Breakfast in Livermore (updated)

Eating breakfast at restaurants next to a group of men from the generation before mine is often a serious challenge to my patience and this morning was no exception. Here I'm sitting next to men speaking about torture and they're saying, "you know why they tortured that guy 186 times? Because the first 185 didn't work hahaha"

Yeah it's hilarious. They're right actually. When you want a man to tell you what you want to hear, it might actually take 186 times for him to figure out what you're looking for. I don't care if the man was Hitler himself, torturing defines the torturer more than it does the tortured. This is America. We don't torture. Period. If Reagan was alive he'd be flipping pissed.

Next up? Homophobia. I'm waiting for it. The closed minded, paranoid intolerance, racism, and Fox News parroting of so many in this age group is offensive and depressing. I guess I'm what Bill O'Reilly would call one of Jon Stewart's "young, stoned audience" except I'm not young or stoned.

I vote, I think, I look for information everywhere - and I'm technically savvy enough to know how to find it, I'm open-minded but skeptical, but most importantly, I know how to see when an entire channel is devoted to getting me to watch by putting out opinion disguised as news and having that opinion be put out by paid propagandists with little more of an agenda than to sell more books by being more shocking and obnoxious than the next guy. Yes this includes Keith Olberman (though I think he's nowhere near the whack job of, say, Ann Coulter). Olberman's fault is that he's a little too bitter and dramatic for me and his messages are often lost because of it, but I will say that he operates on facts a bit more than O'Reilly and definitely more than Coulter. Here is an excellent example...