Frustration

Some long running frustrations:

1) Commentators

Bob Schaefer began his program today by describing various trouble spots around the world (Boko Haram in Nigeria, ISIL in Iraq and Syria, AQAP in Yemen, Putin in Ukraine), played a clip of Susan Rice calling for a sense of perspective and cautioning against being buffeted by the daily news cycle and then asked "Is this administration taking this seriously enough?". That's a new low in journalism for Face the Nation. First, it implicitly conflates seriousness with boots on the ground. Second, the comment itself contributes to the buffeting Rice talked about. 

2) Commentators and Panellists 

After two experts (Michael Morrell, Thomas Donilan) both provided a balanced view of the issues ("It is important to have perspective ... and to keep your eye on the long haul" Thomas Donilan. "Perspective is really important here, Bob" Michael Morrell ), Schaefer said "I'm still not sure that this administration is galvanized to fight this fight and do what's necessary to do it". By implication Schaefer is saying that military intervention is the answer (if history of our recent intervention in the Middle East teaches us anything, it's not).

Morrell then noted that without the air strikes, ISIL would be in Baghdad by now; that's an achievement. In sum, both Morrell and Donilan provided a wonderfully informed and well thought out insight into the issues; which Schaefer sought to over-simplify and sensationalize.

One of the commentators - I forget which - said later on: "Hilary isn't facing challenges from the left". Apparently she hasn't met Senator Warren, who is polling in second place at 16% in the Democratic primary race. She also appeared completely oblivious to any of the nuanced comments Donilan and Morrell had made on that same show 5 minutes before interpreting them as hawks. A better example of selective filtering I've not seen in a while. 

3) Republicans

After criticizing Obama for being "weak" and "leading from behind", they don't want to give him war authorization for taking on ISIL. That's either because they are hypocritical (very likely) or want to attach riders such as approving the XL pipeline or defunding the ACA (somewhat likely). Either would contribute the perception of politicians as conniving  and helps explain why the institution which they collectively are is held in such low regard.

4) Linux

Ubuntu had a reasonably reliable and stable desktop environment; in part this is probably a function of a large user base providing bug reports and a largish army of developers. Then it adopted Unity which sucks so I went in search of other distributions. I've tried many in the last 6 months (Crunchbang, Kubuntu, Ubunto with Gnome and now Mint). Mint has the desktop environment I find the most conducive to being productive; but it just doen't work well enough. The tendency of the open-source community to fork parts or all of the components leads to more incompatibilities, bugs and glitches. For example, Firefox won't launch Flash if it's not up to date but the updating channel isn't working. The file manager often hangs probably because of issues accessing the file system, a problem which afflicts other programs too.  So after 10 years, I am at the point of abandoning Linux as my desktop; I don't know what the next OS will be yet; I have OSX running but it relied on some hacks and I can't afford Apple hardware; so then it's Windows. Sigh!    

5) Fox 'News'

The usual mix of making shit up to fit its political agenda, an chronic irritation which woke me up this at about 5am this morning.