I put on Fox News this morning at 6am.  I normally do not watch Fox News.  In the first 6 minutes I was absolutely disgusted with the way the three anchors fawned over the Republican National Convention, defended Melania Trump’s seemingly plagiarized speech, and praised Chris Christie’s public prosecution of Hilary Clinton.

I thought to myself….this is not news.  It is so clearly biased towards a particular political party and base of constituents.  I could not expect to get any unbiased facts out of this purported “news” broadcast.

So I decided to see what the competition was up to.  I changed the channel to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program.  This show does not have the word “news” in the title, but their own description of the show is “…features interviews with top newsmakers and politicians, and in-depth analysis of the day’s biggest stories.”

And once again I was disgusted with the unbelievable bias that the show’s hosts had against Republicans, Trump, the RNC and everything associated with the right.  If not for the two guests from Bloomberg, who remained dignified and factual when they answered questions, the show would have seemed comical with it’s bias.

Large scale media in this country has an undue amount of influence on our population.  That is both a product of citizen’s passive nature, and the media’s insatiable appetite for filling 24 hour news cycles by pandering to our lowest common denominators.  It is easy to watch “news” that does not challenge your assumptions but merely feeds you what you already know and want to hear.  But as citizens and voters in a country of free press, we need to be better ourselves and demand more facts, less analysis and less bias in the information we take in.  A citizenry that does not think for itself is not a citizenry that will remain free forever.

David Jaxon found a good post on effective meetings and has an excerpt on his blog here:

To make meetings more effective, learn to listen

I have been thinking about this a lot lately.  Too many times, in a one-on-one discussion or a team meeting, people do not listen to one another and incorporate the information and analysis into their own thinking; they are just waiting for their turn to speak.

A friend told of an interesting event that really drives home the point about the benefits to all of actually listening to one another.

Setting: Campus panel of students discussion on the Israeli/Palestine issue(s)

For the first 20 minutes, the aged professor and audience of students listened to both sides shout and rage against the other side in 3 – 5 minutes bursts.  There was little cohesive discussion, specific topics were bounced around in no particular order, and there was a lot of emotions and name calling.

The professor then interrupted and told each “team” that they needed to take notes on what the other side of the panel was saying.  The panels of students on each side were perplexed because they all felt like they “knew” the other side’s arguments.  But the professor persisted and the students on the panel all agreed to take notes on the other sides arguments each time someone spoke.

The next 20 minutes of the panel were much more subdued.  The “listening” side of the panel at any given time was busy taking notes.  There were occasional requests to repeat a statement which sometimes flustered the speaker because the speaker had not necessarily thought about what they were saying; they were just spewing off.  The tone of the arguments became more focused on facts and analysis than on emotion.

After 20 mins the professor interrupted again.  Now, using the notes they had taken (and by default the listening they had done), the two sides of the panel were given the topics that were brought up in the first 20 minutes of heated yelling and raging.

Rather than emotional yelling with no discernible improvement in understanding or proposed solutions, there was rational discussion.  There was respect between the two sides of the panel.  They had the ability to stay on topic until some level of agreement (resolved or unresolved) was reached.  And civility ruled.

The professor’s point to his entire section had been made.  Active listening is a purposeful decision by the listener and the speaker.  If you are not actively listening, you are wasting your time and the speaker’s time.  A good meeting involves discussion around a topic or topics.  If you have invited others to speak at a meeting, but are not able to incorporate their information into your analysis and decision-making process, then you have failed at “meeting”.

What a terrible week for the US.  A number of issues that surround law enforcement have come to a head in a tragic week.

The fatal shootings of two black men in Minnesota (Philando Castile) and Louisiana (Alton Sterling) by policemen have been captured on videos posted to social media for all to see.  In both cases the black men were armed which should rightly make police officers much more concerned for their personal safety.  But from what is publicly known at this time, neither man went for their weapon, and in the case of Philando Castile, he was reaching for his license to carry as had been requested by the officer who then shot him.  This is outrageous behavior by a supposed trained, professional police force.

And now Dallas.  A peaceful protest of the two above shootings turned into an assassination of Dallas police officers (5 dead, 6 wounded at this time) by multiple suspects using automatic weapons.

There are important issues of race that play a large part in all of these incidents.  But the recurring theme is guns.  Handguns on the persons of the two black men fatally shot by police officers; automatic weapons in the hands of the Dallas assassins.

Guns.  Guns.  Guns.

I believe in the 2nd amendment.  I believe that a population has the right to bear arms for two reasons.  The first is attack by outside enemies of the state in which an armed population is a deterrent and resistance towards the outside attackers.  The second case is the rare case that the citizens need to rise up and forcefully take back power from a government that has abducted power from those citizens.  Though a preferred method of ensuring a government entity does not take too much power from the people it serves is by the citizens taking an active part in politics and the political process.

I am not a weapons expert but in neither of those cases are hand guns or automatic weapons necessary.

If anyone has a rational, scientific argument that the number of and easy access to guns in this country had benefited anyone other than the gun manufacturers, I am willing to listen.  But until I hear a valid argument in favor of guns, I remain convinced that the US as a country and society is worse off due to the prevalence of guns.