Comments

Episode-1422- Turn Off The Fricken News — 101 Comments

  1. Jack, movie that demonstrates very well what you’re talking about in this episode is “Canadian Bacon” (also a good comedy in itself)

  2. Jack –

    Just wanted to say…..You’ve been hitting them out of the park the last two weeks. Great stuff, man! Keep it up!!

    Tim

  3. I agree Jack, but I’d go further: get rid of the TV! I did in 2000 or so – I gave it to a friend’s dad – and it was a great decision. I say to anybody and everybody, toss your TV and you’ll be better off! At the least, try this experiment. Do not watch it for 3 weeks. Whatever you get from it, find better alternatives elsewhere. Then put it on and see how you with a new, fresh mind react to what you hear on it. If you are independent-minded, rational and intelligent you’ll probably find it insulting to your intelligence and sickening. Then decide if TV is something to keep. My thinking was that what is on TV isn’t worth the cost of the cable bill and furthermore it’s the establishment’s main way to control me – so why in hell am I paying hundreds of dollars a year for that? Anyhow, I’m looking forward to hearing this episode!

    • If it works for you fine but no me. I find to many entertaining things and educational things to do so. Saying get rid of the TV to me is a lot like saying get rid of your gun. It is all in how you use it.

    • That may work for some, but I have a TV with a Roku connected for watching exactly what I want to, usually downloaded stuff and streamed via Plex server. I literally have no actual TV service, not even the broadcast channels whether OTA (too far to reach towers) or sent via the cable lines.

      • There you go! BTW, there are shows I like and I watch them on the internet. I forgot to mention that. I don’t want to sound like a complete anti-TV snob!

  4. Jack, regarding fascism…a good example is the latest joint resolution in the senate SJR-19, I get emails from the left and the right on this subject. One of the big statements from the left is that this constitutional amendment will overturn citizens united, sounds good on the surface right? Until you read the text of the bill; complete garbage and if it passes we will continue to be super screwed. Its amazing the spin that special interest groups can put on politics to get to their followers emotions. Great show!

  5. Jack, great and important subject! It’s a little scarey how we agree about 95+% of the time. What you’re saying is what I started thinking years ago. What prompted me to make changes for myself was that I was mad all the time, and so my blood pressure and blood sugar soared. Dr. says hypertension, and I noticed the numbers were better when I was relaxed. When I noticed the patterns of predictive programing on the TV, I got rid of the tv, in 1986. Just about six months ago, I threw out the radio instead of blaming the news and talk shows. I cancelled all the web newsletters, told all my friends to stop forwarding articles to me, and I chose to read what’s relevant, and live my life productively. I hear everything that’s important and newsworthy, but consider most to be a distraction and divisive. That’s my response to those around me who panic from the news. As a result, I’m calmer, and my health has improved. Today a pollster called to ask how I would vote. My response was that my parents taught me that my vote was personal and private, not to be shared with anyone. I could have gone on a rant and vented that I wouldn’t vote ever again, or what’s wrong with the system, but I had none of the past emotion. I think I’m finally independent and free.

  6. Getting rid of the TV also gets rid of the kind of people in your life who watch the crap which comes through that medium, when TV went feminism I really started losing interest in it altogether. You see crap like orange is the new black and it’s just sickening what entertainment has become, and how they just make the stuff up as they go along. I have yet to buy a new digital TV, I may get one just for local stations and to create some background noise, I’m into documentaries. I was kind of waiting around until the smarter TV’s came down in price, maybe after Christmas this year when it’s time to dump consumer items I’ll get one.

  7. Jack,

    Have you ever seen the movie Wag the Dog? If not it is an excellent movie that shows exactly how people can be led by the news to believe anything. In the movie they create a fake war and war hero, and people totally believe in this war. None of it was real.

    Mike

  8. The most news I usually get is the 30sec elevator ride up and down the office where they bombard passengers with CNN. Within that elevator ride I have learned to pick out the BS from it thru critical thinking. Now I have an update on the latest BS thru Jack’s xray vision. You know what, I didn’t really miss out on anything after all. Maybe that elevator ride is too long, and I might take to the stairs and get some exercise starting tomorrow.

    • That is about the extent of my exposure as well. The lobby where I work has 3 huge wall screens all showing CNN across from the security desk. I can’t help but glance at it as I walk by, and the 3 seconds I do is enough to suck a few IQ points out of me … no matter when I walk by lately, it is ISIS crap, or that sports guy crap. I feel sorry for the security lady… I don’t know how she can stand having to sit in front of the CNN screens all day.

      • It becomes white noise that is how she does not go nuts. When I am at work I barely listen to the music they play for our customers. If fact unless I am under a speaker I don’t hear it. Which is good considering what they play. Most I would not want to listen to even if I had a choice.

  9. You had discussed some things about Hitler that makes me want to recommend “Mein Kampf” to you. I would say it is top two of my favorite books. There is only a single chapter where he discusses Jews in depth (ch 11) and a little bit more scattered afterwards. There are so many parallels to America today that I would get goosebumps as I was reading.

    • Well… “Mein Kampf” in the English translation has many versions… some “abridged” for the sensibilities of the United States who had not yet entered the war. A reporter at the time felt that the abridgments he was seeing did not accurately reflect what was in the published and approved work so he and a buddy worked night and day to produce their own unauthorized translation. When they published they were immediately sued for copyright infringement (which it certainly was). By the time a court could rule against them, they had sold half a million copies. All proceeds went to charity. They weren’t doing it for the money. They just didn’t like propaganda skewing public opinion.

