I watched a bunch of news shows today. The main topics were health care, Bill Clinton's trip to N. Korea, the economy and cash for clunkers, and the Sotomayor confirmation and swearing in.

I have to say that the quote of the day goes to John McLaughlin, who, in response to a comment by Monica Crowley that Bill Clinton's trip to North Korea would have "unintended consequences," stated, "isn't that the history of man?" I loved that! It's so true.

But the unique show of interest for the day's series had to be the special show that the PBS show, "To the Contrary," which features all female panelists usually, and discusses issues pertinent to women. But today, they had a special, which was a 1/2 hour documentary on why the mainstream, national "environmental movement" had abandoned population control as one of their major environmental issues. I thought it was fascinating, although it had an overemphasis on the impacts of immigration. Immigration is a red herring issue when talking about population, because it deals with people that are already here. Sure, maybe if you deal with immigration, you can somewhat "control" the population in your country, but globally, it's irrelevant. And aren't the serious environmental problems now global?

But the show did raise important questions. And while I agreed to an extent some of the theories set forth as to why the "environmental movement" as a whole has abandoned population control as a major campaign. They said it was because the population growth in the U.S. had shifted from the whites, which were the source of most of the increase during the post world war II baby boom, to minorities. The environmental organizations, already sensitive about being almost exclusively white, didn't want to be branded as taking a racist stand on populations control.

In my opinion, there is some merit to that, but it isn't the only reason. I honestly think that repeated columns (which I have read) over the last number of years talking about how, if population falls too fast, the baby boomers will break the bank in collecting medicare, medicaid, and social security, because there won't be enough workers to pay the bill, have had their effect. Baby boomers like me, we want our social security and medicare. We feel like we've paid for it. So, if it takes us turning a blind eye to population in order to insure that we get our benefits, well, in combination with the racial aspect of it, is enough for us to de-prioritize it. But I give kudos to "To the Contrary" for their special. It was very interesting and thought provoking.

In regard to the health care issue, I do agree that Obama's strategy of staying on the sidelines and not having a clear message to the public about what they have to gain from this is one of the main reasons why he is encountering such flak. But it frustrates me that the mainstream pundits are seeming to give a free ride to those in the public that are disrupting the town hall meetings. There's no doubt that this is a political ploy. But even worse is that they seem to forget that when environmentalists, or civil rights or peace activists use disrupting civil disobedience tactics, that yes, they get on the news, but the news pretty much portrays it critically. But here, we have these people using disrupting, violent tactics, and the news media apologizes for it, saying, "oh, well, it's just a fringe few, but there is a legitimate concern behind it." Oh yeah, and the same thing isn't true regarding the environment, war, and civil rights? No, it's one way or the other. Either these kind of tactics are out of the mainstream or they aren't.

The republican commentators all had a consistent message regarding Bill Clinton's visit to North Korea. They all said, "oh sure, we're glad the gals are free, but "Bubba" (they all referred to him as "Bubba") undercut "our" policy toward North Korea. In reality, what they meant was that the failed Bush policy toward N. Korea, where they built more nuke bombs under him than any other president, was being changed. Thank goodness for that.

A republican acquaintance of mine, who I don't know real well, told me at a social gathering Friday evening, that he had voted for Obama, and that, while a lot of people were criticizing Obama, he wasn't hearing anyone say, "I wish we had Bush back." I think that is very true.