure, the Republicans have been taking cheap shots like that since before the campaign even started, but it's because Obama was on a different level than most candidates that he caught my attention away from Hillary Clinton. As soon as I noticed her acting different and starting to attack Obama the way that fits a Conservative party member. Now it sounds like the people in charge of Obama's campaign want him doing it, too. Maybe we're losing votes, polls are slipping.

We have to remember that electing a President is not a matter of who plays the game better. It's not about who's kinder or more trustworthy. When it comes down to it, our choice should be made to vote for the better (wo)man for the job. People think homeland security is the chief concern of our country, but that's bullshit. Do you really think that throwing money at soldiers will make us safer? This Patriot Act crap has been taking attention from what used to be serious issues for almost a decade now. As far as I can tell, that United 93 thing was a bunch of bullshit. I doubt that our passengers took that plane over. We shot it down to prevent any more damage to our country's morale. I think a lot of these supposed terrorist attacks we thwart are probably orchestrated by the government to make us feel like they're doing something right, or something required. All this to try and keep the White House for another few terms, and if it keeps up, they could have it forever.

Homeland Security isn't so important. If any country makes a threat against us, we have the ability to more than exact revenge. Look what we did to Iraq, and they weren't even our scapegoat for 9/11. Bin Laden was, and he sure wasn't in Iraq. Notice how everyone conveniently forgot who the real bad guy was? In a country where you can stream a video of the hanging of Saddam Hussein, who cares about the guy we said destroyed our buildings and killed thousands of us? The guy who pockmarked one of our greatest cities?

If we don't change the way we're living, pretty soon nobody's going to care about America. We'll be desolate. We won't be able to live without relying on food from other countries. Oil will be the least of our problems. Like the Great Depression we can't come back from. Once the environment is trash and the Earth is scorched, how to we fix that? Vanishing creme? Maybe if we dump precious oil onto our worthless fields it might help us eat. Or kill us even faster, it's yet to be decided.

Who is in the best position to pull America out of an eight year slump? Who is the only person concerning themselves with how this country can be fixed, remedied, steal the baton and lead the march for the rest of the world to do the same? That's right: Ralph Nader.