The Television Programmers versus Distributors Cat Fight

DirecTV subscribers currently do not have Viacom channels, some of them good, as part of their subscriptions. Dish network’s subscribers currently do not have AMC channels, home to the mesmerizing and Albuquerque located Breaking Bad, as part of their subscriptions. The programming providers want more money for their product. Seemingly nothing wrong with that, except that product is bundled as part of larger packages distributed to customers and that more money will come from increased prices for those customers which might lead to canceled subscriptions, resulting in lower revenues to distributors. Both sides have launched cheesy campaigns worthy of a slimy political contest in attempts to blame the other side for their joint issues and distract the consumer from their ever growing monthly television bill. This cat fight is one in which the observer hopes both sides lose leading to a revamped home television entertainment model, one in which consumers can choose the programming they want. Currently, customers only have the choice of packages determined by distributors who have to include packages sold to them by programmers. It’s an outdated and doomed model; the only question is when the transition will take place. The sooner, the better.

The Most Inane Comparison in the World

Apparently July is the emptiest of all months in the sporting universe. As proof, the only proof necessary, is the kerfuffle over the supposed theoretical victor in an altogether impossible basketball game between the original Olympic dream team of 1992 and today’s of 2012. This idiotic episode was prompted by a question posed a few weeks back to Kobe Bryant pondering who would win. Kobe, often regarded as a legendarily competitive athlete, answered in the somewhat hesitant affirmative. There are almost endless reasons why there is absolutely no way to know which team would win in this theoretical matchup, the first being the absence of time travel (required for resolution). Unfortunately, this unconditional fact was no deterrent whatsoever to many commentators determined to opine; leading to many unlistenable sports radio shows and unreadable sports news websites for almost a week. Recently, the argument mercifully jumped the shark with President Obama jumping on board to declare his support for the 1992 team, the conventional (yet still completely subjective and unprovable) answer given by most. This whole episode might seem to be innocuous and it could have been but the indignation displayed by some commentators with regard to a question without an answer, completely based on subjective feelings, was so stupid, inane and annoying that it begs for scorn. It wouldn’t prove anything but maybe Michael Jordan, who appears to have taken to retirement donut in hand, will lead the 1992 team back onto the court one more time in an attempt to end this national nightmare.

More "Fair" Claptrap

In silly, over-the-top, disconnected from reality overtly political statements for the day the President of the United States of America makes his pitch for raising tax rates on families with incomes more than $250,000 per year:

“Let’s not hold the vast majority of Americans and ourentire economy hostage while we debate the merits of another tax cut for thewealthy”

Taking the President’s words as literal, in his apparent understanding, Americans are supposed to think that because he supports raising taxes on a minority segment of the population, that those who do not think that raising anyone’s tax rates is economically sound are taking the rest of the population hostage because he will not support legislation maintaining all current tax rates. Seems a bit like projection.

The much derided “Bush” tax cuts of the early 2000’s are, as they have during President Obama’s entire misguided presidency, the object of much deranged scrutiny. Never mind that they have been the tax rates for nearly 10 years, actually resulted in increases in revenue collected year to year and maintained a progressive rate of taxation by income level (higher rates on higher income), these tax rates haunt political discussion like some kind of chupacabra of the fevered liberal mind.

The President was once asked if he would seek these kinds of increases even if they led to decreased revenue generation and he answered in the affirmative, under the auspices of “fairness”. Fairness being a word whose definition has been twisted to the point of being basically meaningless because it seems to mean anything to anyone. The plea to the majority is further discouraging because it illustrates a problem with direct democracy, don’t the minority of taxpayers deserve some kind of protection from confiscatory tax rates enabled by a majority? To some, there is no tax rate too high on and no problem that cannot be solved with other people’s money. How it is considered “fair” for one erstwhile “free” citizen to pay so much more, as a percentage of their lawfully earned gains, of the government’s activities than others is going to be a determining factor in this year’s election. Those who can conceive this as “fair” should not be surprised as the population of chupacabras shrinks; one wonders who or what they’ll blame next.