Yes, I watched the debate; but why?

I  watched the first debate Wednesday night, between President Obama and Mitt Romney.

If you read this blog before "the accident,'' you know that normally I love these debates. I love the exchange of ideas. I love to hear how these people think. I think it is important to hear the people who want to lead us, to lead our country, and try to figure out how they'll do.

But this one was different. I honestly don't think it matters. I fear most of us have already made up our minds. As I posted on Facebook, I have this feeling like it's all been decided ... that 47 percent (to use Romney's phrase) know they are voting for the President, 47 percent know they are not, and so it all comes down to the "missing" 6 percent who - I'm afraid - won't even be watching the debate!

And nothing that I've seen on the post-debate analysis tells me otherwise. I hear the Republicans talking about how their guy romped with the greatest debate performance in 50 years; I hear the Democrats saying the Republican lied even as they lament that the President didn't do a very good job ("altitude" got him, according to Al Gore).

But all the self-congratulation on one side and the grumbling on the other seems to me to lack serious discussion and only add to the noise that already divides this country so deeply.

Jobless numbers came out. Unemployment went down. The President will argue that's progress. Romney will argue that the number doesn't reflect those who are underemployed (people working part-time jobs who can't get full time employment) and those who have given up looking (both groups, to me, have to be counted - particularly the underemployed who seem ast least to be trying to stay off unemployment).

Perhaps I'm cynical, but as someone once said, there are "lies, there are damn lies, and then there are statistics." I have a sports background, so I know baseball players in particular - because no other sport uses statistics like baseball does - who go in to argue for a raise with their set of statistics, only to be told why they don't deserve a raise based on another set of equally impressive statistics. Statistics can say what you want them to say ... or rather, they will say whatever the person paying for them wants them to say.

Meanwhile, has the bias of the so-called "news" channels ever been more obvious?

If you had any doubt that MSNBC (whose motto "Lean Forward" sounds an awful lot like Chairman Mao's 1958 "Great Leap Forward") is doing all it can to support President Obama, that doubt had to be removed in the aftermath of the first debate. Chris Matthews  literally begged the President to watch his network because - according to Matthews - the hosts on MSNBC have been shooting down Republican positions and Mitt Romney for months. Matthews said they'd been delivering the President his talking points every night, and was literally begging the President to pay attention. Clearly the folks at MSNBC believe they've already provided everything the President needs to win this election and are frustrated that the President won't follow their advice.

Not that Fox News was much better. The Fox folks aren't quite as apoplectic; they don't appear to be about to have seizures and spit all over themselves when they talk about the other side the way the folks at MSNBC do, but they too made no bones about their belief that they have been carrying the flag for Romney and if Romney would just listen to them, he'd win.

And CNN ... well, nobody apparently watches CNN, judging by that network's ratings. I did, simply because I get this sense that CNN has made a business decision to try - as hard as it is for them to honestly try  - to offer some conservative viewpoints without sounding condescending in doing so. Maybe it's just me (and it probably is) but I get the sense the folks at CNN have been told to reign it in because the ratings are terrible and  if they're going to keep their  jobs they need to offer some of whatever it is that keeps Fox's ratings so remarkably high (this is television, after all, which means entertainment. If you don't think ratings don't matter when it comes even to news, ask Katie Couric, or Connie Chung, or any number of network anchors who have come and gone in an attempt to get a majority of the American people to trust them).

Ah, but there is value to all of it. I make myself watch a little of all three "major" cable news networks even though I think Sean Hannity is the right-wing version of Chris Matthews, and Greta grates on my nerves as much as Rachel Maddow.
I watch, because somewhere in the midst of all this propaganda there has to be some truth, some sense to be made out of what is going on.

On the other hand, I listen to young people and realize they're getting their news from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on The Comedy Channel. Somehow, the Comedy Channel has become the most trusted name in news for folks under 30.

But it's not really that different than the late 1800s-early 1900s, when every city had multiple newspapers, and they competed was by taking extremely different positions to try to appeal to the most people. I have a feeling William Randolph Hurst or Joseph Pulitzer would feel right at home owning CNN or MSNBC or Fox News, that their editors could step right into a modern TV news room and feel right at home (once they adjusted to technology).
Sometimes we forget the term "Yellow Journalism," which means "a type of journalism that presents little or no legitimate well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers. Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism," or "biased opinion masquerading as objective fact. Moreover, the practice of yellow journalism involved sensationalism, distorted stories, and misleading images for the sole purpose of boosting newspaper sales and exciting public opinion."
Change out "newspaper sales" for "television ratings" and you have too much of what passes for journalism today, too.

And don't even get me started on polls. All the polls do is create an expectation so that, should the candidate who is behind in the polls win, the people who support the loser have grounds  to claim voter fraud because there is no way the polls could say one thing the day before the election and the election turn out so differently. Some thing must be illegal - hanging chads or voter intimidation or fraudulant voting taking place.
I've even heard that the company that will count the  votes is a Spanish company that is owned by George Soros! (I always believed votes were boxed up and taken to a vote counting facility in each district, usually a government office, where they are counted by machine or by hand under the watchful eye of a representative from all parties involved. Sure, there was corruption ... but it was good old fashioned American corruption - like losing a box or two of ballots, or producing an extra box or two at the last minute that no one "knew" about).

Still, I will vote. And I admit I'm not crazy about either major candidate. I admit I'll be voting against someone rather than for someone, and that isn't the way it should be.

Which means I'm one of those people who watch the debates with a 99 percent certainty of who I will vote for.

Why? I guess because I'm hopeful that one or both of these guys will be struck with some unusually solid common sense and maybe, just maybe, make me change my mind.