Autumn Leaves

Yesterday Annie and I drove to Hill City to view the autumn leaves and eat lunch at the Alphine Inn. We were about a week too early on the changing of the leaf colors. Probably less than half the leaves had turned color.
We stopped at Pactola Lake and were pleased to see the water level as high as it it, 89.5% of capacity. A year ago it was down to about 50% of capacity. We were gratified to see how green the Black Hills looked on this last day in September.

We had a fabulous lunch at the Alphine Inn, as usual. I ordered a smoked pork chop, the best pork chop I have ever tasted. Their German potatos were, as usual, wonderful. We took a stroll up and down main street and were surprised to see how many stores were closed for the season already.

Today's political thoughts:

A couple of weeks ago I watched Charles Gibson interviewing Senator Biden. Gibson's first remark to Biden was "This is the 57th time we've had you on our show." I bet no republican has ever been on their show more than a few times. I never watched the entire interview because I couldn't stand the sugary sweetness Gibson showed toward Biden. It was "old pal" week. I never heard him ask Biden a single hard question.

A week later: Gibson intervied Sarah Palen. He was downright cruel in his attempt to break her down and get her to make a mistake or say something she didn't want to say. He was snippy, petty and obviously upset at his inability to shake her which prompted him to try all the harder.
I had always had a certain amount of respect for Gibson up to that point but no more. I was truly amazed at Sara Palin's coolness and her ability to make Gibson look like an idiot. He totally blew it as far as I am concerned, showing his true colors. I had watched ABC evening news about half the time up until that day but now I refuse to even turn to that channel, which only leaves me Fox News. I absolutely refuse to watch the other major network and CNN news because of their incrediably obvious bias against Republicans, the church, the business world and the oil industry.

Why do I believe and trust Fox News.? First of all, their motto is "Fair and Balanced coverage" and they come the closest to that by a wide margin. Nearly half their news hour anchor people are liberals. Both the Fox News conservative and liberal reporters and anchor people make no bones about their political leaning and often come right out and say what their political beliefs are.

When a political or business person is being interviewed, they are never overwhelmed by two reporters and a guest of the same political persuasion . It is always one on one or two on one with both a conservative and a liberal reporter asking questions of the person being interviewed.

The three network and news channels tell us in their words what some Republican or business person has said. Usually they twist it around in such a way they have the person saying something he or she didn't say. If they run a news clip, the tendency is to clip it in such a way as to change or distort what the person said.
An example of this was about ten or twelve years ago when Newt Gingrich (sp?) was Speaker of the House. He gave a speech in Florida in which he was commenting on the intelligence of the black people. I don't remember his exact words but they were to the affect that "there are those people who believe blacks are less intelligent than white people but I am here to tell you, there is no difference in the intelligence of the two races." I know that is what he said as I was listening to his speech. The Associated press took that statement and clipped it in such a way as to make him appear to say "blacks are less intelligent than whites". All the major news outlets picked up this AP story and presented it to the public as the AP people presented it. This episode was one of the major reasons his political career was destroyed and he was forced to resign as Speaker of the House. How would Fox News have handled that story or any story showing what a political person, democrat or republican, liberal or conservative said? They would have run enough of the story so no one would have any doubt the person was saying what he actually said.