Hey I went a bit further today.

Map: 1 hour 12 minutes. 12.67 miles.

 7/29/2011; 4:57:29 PM.   .

I watched a bit of David Gregory on MSNBC. He's talking about how angry people are and how this might create a third-party candidate for president. Fine, but how about a third-party version of David Gregory?

See, the story isn't anything like what Gregory, who is supposed to be a reporter, says it is.

This is the story.

1. Raising the debt ceiling is a routine thing.

2. It's never been a political issue.

3. The Republicans decided to withhold their approval.

4. Which is a form of blackmail.

5. The victims of the blackmail are everyone but the Republican politicians, including most of the people who vote Republican.

Until Gregory reports that as the basic story, he's overdue for toppling.

One of these days people are going to figure it out.

BTW, thanks to Howard Weaver for digging up this clip from Season 6 of the West Wing, where they, in a just a minute, explain what the debt ceiling is about.

If a bunch of actors can figure it out, why can't a professional correspondent for NBC? (Answer, of course he can, and has.)

 7/29/2011; 3:04:41 PM.   .

Now there are three bloggers, that I know of, that are quotable by CNN, who have written rationally about what's going on in Washington. Written things they would never let them say on CNN. Important pieces.

Two of them are Republicans. One, David Frum, has been consistently critical of his own party.

The other Republican, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, has also been critical of Republicans, even mocking them -- but now has written a piece that calls out the Democrats too. His criticism of Repubs makes his criticism of Dems more credible.

Paul Krugman, a Democrat, has been consistently saying, persuasively, that it's madness to cut government spending with the economy in the shape it's in now. And recently, in an echo of past eloquence, explains exactly why MSM reporting is what's creating the problem. Letting the Republicans lie, and then lie when they say the Democrats are lying too. Leading to a mishmash of who-said-what about who, chatty personal stuff, as if the affiars of our complex world can be reduced to the language of a junior high school playground.

What's remarkable about these three writers, what gives me hope that there may be a way out of the bigger mess, of which this month's meltdown is just a sympton, is that finally blogging is effectively routing around MSM. If you want to hear from smart people who know what they're talking about, and who aren't spnning, you can.

This is why blogging is important.

It's the Sources Go Direct theory put into action. Just as Krugman and Holts-Eaken have their theories about how economies behave, and Frum is an expert on the inner workings of politics, changes in media are exerting their influence. It's an equal supporter of dysfunction, but equally capable of correcting it.

This is an important part of our societal corner-turn. It's kind of amazing that Krugman, who has figured out what is wrong with CNN et al, hasn't yet written about what's right about the system he is such an active and artful participant in -- blogging. Waiting for that post, hope to see it soon.

PS: In the HTML rendering of this post, I'm playing around with Google Web Fonts. Thanks to Joshua Johnson for his excellent tutorial on this subject. Still have a lot to learn about making text beautiful on the web, but I'm very anxious to make this stuff look better.

 7/29/2011; 11:16:01 AM.   .