      That reporter was Alan Cranston who went on to become Senator Cranston, Democrat Senator for California.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cranston

  10. Your right Jack about all the BS we see on the News. But it gets worse Jack I was watching some tv with my nephew last year on the “Cartoon Network ” and say a commercial for a new cartoon that had me thinking what the Hell and had me stuned. The commercial was for a cartoon called “Bobs Burgers” in this commercial they sang a song saying poor people should burn down rich peoples homes and put their heads on a pike in the center of town. It still gets worse the son at the end says he feels better after singing that short song.
    That last statement from the son implies if you feel bad about your life take it out on the rich. This commercial was on for about 3 months and I have not seen it since the first of the year. It sucks to be them since I used my phone to record that commercial and can send it to you to let all know what they were trying to sneak through. Which is why I will watch what my nephew watches to try to keep him from watching that underhanded way to program our youth. In the end it is not just the News channels you have to watch out for it is all of them through commercials.

  11. Great show again, Jack. Regarding “ISIS is coming to get you”, I learned by example how effective this propaganda was a few days ago because my mother brought up the issue. Now, I love her but she’s just about the biggest sheep I have ever known… she literally doesn’t know what Republican and Democrat are and has never voted once in her life. She turns on the TV “news” at 6pm, watches it dutifully and then believes she is informed. On her own without me bringing up the topic, she brought up the issue that she’s terrified ISIS is going to kill her any day now. She really believes they are everywhere and about to kill not just some unfortunate people out there, but everyone. Note that she lives in a run-down area of a small town consisting of beach cottages. I asked her how exactly she thought ISIS was going to kill her. “Bombs” was her answer. I asked her why she thought they’d pick a beach cottage in a tiny town to drop a bomb on, out of the 300 million other possible households. It hadn’t occurred to her.

  12. ?I agree with your “formula for how to control a society”.
    In Sudetenland (Neville Chamberlain – Peace for our time), my widowed grandmother did not have the money for a radio or newspapers. She worked on the fields and was definitely unplugged from organized propaganda. The children, however, were at school, with Hitler’s portrait and the Hitler Youth activities after school. Eventually, the Russian military arrived, Hitler died, and Mika Brzezinski’s (MSNBC) great, great uncle – President Benes of Czechoslovakia purged /expelled many hundred of thousands of ethnic Germans. Today, if you want to watch the news, you can watch Mika on Morning Joe gush over the new socialist leader. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
    Nowadays, the powers that be have a great friend in the mainstream media. You can try your best to “turn off the fricken news”, but the children are constantly the target of propaganda. Year after year, schools have been grooming the next generation to support global Marxist UN Treaties. Climate change and the anti-firearm agenda are being pushed. Tell the big lie over and over again and it will become the truth. The youth are the ultimate target for the fundamental transformation. Add the compliant mainstream media, and you can shape public opinion very efficiently. The beat goes on.

  13. Jack, thanks for the great show today but one question: who exactly are these puppet-masters – the “they” to whom you referred several times? Not only do they wield great power and influence, but they’re incredibly patient and able to steer things over multiple generations in human history.

    PS: it’s a lot harder than I fricken thought to keep from looking at the news and commentary sites all the time!

    • I did what jacked talked about about 3 months ago, it’s easier than you think. You just have to completely avoid any and all websites that have headlines.

      No yahoo, (if you go to it for mail, go to the mail site, not yahoo), no MSN, no drudge, no Lew Rockwell, American Conservative, any of these types of sites. In fact probably one of the best ways to avoid them is to avoid all sites that are less about practical things in your daily life, or things that are positive.

      I actually in some ways wish i could unhear the dumb stuff in this episode (the news). I should have just skipped it, hah, but I know you couldn’t do the show without talking about specifics.

  14. I long ago concluded that TV News — especially since the advent of the 24-hour news cycle — is designed to compel people to concentrate on their circle of concern at the expense of their circle of influence. My life has been better since I gave up watching any TV news at all (and most TV, period) several years ago.

    I also attribute the crazy fears around child abduction to the 24-hour news cycle. People look at me in disbelief when I tell them about letting my 7-year old daughter play largely unsupervised — and encourage her to explore on her own — because she might *GASP* be abducted. I immediately ask them if they ever put their kid into a car, because statistically speaking their kid is much, much more likely to be injured or killed in a car accident than abducted.

    Usually they just look at me for a second with that deer-in-headlights look, then blink a few times before going back to, “But God forbid they get abducted, you could never deal with that as a parent and we have to keep our kids safe….” Then I just shake my head and move along, realizing that the propaganda masquerading as “news” has succeeded in getting them to “think” with their emotions instead of looking at things through a more logical lens, and there’s no point in pushing the issue any further.

    • Couldn’t agree more. Local events turned into national news and then things are “linked together” then they call it an “epidemic”. All show, and dollars and power for the “news” (entertainment) industry.

  15. The news is just comical, makes me laugh when I watch it. The newspapers are not any better. Our local paper readership just keeps dropping and they are moving their printing to another city. You wouldn’t believe the garbage they promote. One writer thinks it’s permissible to make pets and their owners not responsible to livestock kills. I truly think she is delusional. It had CNN on at work the other day and it is just ridiculous, I laugh instead of getting pissed, no sense in getting angry over these knobs.

