Bush's Presidency: What Went Wrong

Without a doubt, Bush has gone through a cluster-frack of controversies throughout his presidency. From torture, to political firings, to Iraq, and an overall lack of oversight. Of course, it has been this lack of real oversight that has been the core problem. If enough had been there, all the controversies would have more appropriate consequences to them, rather then the apparent promotion that went on.

Some have been calling for Obama to investigate, and possible prosecute, members of the Bush Administration over those controversies. I would hope that this would create rules within the government to stop all this from happening again. But I see a blantant flaw in that: many of those rules existed before Bush came into office; he just ignored them.

It would be nice to say it's the politicians fault; that having a Republican president along with a Republican congress hindered oversight. The problem: the Democrats didn't do much either. The "I" word (impeachment) was never used, because of the political overtones it gained when Clinton was impeached.

So, I've come to one conclusion: the fault lies in all our hands.

After 9/11, we gave our trust to this president to do the right thing. Not just a little, or most, all our trust.

Because of the high aproval Bush had after 9/11, the news media didn't look, didn't question what was happening behind the scenes. And we didn't ask them to either.

There was a reason that freedom of speach was part of the First Amendment. That desent should be part of the political discussion. Without desent, government is far more prone to mistakes; and not minor ones.

The reality is that the problem with the Bush Presidency lies in our society rather than politics. By having a us vs. them mentality (as we most definately had these past four years), solutions are never found. Conversly, solutions aren't found when we are one either. We need many voices in the debate, all without any hate, anger or desperateness to it.

So, as much as I would like to hand my trust over to the Obama Administration to solve many of the grave problems before all of us, I won't hand it all. It is my hope that the news media, and we all, continue to question, continue to ask: Is this the best course for our United States?

Being in an excessively large WoW guild

I am part of alea iacta est on Earthen Ring (aka, the guild from The Instance). For the past year and a half, this was my guild of choice, going into no other. Thus far, I've submitted four toons to the guild, (all current) a level 77 druid, 72 mage, 62 death knight, and a 25 paladin (which turned into my bank alt).

AIE right now has more then 4000 characters. To get a perspective, that's larger then all of the Penny Arcade Alliance guilds put together. Heck, the amount of characters at my druid's level all could run an old world instance.

So what is it like? First, this is a casual guild. We all talk casually,making jokes, cheering about acomplishments (not nessisarily Achievements) and progress however we can in whatever area we want.

Because we're a large guild, that green text is ever crawling. It almost never stops, people are on all the time. It got so big, we had to build two seperate channels for people looking for a group or an officer.

The forums turned into one of the most important organizational tools, probably more so than in other guilds. Because we're so large, to build any pve or pvp raiding groups requires everyone be on the same page. Heck, we organize events like the Running of the Beef and crafting fairs through the forums. In part because those events can be larger than a raid will allow.

I think because our guild is more casual means our progression is not too quick. The groups vary in how quickly they progress, although I don't think any of our groups was running Black Temple or Mt. Hyjal regularly before 3.0.

The thing was, our guild was a kind of mini-realm. There was all sorts of people in it, some very good players while others didn't compete at all. Some people could be seen playing almost all the time, others (like me) play every so often. We've had people who needed to take a break (or like Leo Laporte, needed to quit) for one reason or another, but most have been able to balance WoW with the other aspects of their lives.

And heck, we got great officers who make sure no drama of any kind pops up. We have no hate in the guild. Except for the Alliance. Especially gnomes. We all could punt gnomes all day and never get tired.

If there's one problem with the guild of our size, it really is like being on a realm without a guild at times. Notably, when looking for tanks and especially healers. 5-man guild runs are often a friendlier form of PUG.

I can also imagine people not liking a large guild. It becomes a bit tough to really get to know other members when there's 100+ others on at the same time. If you consistantly run with people, that's one thing. But the use of the addon Identity is almost required, since people often have two or more characters in the guild, especially the officers.

