Break out the sandwich board signs, grab your bull horns and then lose interest and wander off.

I really shouldn't listen to the news in the morning (or in the evening) but I just can't seem to help it. I have to know what is going on. I am an avowed news addict. I trawl the Internet and read news wires and blogs from around the world. I like to think that I am well informed. In fact it has been a long time since I actually listened to a news report and didn't know about all of the stories before hand.

This is the problem.

I know what is going on so well from different angles that by the time I here the broadcast news I can see all of the bias the omissions the outright lies. My blood pressures shoots up and I am glad that I am alone in the car or I would wilt the children's ears and cost myself thousands in therapy bills.

I am exaggerating of course but it really has become absurd how certain broadcasts slant things to there own political desires. For example, the President is threatening to VETO the expansion of the SCHIP program. Though he seems determined to imitate a hamster with Downs Syndrome most of the time, he has this one right. If anyone actually took the time to read the bill, it is an obvious and absurd expansion of entitlement. I'll explain. SCHIP is a health insurance program started for the children of the poor. Sounds good. Sounds noble. But now the congress wants to expand it to include children in household that make up to 80K a years and they are defining children as anyone under 25. Its absurd. If you look at the politicians who are promoting it loudly, you realize that they are the ones who want to nationalize health-care under one plan or another. Its a classic case of political types trying to sneak in in increments what the voters reject wholesale.

Anyway, I bring this up because I was listening to NPRs Morning Addiction. I love Morning Addition and The World and all their shows. They have much greater subject base and wide view point on many subjects, so it really irritates me when they do things like this. They kept saying over and over that President Bush was about to veto a "popular children's health insurance program". Every quote they brought in on the subject was from proponents of the bill; including a quote from Harry Reid on how he didn't know how the President "could sleep at night if he doesn't sign this bill." It was all completely biased. Anyone who relies on them for news coverage, and there are many who do, would come away thinking that the President was and Ogre who wanted to hurt poor children. The reality is that for once he got something right, he wants to keep the program as it is and prevent it from becoming another step toward central planning.

OK, I'll get off the soap box now and wander away with the sullen realization that there is nothing to be done about it. People will insist on seeing issues through their own narrow biases.