  16. Jack,
    Without the Drudge Report, I might have missed out on the Jennifer Lawrence pictures, an event I was no prepped for.
    On a serious note, I like to see what’s going on in other countries, to stay aware of actual stories that effect me (or will soon. Russia and China Trade agreement without dollars raised my eyebrows). The Jennifer Lawrence was a warning that your data is most likely safe, but not irretrievable. Maybe Ms Lawrence should have stored her pictures on Lois Lerner’s servers instead..

    • Something tells me you still would have known about these things. I also only suggested you just take 2 weeks off, you can do that can’t you?

    • There was a short window of opportunity on that one..lol. I don’t listen to the news anymore, or watch anything on TV. I reference Drudge every now and then, so two weeks wont hurt me. I usually skip the headlines, and look for the one line header on the sides anyway. The real news seems to be there.
      I have “Atlas Shrugged” on audiobook, so that should take about two weeks to get through..lol.

  17. Sent this to my mom. She has driven everyone I know insane on facebook by her political rants and meme forwarding. She told me the other day for the first time in her life she was “eyes wide opened”. I had to sigh, and go, in reality you don’t realize how much you’ve closed your eyes, because now you’re following the puppets intensely. All talking points are scripted, and you’re being put into one side of the script or the other.

    This same woman who 99 times out of 100 just “wants to be left alone” has started (apparently, I’m not on facebook) making all sorts of ridiculous pro-Republican big government statements. She wears a shirt ALL THE TIME that says “Kick em all out of office”. So we can put whom in? And why?

    I don’t pay attention to the news but she brought up some sort of “two people are dead because of…..”. Mom how do you know? What does that have to do with you? Everything you feel and how you feel it, is because somebody / some organization told you to feel that way about something that has nothing to do with you, for your own detriment, and for their benefit.

    • I have family that do the same thing, which is a major reason I have no interest in facebook. You can actually see people become more ignorant in real-time. It’s just too depressing for me to see people jumping from crisis to crisis, day to day, or week to week. Kinda reminds me of “hate week” in 1984. Getting people worked up these days is as easy as pushing a button.

      • “You can actually see people become more ignorant in real-time”

        I almost covered my key board in coffee when I read that! It is profoundly sad, it is also though profoundly funny because it is so true.

        • Agreed. It’s like… what an interestingly perfect statement of what it is. It’s basically “foot in mouth” but completely and totally fail to realize that is what it is.

          I have a new view of facebook and twitter, but it’s definitely quite different than the average consumer. I realized the other day to the fullest extent its your PUBLIC face. Yes we have all heard this before, but it’s NOT your place to “congregate with your close friends”. It’s like you putting signs on your front lawn, then writing into the newspaper with a picture of your stupidity for everyone to see.

          I guess the scary thing also about facebook or “social media” that these people “get stupid in real time” TOGETHER. So instead of somebody going “wow you need to lay down the crack pipe” (people say that too) you will find enough people that boost you up about it.

          My mom was proud of the fact random strangers would compliment her on her ridiculous shirts. (I want my country back). Sigh………….. So the value of random strangers supercedes those who care about you? RIIIGHT.

        • Why i aughta!!

          Well ya! I got ya. I think it would be hard pressed to find a family where at least one member of that family really irks another with their “crazy actions and beliefs”.

    • The ironic thing about this (quite the funny irony I must say) is that she attributes this change partially to you 🙂 with you prodding her quite some time ago to get in the know or something. I can’t totally remember what started it, but, sigh, yeah she definitely didn’t quite go in the direction you intended. So she isn’t a lost cause, she is just on a journey hopefully and this is a phase like being a teenager to having her eyes actually open.

  18. The topic of this show is true. Its the reason i stopped watching NRA news because it has become %80 b.s. topics that having nothing to do with what they used to talk about. C,mon really talking about a mayor and his salt and soda bans.

    • I think it was my dad the other day who was telling me about him getting all puffed up in support of the NRA. I just think we all need a good dose of humility, caution, and being in prolonged thought, rather than mindless labor.

  19. I do haft to say if you vote local do your research when it comes to a judge etc. The reason is you may just haft to stand before them one day and if your a vote responsible for putting that person in office it could backfire if the person has a corrupt history or totally differant beliefs than you.

    • When such an election in my area is ever tight enough for a few votes to matter, may be I will care.

      Our local elections are generally won by majorities of 70-90%, what possible reason is there for me to spend my time worrying about who is going to win such an election?

      • Being a recent early mover to NH for the FSP, I was looking forward to voting in the primaries yesterday as we had a bunch of very good liberty oriented candidates. They were so clearly superior to the usual establishment drones. You can guess what happened though… They all lost! F’ing Scott Brown won by a landslide! The progressive carpetbagger from MA. People really are too stupid to vote for liberty, and I can’t see them changing anytime soon especially when their numbers are so huge and they are firmly entrenched.

        You are right, if we want liberty we have to work for it in our own individual lives. It isn’t coming from government and there is no hope to vote in anyone who could change it.