But I have been enjoying the experience. Heck, I don't think I would still be playing WoW if it wasn't for this guild.

How the News is Supposed to Work

Last night's Cold Case had a storyline that took place in a broadcast newsroom in the early 80's, about when the news was getting to be profitable, not just a service for television stations. While I highly doubt the problems shown were that severe, even back then, it still plays off of misconceptions about the news (sometimes real, but often not).

So I felt that it would be important to let people know just how advertising and the actual newsroom interact, or not.

(Blogger's note: I may not have worked professionally in a newsroom, but I have worked in a few, and have experienced a few possible controversies based on the subject of PR vs. News).

To start out with, there are two sections for news organizations, basically of any kind: the newsroom and advertising. As long as the news is completely or partially reliant on advertising, those two sections will exist.

However, for all intents and purposes, those two don't interact all that often. Before any page layout or broadcast is done, the advertising section takes out what it needs (ideally without showing the ads, but due to time constraints this may not be done), then the news people take what is left for the actual news.

For a mass market, this isn't bad deal. If a story or another forces an advertiser out, another can come up or they may just eat the small loss.

The problem mostly happens in a niche market, like video games or technology journalism. There are fewer advertisers, which are often in the same subject as the news organization (which makes sense, because if gamers are watching, you'd want to sell games there). If an advertiser threatens to stop advertising, the loss is much greater. This is one of the major reasons that Gertsmann-gate happened, and why some other game journalists say they get plenty of pressure from the advertising department to fudge reviews.

I've experienced personally one other possible problem with PR vs news: when a press release becomes a news story.

And there are times that without any doubt a story that originated from a press release is news worthy. And because of this, reporters of any type are often get press releases shoved into their face, hoping that it would become a story (or as the PR side would see it, free advertising).

A reporter has to filter those press releases, and figure out what is news worthy. And more over, figure out an angle to that story that isn't a) biased for the company and b) is actually giving information that the audience wants. There are times that this can be hard, and reporters do make mistakes (or worse, just post the stupid press release in whole, IGN).

I do believe that most, if not all, reporters at least try to keep some objectivity in their news. If there's one thing that people should know, is that journalists are aware of possible problems and try to avoid them.

The Days Without Print Media

Being someone on the receiving end of the print journalism (which now officially includes gaming magazines, not just newspapers), I've been thinking of just how this would affect the political environment.

The problem lies in the formatting of print and newspapers that doesn't exist in other media. Print allows longer articles, with as much detail as space allows. Online, in theory, has the same format, but in reality people don't sit and read as much. Too often, links are given for more information, which enhances the already short-attention readers have. Television and radio: both very short and reliant on pictures and on focusing on one major element of a story.

I think the most detailed analysis of politics will go to the online space. And moreover, where stories will be made and broken. Television, especially when you go into larger and larger markets, relies on taking stories broken from newspapers, and doing their own research on it. So, with online being instant, rather than waiting until the next morning for the newspaper, how can that be bad?

Two things:
1) The need to get the stories out is already, in my opinion, too fast. By breaking a news story, they may the initial ratings for it, but also won't do as much due diligence for the accuracy and detail the story needs.

2) There may not be as many stories broken by professional reporters, who have the skills to do the research (at least in general) and influence to have those in power actually answer any needed questions.

In politics, having online be the primary source of news means more people will try to take control of a story, rather than find the reality in it.

If you think the New York Times and Washington Post are biased, they have nothing on what online blogs have (and online blogs are now just as much part of the journalism space as news organizations). You have already seen what kind of poo is being thrown by both the left and the right on the Internets, think of what would happen without any kind of moderator. Even if the way each news organization's objectivity may be flawed in some way (usually not in a politically biased manner), at least they try to be objective.

Newspapers have been the best source of professional reporters, who are objective and look for as much detail in the stories as possible. While things may change for online and print, it's my hope that someplace will exist that those reporters can exist and do their jobs right, especially in the realm of politics.