  20. I suppose the definitive moment for me has been 9-11-2001; having devoted my entire day to the MSM, watching the effect of a Reichstag Fire of our time unfold upon our nation’s people. I had just upgraded my ISP to T-1 lines and had my own freeway to the ‘net – and for diminishing amounts of time over the following ten years I researched the opinions of people who thought as do I that what the world saw that day was entirely scripted and executed by people whose sole intention is to divide and conquer (apparently even its own people) through Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD). Even 13 years later to call into question the ‘official story’ is tantamount to labeling oneself unpatriotic (for exercising a healthy level of skepticism – a self-preservation mechanism?).

    My curiosity has long been to identify who the ‘They’ are; to some extent it is comprised of ‘Us’ acting in what we believe to be our best interests under our own volition, though this belief is instilled via social programming we call formal education. The education system has a hierarchy, the top of which is ruled by entities that ‘accredit’ higher education programming – a method for screening future college professors and foundation gurus. Everyone who believes that education can only happen or matter if it occurs within the rarefied atmosphere of the college campus enables this myth.

    At each step that promulgated myths are granted validation by us, the degree to which we are able to dispel these myths becomes strategically more difficult by a mechanism known as Cognitive Dissonance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance). That resistive force is multiplied manifold by our engagement with the balance of society (the collective hallucination). To overcome it requires a complete separation from the social ‘order’ – and requires the humbling effect that recognizing that one’s personal power has too easily been defined by the pretense of social status and that this status stands directly in the way of true self-discovery and empowerment.

    I’ve lived in the hills for 30 years now, and with exception to ‘witnessing’ 9-11 on my neighbor’s TV, I have had no interest in MSM… ever. We do stream internet content, some for entertainment; but the commercials are gone and so is the incentive for ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’ social engineering by advertisers.

    For another angle on who ‘They’ are, I follow the money. Not fiat debt – gold. Best discussions on the topic I’ve read so far have been on Kitco Forums (http://www.kitco.com) – it’s where the link to THIS site was posted, btw. If you’ve just had the thought reaction “who cares about gold anymore?” I suggest that you have been conditioned to believe this, also by the MSM. The collective hallucination that our paper money is worth so much of our time and effort to obtain is another enormous myth by which we allow and enable our servitude – by which ‘We’ become and enable ‘They’ and blur the distinction yet again.

    • Who are they is a question I got a lot after this show. I plan to talk about it on Monday in the feedback show.

      Short answer though is they are whoever is in charge of the systems at the current time. This includes bankers, industry and government.

      The system is the problem, the people are only doing what works with this system.

      Put it to you this way, if you want to fly a plane you will learn how it works and fly it. You will do what the plane was meant to do and fly it the way that it needs to be flown.

      If someone asked you why you fly it that way, you would say, because it is plane, this is how it works. If I don’t fly it this way it will either not get off the ground at all or it will crash.

      Even if you wanted to fly it backwards, fly it to the moon or fly it underwater you could not do so. If someone asked you to do any of those things, what would you say?

      Something like?

      A plane doesn’t do those things, we need a different vehicle.

      And there you go.

      • And this is where I’m really starting to wonder if our thinking isn’t radical enough.

        Instead of turning our plane into a monorail, maybe we need to turn it into a tuba.

        ‘What are the essential functions of government?’ (libertarian) may be the wrong question.

      • @Insidious

        You just had to take this to the sky high level…

        “‘What are the essential functions of government?’ (libertarian) may be the wrong question.”
        So what is the alternative? No government? That isn’t a new idea or radical (depending completely on who views it).

        Total Government -> Lots of Government -> Some Government -> No Government.

        Is there something else?

        • Well you’re showing this as a range of possible values of government, ranging from totalitarian to none.

          Analogous questions:
          How many pesticides do we need to apply for a healthy garden?

          What sort (and what quantity) of drugs should we give our children to allow them to sit still after eating a sugar laden breakfast?

          Thinking clearly about the subject is corrupted by the the depth of propaganda about the subject.

          Another example of this is money. Mentally separating the FUNCTION of money from the current conception of FORMS of money (fiat currencies, USD, gold/silver) was very difficult. And the ‘rules’ about the forms of money, confused understanding of its purpose.

          So.. if your a FED propagandist.. ‘Money (the USD) is essential. nothing can/does happen without money (the USD).’

          Which is not true. Service providers will meet NEEDS. Money provides a service that people find useful. But it is NOT essential, or NEEDED in an absolute sense.

          But when you live in a society that is a MONEY CENTRIC society, its almost impossible to conceive of a money free society (A society running on BTC.. is NOT a money free society).

        • So therefore…. “resource based economy”? HAR HAR. You know I kid. Could not be a more baggage laden concept than that. Just on it’s face sounds so reasonable and practical and its like “uh yeah, that’s what an economy should be, in fact that’s the purpose of the ‘free market'”. Then you get to the totalitarian socialist government aspect and go “oh right”.

        • The only issue with a Resource Based Economy as presented by the people that tout it is they never cover who gets to decide how much of what everyone gets. That always leads to well death, blood shed, etc. Just the usual stuff.

          Sadly when I look at nations like Estonia I find myself saying it is possible that these people could live that way and not kill each other. Then I look at my own nation, sigh.

        • It would be interesting to think about a Permaculture principled ‘extraction and rental tax’ with ‘earth dividends’.

          ;-p

          So, anyone who wants to extract, bids on the resource they wish to extract (I bid $10/barrel for extraction rights to this oil). And land use is the same (I bid $1000/acre per year for this property).

          But no individual can own land or extractable resources that haven’t been extracted.

          The ‘money’ (taxes basically) is equally distributed to every person of legal age.. and everyone is required to earmark x% of their check for shared services.

          There are no other taxes. 😉

          So if you produce.. that’s all yours.

        • @Insidious
          Oh wait you mean a carbon tax? HOOO boy. Any reasonable statement can always be replied with a “oh that exists, its socialist/theft” concept that has tried to fly by.

          The more reasonable something sounds in government the more we know it’s to hand wave over people who love headlines, but could careless about details.

          @jack
          I was looking up their tax system and apparently the majority of their taxes come from land (property) tax. The interesting thing of which no improvements are considered just the actual land itself (that’s kinda cool). Apparently their home ownership rate is like 90% which is kind of crazy.

          I mostly liked the digital citizen idea just as having “another place to go”. International travel particularly being able to stay in another country and come and go as you please requires you to basically have quite a bit of income or become a citizen. A few months ago i looked around at various laws in Sweden and Finland and it was an interesting wakeup call to how just different places in the world view different things like “everyone’s right to outdoors” and the ability to “forage”.

  21. I almost laughed during the pool part, I was thinking a segment called “Jack’s first world problem’s”. Episode 1: The Pool…. Episode 2: The Steelers didn’t win the Superbowl last year 🙂

  22. TV news is a cesspool anyway – reminds me of the John Prine tune “Blow up yer TV…”. Yep!!

    Here is what IS important about the Ray Rice story. The NJ prosecutor let him off with what amounts to probation. That same prosecutor is pursuing charges for Shaneen Allen, a single mother. Her crime? Carrying her legal handgun for which she had a PA concealed permit over the border to NJ, then informing an officer who pulled her over that she had it in her purse during a routine traffic stop. Yes, she should have known the laws, but really??? A violent assault goes unpunished and a paperwork violation gets a working single mom a potential 3 1/2 to 10 year sentence and huge legal bills?

    • The person beating up his wife really isn’t a threat to the authority of the government. But the woman peacefully carrying a gun is, and they hate that. How dare she do anything to help herself and not trust the state to do it for her, even if they cant or wont. She is their biggest threat. So, she gets the full wrath of the state against her.

  23. Jack, I quit watching the news when digital TV cut us off. We tried the bogus box that was subsidized by the government, but just wasted $$. Today, when I visit family & friends and watch news with them because that’s what is on, it’s like same story/different day as the last time I watched. I can note the panic of the day and the trash that fills in the rest, but then I get on with life again. The only thing my husband misses is football games and I wish there was a good solution for that. (Satellite Internet here, so not enough bandwidth for TV shows or games.) My family was very worried about us for a long time, forwarding news stories that they just KNEW we were missing out on. LOL. But the world has continued and we know enough of what goes on to keep us focused on working and building our own lives and community. Thank you again, Jack, for sharing your thoughts!

  24. Regarding the “ISIS coming across the Rio Grande” angle… My last gig in the Army Reserve was heading up a mission on behalf of JTF-6 (now NORTHCOM) improving a section of the Border Patrol road right up against the fence in Nogales, AZ. I remember when the CG came to visit, he was stuck on the narrative then of Radical Islamists coming across the US-Mexico border.

    This was in 2004. I remember thinking that it was complete BS then. And it’s complete BS now.

  25. I regret that I have not heard this episode yet, however, I will probably catch up this week. I shut the TV off for the most part in 2008 and have never been happier. Sure, my wife and I will watch a show that we downloaded in the evening a couple times a week at the time we desire and a program that we want to entertain us. We decide. we’ve never been happier. We no longer are oversaturated with issues that are out of our circle of influence (Covey). I have no cable bill. I can catch up on a months worth of news by going to the gym and listening to music. the tv stations are all on news channels and I can catch up on a month’s worth of news in about 2-6 minutes. Even then it really doesn’t matter because I’m a bit jaded now and pretty much assume its all marketing and there is little value to television anymore. We still download shows like game of thrones or something we want to watch without commercials or news. other than that I got better stuff to do.

  26. One of my favorite tv quotes, “Seeing a murder on television… can help work off one’s antagonisms. And if you haven’t any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.” ~Alfred Hitchcock

    There’s a bunch more great tv quotes here…
    http://www.quotegarden.com/television.html

    Ironically enough, a great many of them from people who worked in television. Who better to know the workings of the creature itself?

  27. I never post, I don’t even come to the website ever, I use a podcast aggregator to listen to the shows, this episode and the the other I’m about to comment in were great, outstanding

    • Please come around more, there are GREAT people to talk to here and we have a LOT to offer beyond the podcast. Thanks for taking the time to comment and to visit.

  28. OK. I admit I only half listened to this episode.. and that mostly because its the ‘Mike Cornwall Memorial Episode’ (he’s been bragging about his news free ways for months now) 😉

    I was stationed in the Congo for about 18 months.. no TV, no radio, no newspapers.. and this was pre-internet. When I got back to the states I saw some TV. Holy crap. 18 months and the average IQ of shows had dropped 30 points.. and the news was even stupider.

    Its amazing when you step away for a little while how ridiculous the whole propaganda show seems when you see it again. Part of it is your brain gets a chance to stop bouncing around from non-issue to non-issue like a pachinko ball for a few minutes.. and eventually actual thinking (TM!) starts happening.

    Seriously. If anyone is actually watching this crap (and I hope you’re not).. stop it. Zero value. 100% time wasted.

    If ya gotta get some value out of your TV.. watch some trash television. At least then you’ll be getting SOMETHING for your time (entertainment).

    I am finding it interesting however how DESPERATE the propaganda machine is getting. Memes are shorter. Effects are shorter.

    After crying wolf for the millionth time, its really hard to take anything ‘they’ say seriously. Even if you’re five.

    • @Insidious, you said, “OK. I admit I only half listened to this episode.. and that mostly because its the ‘Mike Cornwall Memorial Episode’”

      Well just wait till you get a load of today’s show, LOL

    • HAHA. Talk about laugh out loud comments.

      Well hell. I just notice how much people pay attention to the news, how much I used to, and now that I don’t, I want to tell everyone! Forget you Insidious.

      When I was in Afghanistan similar situation. I did have news but it was British news. What I learned there is the US really believes that everything that happens here is broadcasted everywhere and everyone knows and cares. Doesn’t work that way, and nobody cares.

      “If ya gotta get some value out of your TV.. watch some trash television. At least then you’ll be getting SOMETHING for your time (entertainment).”
      Right. I agree because the news tricks you into caring deeper and with a more emotional attachment than any other entertainment source. Even headlines seep into your brains to where you see something written ridiculously (by Copywriters I’ll note) and you just HAVE to share it with your spouse or friends just because “it’s so ridiculous”. Well they win even with that.

      “After crying wolf for the millionth time”
      You gave yourself away. How do you know they’re crying wolf a million times or the meme’s are getting shorter if you don’t pay attention? Ahh HA! gotcha. =)

    • @Mike (wrong reply level)
      The only thing on this show I’d heard about was the existence of ISIS.

      And that was from an Iraqi neighbor who was concerned that her Christian Iraq friend, still in Iraq, would be killed by them. The Iraqi community here has been collecting money to try and smuggle them into Syria. They can afford to save about one a month, so its always quite an emotional decision regarding who gets to escape.

      As for the millionth time.. I’m old, been hearing this crap forever.

      The only thing that (sort of) makes it work is people can’t remember what THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD was.. yesterday.

      I do pay attention a wee bit though.. gotta read the zeitgeist. And kind of curious who wants to get into Syria so badly?

      Pipeline from middle east to western Europe to try and squeeze out Russia?

      • “The only thing on this show I’d heard about was the existence of ISIS. ”
        Me too and only because I had listened to TSP enough to hear jack talk about it. A middle east country “in trouble” WHAT”S NEW?

        Yeah see when it gets personal THEEEEEEN it makes sense, but even then hearing the NEWS talk about it is completely and totally pointless. Again anything you might need to do you’d be able to figure out in about 10 seconds. And hell if you actually live there you can speak about it.

        In Afghanistan there were all sorts of faked events that occured to try and get international media all over it. Staged burnings of korans. (Like marines who fear having their hands in their pockets are going to burn a pile of korans and act like a bunch of dummies). There would be people bused into the middle of nowhere to stage demonstrations in hope that media would come. Ever heard of the “bustling city” of Delaram? Of course not, but yet out of nowhere a bunch of people were bussed in while we were there. I was like wait a minute isn’t this what happens in the US?

        I loved hearing people go and talk to people striking in DC. They’d talk to them and ask them specific questions and it wouldn’t take 2 seconds to realize it’s just a bunch of poor locals they paid to hold signs while the news go “this angry union is striking”. Uhm no.

        “what THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD was.. yesterday.”
        That is a good litmus test.

        • “Staged burnings of korans. (Like marines who fear having their hands in their pockets are going to burn a pile of korans and act like a bunch of dummies).”

          Having been told a few times to “take off your F*&k*&G air force gloves and get down and push”, I have to say I am saddened that I never pointed this out to anyone before. It is a very important point that most people who never served will sadly never understand.

        • Air Force Gloves is an Army term. Unless there has been some major change since I was in the Army, you can only have your hands in your pockets for 3 seconds tops to retrieve an item you are carrying in it like keys, change, etc.

          If Marines say, “Army Gloves” they are either misinformed or something has changed with AR 670-1 since my days in service.

        • Makes me think of this. One day in AIT (that is our school after basic, basic is what you call boot camp) I went to Clothing Sales to get some stuff, what I don’t remember. On the way to the door an Air Force Captain was coming out the door. I saluted him. Now this is on a Basic and AIT post where it is very clear that you are a recruit or at best in AIT because you have no patch on your arm. So basically any and all people of Corporal and Above F with you at all times, always, Drill Sgt. or not doesn’t matter. Drills are just WORSE.

          So I hear, “hey high speed, get the F over here”! (he didn’t say F).

          Turn around it is a Drill (E7) looking pissed as hell. DAMN! WTF NOW. Trot over, “yes Drill Serargant” in a loud sound off.

          “Private, Spear, spur, what ever private shitfuck, do you know what you just did”.

          “No Drill Sergeant I do not, I simply saluted an officer as regulations require”.

          “No son, you did more than that, do you know you just made that Captain look like shit?”

          “Um, mumble, ahhh, I am sorry Drill Sergeant, I don’t understand”.

          “Solider that was one hell of a crisp good looking salute, you made that Captain look like shit with his sloppy ass Air Force Salute, good job, solider on”.

          “Yes Drill Sergeant”!

        • Terminal lance is without a doubt the best porthole into the marine corps, but unfortunately I think a lot of people aren’t going to have the full force of gravity with it, because of how bluntly (and ridiculously) true it is.

          This is a great comic. I think some people would pass this over, but its the real deal. You’re like “You know what my life is pretty good, I think I’m going to have a good day”. You walk and look just a little off and some fucking dick head with something up his ass just has to shit all over you. It happens enough times that you dread EVER being in public especially in uniform.
          Living in Fear

  29. On the ISIS thing: what is the appropriate reaction to the execution of the two American journalists? I personally don’t want boots on the ground (at least no more than the God-knows-how-many Spec Ops that are already there), so is it just ‘airstrikes airstrikes airstrikes’ and hope they get tired of us dropping bombs on them?

    • Why should there be a reaction? People are murdered every day, thousands and even millions of them, and no reaction. These two aren’t special, except to their own families. This situation was set up and presented before us in order to induce a reaction that the government wants so they can justify more war. Don’t fall for it.

    • Well there is an expectation of some kind of action if an American is murdered. There is usually at least a feigned attempt to seek justice when it happens within our borders. I mean, I’d be just fine we never sent a soldier onto foreign soils except in the unlikely case of an actual open war scenario with a serious world power. But are we really to the point where we just do nothing when a pair of Americans are openly murdered?

      Also, while I do agree that the government finds this situation advantageous to the furthering of their goals, I don’t believe the government had those two men killed.

      • Right, they didn’t specifically have these two men killed. They did set up the situation where anyone could know this type of thing would end up happening though, by making sure funds and weapons get to them though, etc.

      • @Tyler, I agree with @Going Galt, you don’t have to specifically target these men as pawns to have them be pawns. When one plays chess he doesn’t usually figure exactly which pawns will be sacrificed but as the game plays out, that which is expedient is done.

        When you say this though,

        “But are we really to the point where we just do nothing when a pair of Americans are openly murdered?”

        Understand that sentiment is exactly what is being used to create yet another war, one we should not fight, one this will make the situation worse and one we can’t afford.

        On some levels I am sorry if you go to a war zone by your own choice you can be killed, tortured, murdered, taken prisoner. I am under no obligation to kill innocents and risk my blood or my child’s blood to avenge your death in the name of justice at all, PERIOD.

        This is all BULLSHIT, period. The men we are so concerned about now were SOLD TO ISIS by the very “moderates” we funded and backed and now want to build a coalition with.

        I am sorry but NO I have seen this movie before, the ending is bad and we should not do it again. Don’t get all but, but, but on it either dude, you don’t have to worry, your fellow sheep want blood and it shall be spilled. When the whole fucking place is a damn disaster after it is over, when the last bit of stability and modern life is gone from the middle east, when a few hundred thousand are murdered and we finally have some ass-clown-in-cheif tell us “justice has been done”, then you come back here and tell me if it was worth it.

        FTR thousands of people a day are killed, including Americans and none of the pricks asking us to murder and kill in the name of justice now ever give a fuck about those people, do they?

        This isn’t about justice, this is about a plan that has been being worked since the Bush administration started it. Please watch this video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMjXbuj7BPI

        You want justice for those guys? Well then you want the members of ISIS dead, if we get the hell out of the way that is what will happen.

        • “You want justice for those guys? Well then you want the members of ISIS dead, if we get the hell out of the way that is what will happen.”

          Yeah, that’s a fair point. If we weren’t the ones throwing money and, even worse, bodies at every problem over there, then the rest of the world would have to get it’s collective crap together and put halt to these fools.

          It’s really the outrage switch that the news flips in many people that causes so much trouble. I feel it myself, obviously. I hear about something like this, or the Embassy attack in Libya, and it just puts this burning ember in the middle of my chest. It doesn’t flare up, it just sits there, burning my guts, demanding “something must be done”.

          Of course, if one wanted to be brutally honest, they would point out that it won’t be me going to deliver “justice” to these pigs. I don’t serve. Friends do, a few family members outside my immediate family do, but not me. It’s shockingly easy to demand we fight an enemy I’ll likely never see face to face.

      • @Tyler,

        Let me add groups like ISIS or ISIL or what ever the fuck they call themselves or we call them next, feed on a delusion.

        This delusion is that the UK and the US are the great Satan and that to battle with him is glorious. That Allah is with them and will see to their victory. So when we send troops, when we bomb them, when we are involved we FEED THIS DELUSION. Got that?

        We are the greatest recruiting tool there is for radical Islam. If we get out of the way and let other powers deal with this, and damn it they will, there is no “Great Satan and Little Satan” to fight, there is no glorious war against the infidels, do you understand that?

        If you want to understand this, go here, http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/9/islamic-state-obamastrategicplan.html

        Read just the section with the headline, “A return to premodern heroism”

        When fing Aljazeera is more honest with you then your president, it is time to start thinking a lot differently.

        • God, if nothing else convinces one that politicians can not solve the major problems we face, that article will do it. There is no one, to my knowledge, even in spitting distance of winning the presidency, that is advocating the non-interventionism that article makes a case for. Even Rand Paul, if I recall correctly, has said he’s in favor of fighting ISIS. Just not the way Obama’s doing it.

  30. I turned off the television news and talk radio for the more part several years ago and never looked back. I do monitor some sources online for investment reasons, and occasionally (like last night), I get alerts on my phone that make my blood boil over. Tim Sanders wrote a book in the aftermath of the 2008-9 financial meltdown that encouraged ridding oneself of negatively. Worth the money there.

    I guess the question I keep having is that if no one points out the idiocy of what our owners are doing, how will anyone take the red pill?

    • This is the only thing I’d like to monitor more that I kind of miss. But even then I had/have no skin in the game so what difference did it make to me it was just entertainment.

      I used to hit refresh on zerohedge probably every 60 seconds all day long. I would consider going back there if it wasn’t for the fact there is almost a 5 to 1 political ratio on the website now. Even then, all the negative economic news and negative spins don’t do me any good.

  31. It’s been a long time since I turned on talk radio in the car. I used to listen to it nonstop before I found TSP.

    After listening to this show I found myself with nothing to listen to on my way home from work. I figured i’d turn on talk radio just to do it.

    I was amazed how little i agreed with the people i used to listen to every day. It’s been nice to not be so uptight about every little news item on the other side of the world.

    Thanks Jack!

  32. Great show, history repeats itself over and over, pattern recognition. How about the Micheal Vic story, let’s take all his money(millions) for a crime and see if anyone objects, no one touched it and he got screwed even thou he is a dirt bag, the state unjusted took him to the cleaners.

  33. Plus we got robotic air support. The latest jihadi bad guy group doesn’t have robots. I mean, I’m bettin on the team with the combat robotic support. That’s bad ass right there. Also look up ISIS merchandise, they have action figures and t-shirts.

  34. The clock does not care if you are productive or not, it just moves along. And old friend of mine had a theory as to why time seems to go faster as one gets older and it was loosely based on this:

    As a child of six or seven, summer vacation seemed to go on forever. Two months to someone who has lived 84 months is 2% of their life. At 51, two months is .3 % of one’s life. When I hear it , I develop a sense of urgency, even if it involves planting *one* thing in the garden, stacking one more piece of wood for the winter or visiting a friend who I have not seen in a while. It is very powerful. Dead is forever, tick tock …tick tock… I was driving with my neighbor a month or so ago to drop off our chickens for slaughter and it was a beautiful summer evening, and the song on the radio was Seals and Crofts “We may never pass this way again”

    • About the time they showed the blood on the walls from the Israel “self defense”, my heart hurt and I turned it off.

      I think this may be useful to wake up some of the sleeping.

  35. I decided to go for 2 weeks with NO news. After one week I think it was a great idea, Im not missing much and my world did not come crashing down around me. I am really starting to see the point of not worrying about things I cannot change. If ISIS some how attacks us tomorrow or the economy really crashes, what am I going to do to stop it. Nothing and hope I am far enough on my journey towards self reliance to get through it. I am going to finish the 2 weeks and then start watching and reading the news. A little bit, and take it all with a grain of salt and a good dose of moderation. Thanks Jack.

    I also posted this in the show discussion on the forum.

  36. Started my news fast this past Sunday and I’m going to do it for 2 weeks as suggested. I already view the news networks as the propaganda tools they are which is part of the reason I need a break. Seriously…how does ANYONE take this ISIS fear mongering seriously? It makes me angry that these news networks are facilitating war and trying to scare people. I get angry at almost any story they cover though because sometimes they spread outright lies and other times they don’t cover the full story. My anger does nothing to help the situation other than make my anxiety worse. Thus, the need for me to stay away from the news. I only turn it on when there is nothing else I want to watch on TV just to see what lies the sheeple are being fed. I found myself doing that Sunday so I said “No! If there is nothing on, don’t watch the freaking TV! Just turn it off instead of turning it to the news.”

    Thanks for the kick in the butt, Jack! Sometimes I know what I need to do, but I just need someone to light that fire under me.

  37. The closest thing I’ve watched to “News” for the last … 20 years is the weather channel. Hurricanes in the gulf have me checking the radar at http://www.weather.unisys.com as I grew up near the entrance to the Houston Ship Channel and the junction of Galveston and Trinity Bays. I’ve also got family on the Gulf Coast in Brownsville and Corpus Christi TX. During the summers, I watch in envy as my in-laws get 80 degree days and 50 degree nights in northern MN.

    For those of you struggling not to watch… pick up a book or three. As much as I like the portability of e-books, I still prefer the tactile experience of a good old-fashioned paperback. I can’t go into the library without at least a quick glance at the Discard Table or Friends of Library book rooms. My front door swings open into a bookshelf, there are books on every just about every horizontal surface in every room of the house, the garage (where there are both shelves and boxes of books) and even a few boxes in the attic.

    The books I recommend to help wean you of the news are “The Media is the Message” by Marshall McLuhan and two books by Neil Postman “Amusing Ourselves to Death” (on the mass media in general) and “How to Watch TV News” (co-written with Steve Powers) If I remember correctly, McLuhan was a bit of a trudge, but Postman is very readable… almost conversational in his style.

    In the beginning news programming was seen as a loss to the major networks (a public service), but once they figured out the advertising, it became just as much a part of their revenue plan as the Simpsons.

  38. This guy just gave the best advice any family leader could ever follow. Don’t watch it, and as Tom Selene said throw the cursed thing out and forget it ever existed. The major drawback is we would have to look at and listen to each other. Wouldn’t it be terrible to be a real family again! We might actually know what color eyes our spouses have. Gosh, hope my wife doesn’t read this. Excellent read.